A Field Trip

I'm not really into animated films, but like Leeper said, "expand your interests", so last night was an opportunity I'm glad I've taken because we did see a great animated film called The Book of life. Yes a children's film so of course there is a happy ending and yes the moral of the story was to be yourself    and not someone you are not. But what I really liked about the film was the unique animation. The idea of the characters being dolls, the colors that corresponds so well with their scenery, the score and the architecture in the movie based on the ancient Myan aztecs culture... and the pig named Chewie that oddly sound like a sheep. But during the movie I found myself watching it as a simple viewer. Not actually looking at the film for what it has but what I see... If that made any sense. Okay probably not but in front of me was sitting Prof. Leeper. I couldn't help but to think during the whole movie, "what is he thinking? Does he like it? What does he look at while watching a film instead of 'watching a film'?"  Because you know, Leeper has the master-mind of film and animation and knows what it takes to become a successful film maker.

ZOMBIE MOVIE: A Call For Zombies

Zombie video shoot!  Thursday, October 23rd immediately after Intro to Digital Media. 

 

The first shoot is at 12:20-3pm.  This is a regular class scene.  Just be your normal self for class.  Then we will do zombie make up.  And take a shot of you chasing Alex (the only human left on campus) out the door. We need about 16 zombies.. There will be bribes, in the shape of pizza and snacks.  

 

The second shoot is at 10pm-12am.  This shot is a zombie rave party.  We will direct certain things we want in the shot (of you stealing Alex's nerf guns), but we want you to have fun.  YOU WILL BE SUPPLIED WITH GLOWSTICKS AND FOOD(not brains)!   

 

You will need to bring a messy change of clothes or at least something you can have grease, paint, and hair spray thrown around on. Cause let's face it, Zombification gets messy.

 

For a reminder of what you are getting into, here is our movie pitch that we showed in class.

 

Reply if you wanna be a ZOMBIE!

See ya'll!

That Wolf Was So Freaky!

I hope I’m not the only one who was freaked out and disturbed by the wolf in Sand or Peter and the Wolf. I mean, I’m not a horror movie fan anyways, but wow, something about that wolf’s sand animation really made it freaky. Just the spastic, ferocious movement of the wolf, its ability to change into anything, and the terrifying soundtrack that accompanied its every move made it convincingly scary. If I was a little kid watching this film, I would probably be scared to death.

            The portrayal of the story itself is fantastic, and it still blows me away how all of that was created from sand. Having myself completed a 10-minute stop motion animation film in 33 hours, I have such a respect for this animator.  Her ability to convey emotion and movement with purely sand is incredible. To be sure, I will not be forgetting that image of the wolf the first time it appears. I think that the bare, savage nature of the sand lends to this terrifying image. It just goes to show that you don’t have to be an artist to be an animator. Art can be created through any medium if you have the right mind for it.

Sand Animation

It was interesting seeing this sand animation, I thought I saw it before, but I have only seen stop motion this was different. It’s hard for me to imagine loosing every single picture after it’s done, because with hand drawn animation you have the sketches and such, and in digital you have the characters, and backgrounds. All of it is there and you can go back and touch it, hold it, at the end of the day the only thing that the artist has left with the sand animation is the film itself and the grains of sand used to make it. Somehow to me that makes the film more special because it is all you have, aside from the tools used to create the work. I can’t imagine doing all that work and not being able to hold it or at least mess with it on a computer. The animation was hard to get used to but the movements were gorgeous especially the way the birds moved, they often looked very believable. I would be interested to know some more artists that use this method of animation, because though usually simple from what I saw they look quite fantastic, and capture attention quickly.

dat wolf face

Different Views

It's always good to see everything from a different viewpoint.  In the past, men have dominated many parts of life.  This included art, inventions, politics, religion, and so much more.  But these are the things women dominated: children's behavior, life at home, taking care of the family (mostly cooking and cleaning), and raising children into responsible adults.  But men did partake in raising children most of the time, if they weren't at work or at war.

But today, it's so different.  Men can be the dad at home.  And women can go to work.  Women have influenced to change the outside view of art, inventions, politics, religion, and more.  Taking those things and showing to everyone what they see.

In class, Professor Leeper mentioned about a lady who didn't like certain animation because they weren't smooth and colorful like animation was suppose to be.  At least not to her.  But being open to other ideas and styles make a great artist.

Being open in a way that you're not a mindless consumer taking every idea there is.  Taking ideas and looking at it from an outside view, asking "will this make it any better?"  If yes, take it.  If not, don't just reject it.  Keep it for another idea.  Not all solutions fix the problem.

That's what I gathered from today's class.

This is why we are animators.........

Women are great

I am all about talking about women in all the roles. Women and girls are awesome. It's extremely interesting to look at women in media and pop culture and everywhere and compare how their roles and even how they are perceived is different from men in the same or similar roles. 

The films we watched today do seem like they came from a different gaze than other films we've watched so far in the semester, there's almost more of a passive eye that comes with it. The view accepts the things we're shown, almost before we can accept it.

Yeah.

best batgirl

Animation Technique and Style

Sand animation is something I normally would look over or forget about when talking about stop motion. These past few classes we have been talking a lot about different animators within children's media, masters of animation, and women in media. Each animator has their own type of animation technique as well as their own specific style of animation to go along with it. Today we examined the works of Caroline Leafand Wendy Tilby. The significance of todays class was to examine some very obscure types of animation which I found very interesting. These included some stop motion sand animation and some scratching of 75mm film celluloid. I had seen some sand animation before on Vimeo and a few other times before today. The scratching of the 75mm was something very distinct that I had never seen before and I was very impressed by that style and technique. It created a very different viewing world. Very chopping and quick. It left you in a state that made you feel as if you were watching a dream. It was very interesting indeed. I hope that we get around to seeing a few different types of animation as the semester goes on. I'm sure there are a lot of styles I am unfamiliar with!

Hedgehog in the Fog vs. Tale of Tales

For me personally the Hedgehog in the Fog was more entertaining than Tale of Tales. I was trying to my best ability to enjoy the artwork of Tale of Tales, but it would not affect me like the art in Hedgehog in the Fog. I could not get over the fact that I couldn't understand the story. I don't know if there is a story that i'm missing or if the writer made it so vague but it work for me. Hedgehog in the Fog on the other hand was some the most beautiful animation I have seen in my life. The storyline in HITF let me be fully invested into the film but I was pulled out constantly from TOT.

Another aspect of the two films that separated them in my mind was beauty. HITF had cute of beautiful characters  that made me feel good. But, TOT's characters had a certain dark aspect (Just look into the wolf's eyes) that made me feel uncomfortable and slightly sick. I think the most surprising difference between the two films was, even though I liked HITF more I remembered TOT and was affected by TOT the most. TOT affected me like a drug, I was not the same as I entered the class when I left. I felt different.

I think Leeper favours the National Film Board of Canada because we've been watching a lot of work by them lately. In the past weeks we've watched TV Tango, Duel, Sand Castle and today I couldn't help but notice the logo appearing before the films by Caroline Leaf. Being Canadian, this makes me happy :-) We produce a lot of good films apparently… 


I have a very limited understanding of how the use of sand on a light table works. I get the concept, but the fact that there are people who do it well amazes me. I've seen acts on America's Got Talent of people who've created incredible images in a couple of minutes, but I didn't know full length films were being produced. I can't even imagine the time and effort it would take to make a movie using this medium.

   

I really enjoyed The Owl Who Married a Goose because it was strange. I guess an owl and a goose fall in love, she has babies, and they all fly south for the winter. My favourite part was when the owl is exhausted from keeping up with the flock, and he humorously collapses into the water when they arrive. The whole plot was weird, and the ending happened so quickly I didn't know what to think. The owl drowned in the water, and the credits rolled. It was very odd, but I just shrugged my shoulders. I know it's Leeper's goal to confuse us, and lately he has been succeeding. 

Industry Talk

So I figured with all this talk about the greed of the studio system and the bigger end of the film industry I'd post an interesting link to an article I found on one of my favorite film news sites, Indiewire (if you don't ever go here you should because it is amazing...No Film School is also a good one). In the article they are discussing the upcoming film Birdman with actor Zach Galifianakis. He goes into some detail about his views on the industry and how he has always had this love/hate relationship with it. He expresses the same views we have discussed in class about the studio's focus on money and their lack of effort towards creativity in their work. They take no chances and stick to their guns to ensure that they can make money and be successful on their terms. Galifianakis expresses that he has always felt this way about the industry. Even though he has been in popular blockbusters like the Hangover trilogy, he still wants the industry to strive for creativity and originality. This makes me wonder how many popular actors following the flow of the studio system feel the same way. Galifianakis just wants to see a little more of something creative. I wouldn't mind that either.

Here's the link to the full article: http://www.indiewire.com/article/zach-galifianakis-on-mocking-celebrity-with-birdman-and-why-hollywood-is-gross-20141014?page=1

Actions Speak Louder than Words

Caroline Leaf’s sand work is phenomenal. It just makes my brain hurt a little to think of the amount of dedication and sand in each cell that had to be measured and molded accordingly. I wish I had known of her before coming to this class. Her work with Sand Peter and the Wolf is something I feel I would have enjoyed watching as a child. There was something about Sand Peter and the Wolf that really caught my attention. I don’t know if it was the style of animation or the music, but I really enjoyed it. I used to watch this VHS series called The Children’s Circle where they would pick a bunch of famous children’s stories and turn them into animated shorts, and even though they weren’t “disney” or even “happy” all of the time, I really connected with them. I can still remember the theme song to the tape and all the stories that were my favorites. Sand Peter and the Wolf just reminded me of something I would have watched in that series- and I mean that as a huge compliment. Children connect very well to things that aren’t always “fuzzy”. It’s good to feed them things besides Disney and Pixar etc.

I think what I enjoyed most about The Owl who Married a Goose was the language they spoke. I always connect well with things in other languages and eskimo was no exception. They didn’t even need words to communicate; I understood everything through their body language, which tells me that a lot of hard work went into making this. Being able to follow a story with as few words as possible is key for me. I like to be able to watch the characters move and interact while hardly speaking. I suppose that’s one of the reasons Bambi is my favorite Disney movie. Actions speak louder than words after all. 

girls gettin stuff done

 So I have found the last few classes to be totally enlightening. Although some people might not agree with me, I personally have really enjoyed what we've been watching and discussing. It was supes interesting to me today to look into women in animation. (Seeing as I'm a woman... wanting to go into animation...). 

ANYWAY but really though women's roles in the film and animation industries have been seriously lacking. In 2013, only 6% of films were directed by women, and that number has actually been decreasing. And according to other research, women are more likely to work in drama, comedy, and documentaries, but are least likely to work on sci-fi and horror, or any animation at all. From what I saw today, women have something that they bring to the table that men don't typically bring. Like Leeper pointed out, a lot of the films made by Leaf and Tilby just have this sense of connectedness and a deeper sense of relationships and emotions. I'm not like against anyone or any gender here, it's just simply the way it is: that women just get that emotional stuff and portray it on a deeper level. And that's just what some films need sometimes: a deep story with characters you can feel for and relate to, and women bring that. And hey, without women in film, we wouldn't have the Mean Girls we all know and love. In my little research session I found that the most popular films with the most women working on it were Mean Girls, Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and Honey. The work force for these movies were just about 40% women.

Though we may be lacking in some areas today, women have come a long way. I don't know if you guys have ever heard about this, but back in the day, Walt Disney Animation Studios didn't even hire women to animate: the only thing they could do there was paint and ink. This letter written in 1938 is proof of that. It wasn't saying that women couldn't draw, it was more reflecting women's role in society and their limitations because of the glass ceiling. However, slowly but surely after this rejection letter, women made their way into the studio and made some major influences on character styles and stories. Women have made leaps and bounds in art and film and the workforce in general, (as seen in the films we watched today) and I think our future in the industry looks bright. :)

"Flowers of the Fall" Over Fall Break

Over fall break, instead of heading back home to visit my friends and family like many of our classmates did, I chose to work on Ethan Burch's senior film "Flowers of the Fall". I was assigned the position of grip and electrician, which is not one of the top positions of course, but I was eager get involved any way I could. Even though we had to be at our call time of 6:30 a.m. every morning, it was more than worth it!

In one of the pre-production meetings, our producer told us our production was not assigned a behind-the-scenes person. She told us she wanted us to share any of the photos we took, either on our phones or cameras. I decided I would bring my camera along with me, unsure if I would actually use it much or not. Boy, did I use that camera a lot!

I wasn't really sure what I was supposed to take pictures of, so I just shot a bunch of pictures of everyone setting up at first; some people posed for pictures too. I thought at least people would have a few pictures to look at after we were done filming, but eventually people started saying "hey, BTS, take a picture of this!". BTS stands for behind the scenes, so I was really grip half time and the behind the scenes photographer the other half. I ended up taking hundreds of pictures each day, almost 1,000 total!

On top of being one of the grips and BTS, I had a great overall experience with everyone on set! Everyone got along very well and was part of a hardworking team. I'm definitely glad I didn't go home for break, I wouldn't have wanted to miss out on such an awesome experience! I'm not going to spoil anything for you on here, but I can't wait for the premiere!!

Brother

This fall break I had the opportunity to work on the senior film Brother as the script supervisor. I have to say that this has been one of the best film set experiences I’ve had ever had. From day one the crew came together and operated like clockwork. I was extremely impressed with the director; Mathis Glover. He had a very clear vision for the film, which made the entire process much smoother for everyone involved.

Being on set again reminded me why I chose to major in film production. Despite working close to 12 hours every day I never felt tried. I absolutely loved being on set, and I’m ready for the next senior project that’s filming this weekend.

Fairytales Can Be Terrifying

A story doesn't have to be light and happy to be considered a fairytale. The original fairytales were dark and disturbing, but also had a whimsical and magical side to them. The short animated film "One Day a Man Bought a House" is very similar to the old folk tales, but with some modern conventions.

The story is about a man who buys a home who is occupied by a revolting, enormous rat. He tries to give the rat the boot, but all of his attempts fall flat. Rat poison, bear traps, and an even larger rat-hunting cat are no match for this rodent. Surprisingly, the rat appreciates the man's attempts to get it to leave, viewing these actions as gifts from the man who owns the house.
The rat, much to our surprise, turns out to be a female rat who falls in love with the man who shares the house with her. She knows her appearance is grotesque, so she plasters makeup on her face and dawns a wedding gown to impress the man. She runs to the man, who is nearly about to leave, and never lets him go.
I found this incredibly ludicrous story of rat falls in love with man very enjoyable and humorous. Lots of the imagery was rather dark and scary, but the piece had a dark humor about it. I like how this film made it fun to be a little creeped out, I had several nervous laughs while watching this.

Fantastic beasts

Many people know I am obsessed with Harry Potter. This is nothing new. Fantastic beasts is also nothing new. There is a large misunderstanding in the fandom that Fantastic Beasts will feature the main characters we love. This is not true. The first movie will take place in 1920's New York. All 3 movies will follow magizoologist Newt Scamander as he works on writing "Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them." J.K. Rowling recently tweeted an anagram that ended up being the first line of a synopsis of the first movie. "Newt Scamander only meant to stay in New York for a few hours."

Personally, I've known it was a trilogy since they announced they were making it, but I did not know the dates. When you are as involved in the fandom as I am at this point, you tend to find things out pretty quickly. It also doesn't help that I go to a Harry Potter convention every year. Harry Potter is how I met some of my best friends, most of whom I only get to see once a year at this convention.

I'm not all that worried, especially since Jo is writing the screenplays. Evanna Lynch has said that she wants to be in the movies if at all possible. Technically, it could happen since Luna married Newt's Great-Great grandson.



In Diagon Alley in Florida, there's sneak peaks of creatures in the movie, if you know where to look.

Sandimation

I very much enjoyed Caroline Leaf's sand animations.  To me, sand seems to be a completely different medium for animation, as opposed to things like drawings, 3D, or clay.  In most forms of animation, you're typically re-drawing the same figure in a different pose or you're moving limbs on your tangible clay figure to create a new pose.  But with sand, you have to move the sand to create a new pose, while still retaining the basic shape of the figure.  I would imagine that keeping the same shape of the thing you're animating must take lots of practice when it comes to sand.  Although I wasn't really drawn in by Leaf's characters or stories, I was captivated by the actual animation.  As far as these films go, I think that's all that really matters.  What I loved most about Peter and the Wolf and The Owl Who Married a Goose was her transitioning over to scenes of negative space.  Not only was it a nice idea in adding to the overall look of the film, but it just amazed me how she seemed to move her negative-space characters as easily as she could when the characters were made of sand.  

   

Greatest Animated Films?

Although I can understand why the visual elements and everything that went into creating the two films we saw would make it what it was, it personally didn't do anything for me. 

I can admire what went into creating the film and the different effects, but I didn't find them very entertaining. The films didn't really do anything for me, neither the hedgehog or the wolf. Rather than being intrigued into watching it I felt myself sitting there thinking "When is it going to be over?" 

Stop-motion is not a favorable style of mine overall so I don't really know that I could properly speak on these films. Some of the more uber complex stop-motion like Paranorman and Coraline I enjoy, other types not as much, you could say I'm very picky about my stop-motion enjoyment. 

I didn't really get anything out of the films, whether that is from the visual style or overall story-telling style I'm not sure, but I didn't feel too great about either films.

Lullaby and Goodnight

This video was made by Yuri Norstien.  This was a very extensive video telling the story of the Russian lullaby where the wolf would come and steal babies into the woods.  I adored the animation and the story that went along with the lullaby.  I wish that the video was shorter.  For a lullaby, it really did put me to sleep with all the dark tones and the music.

This artist uses a lot of dark tones and bases a lot of his work at night.  He has many different styles, but I can all detect bits and pieces that lead to him.

While I've been learning how to become an artist and developing my own style, I'm taking bits and pieces of other artist style and applying them to my own work.  It's amazing to see how much I'm learning from other artist.  A lot of people look down on artist for copying their styles, but that's not how artist learn or grow.  When I was in third grade, my art teacher told us it was better to look at something and copy than to use a light board.  Copying was frowned upon, but I used it to develop my skill at copying be seeing.

I want to grow into a better artist, but I don't want to be the next Picasso. I want to be the best artist I can be.

Allow me to gush

TALE OF TALES IS THE BEST THING EVER! IT IS SO AMAZING IT MAKES KITTENS FLY! 5 STARS! A+! 10/10! ROGER EBERT APPROVES! JESUS APPROVES! ABRAHAM LINCOLN APPROVES! IT! IS! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMAAAAAAAAAAA
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIINNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG
GGG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! uzodHEFWA UTHVSEOFUHEAUSFHGRSJXHFJSK4HFUOJSIRNVAHGOICSNUHF ESANFH UANC

Okay now time to be all srs! Tale of Tales is one of the best animated...things for a reason! For one, the animation. ERMEGERD WHERE DO I BEGIN! First off, if you would have told me that this was made in the late 70s, I would not believe you! The animation is so fluent and full of life that I still can not believe it was not made on a computer! Like when the wolf was running on the highway with the baby who he thought was a piece of paper. I was like "HOW WAS THIS EVEN POSSIBLE IN THE 80S'!" It's that good. Though I would like to say that the animation does remind me of something that Terry Gilliam would do on Monty Python. At any minute I kept on waiting for a giant foot crushing something! And for anyone out there reading this who has not seen Monty Python:



As far as a plot is concern...well there isn't any seeing how this is an art film. And I'm not saying that as someone saying "EW IT'S ALL ARTY AND CRAP! WHAT DO THEY WANT FROM ME? ACTUALLY USE MY BRAIN! AOCNA OJRC AOFIHIUSNPRV HSEOICNXEWHCRUAWNSFXIEGAUNRENCMGFXNECYRNCFIOXAU!" No. I mean more on how there really isn't that much of a plot but it makes you think. Think about why there was a bull jump roping with a girl. And why they are in limbo. And why the wolf suddenly appear in limbo. And why did he take a paper that turned into a baby. And why-GOODNESS THIS MOVIE MAKES NO SENSE! But then I read a Wikipedia article (IT CAN BE RIGHT SOME TIMES!) that says that the movie was supposed to be basically a dream sequence. That the scenes are supposed to be fragmented memories being stringed together. Now usually memories in films would be strung in chronological order, like with Forrest Gump. But here, it is told out of chronological order because when we do remember something, it is usually at one point in time and not in order of events. They come to us at random. And that really does make sense. With the soldiers scenes appearing at random and the kids eating the apple as well. And if it isn't supposed to be a dream, well it's the one that makes sense to me!

And...um...yeah...that's all I got...



























Time to light the rockets!

Shooting Flowers of The Fall

Over fall break I had the opportunity of working grip on Flowers of The Fall.
It was easily the best film experience I've had so far. It was the first professional set I've ever worked on. I learned so much from the experience, and I truly discovered what it's like to make a film. And I can proudly say that I'm happy to be in the industry I'm in. The crew was incredible, and even the director said we were the best and most organized crew he's ever worked with. I'm happy my first set experience was so positive.

New Harry Potter Trilogy....Whaaaa?

Ok so I think I speak for a large part of our generation when I say that I have mixed feelings about the upcoming spin-off installments of the Harry Potter movies. For those of you who don't know about Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, it is a book written by JK Rowling that is supposed to be a textbook used at Hogwarts. Within the last year, they announced that it would be turned into a movie, and now it will be three movies, and possibly more. On one hand, I'm thrilled to have more Harry Potter in my life, but at the same time, I worry that it could be too much of a good thing. It don't think it's unreasonable to have reservations about it because historically spin-offs can be really hit-or-miss. At the same time, there have been spin-offs that have had lots of success in the box office, so it's hard to say. My biggest worry is that Harry Potter has been such a huge part of millions of people's lives, and if we introduce something new into an already settled and accepted thing, it will be a flop in many's eyes.  Hopefully, they will be different enough from the original (and unbeatable) movies, and that people go into it not having expectations about them.

I trust JK Rowling's supervision on this - she hasn't let me down yet! I just don't trust the general public...I'm leaving this in the hands of the makers of the films: if you let us down, you have nobody to blame but yourselves. You can't mess with our emotions when it comes to Harry Potter.

If you want to read more about it, here is the link to the article:
http://www.theverge.com/2014/10/15/6982525/harry-potter-spin-off-fantastic-beasts-and-where-to-find-them