BSA103 Visual Diary

Concept: Non-narrative short films and how they capture emotion without narrative. 
Film where the primary focus is to capture and emphasise emotion in only a short amount of time and without using narrative to create relatability and therefore emotion.

Techniques that I have seen used in non-narrative short film and how they are effective:

• Short film has less time to introduce characters and develop a plotline. Non-narrative short films are more experimental. They can't use the same methods that feature length film uses such as deep character development and intricate plotlines to capture the audiences attention, so different methods have to be used remain interesting and relatable. 
• Non-narrative film doesn't  follow the conventional structure of storytelling, meaning there is more room to experiment.
• In order to be relevant, non-narrative shorts has to have an emotional connection with the viewer. Without character development and plotline, non-narrative shorts rely heavily on use of metaphor and symbolism to create emotion. 
• Montage is common.

Contemporary works that I will draw inspiration from:

• Pools, a music video from Glass Animals.

The main emotions captured while watching the clip are that of restlessness and wonder.


It is done by stop motion using playdoh.

Objects change, grow and morph into each other and other things (this creates the feeling of restlessness). Everything is in constant movement and very abstract and surreal (this helps evoke a feeling of wonder).

The final result has a dreamlike, trippy quality. There is no coherent time frame or plotline and, although there are recurring characters, there is no real protagonist either. However, the clip still interests the audience because the constant movement and change captures their attention.

• Fjogur Piano directed by Alma Har'el for the Valtari Film Experiment.

The main emotions captured are a sense of longing, addiction and entrapment. 

It is shot in live action. 

The director captures the emotions by using recurrent symbolism, the main one being trapped, dead butterflies in glass frames. 

There is an obscure, well hidden narrative that tells a story of longing and addiction. The story tells us how to feel by reading facial expression and using symbols, there is no explanation or dialogue. 

The narrative is structured unconventionally with time skipping from past to future to past again, This creates confusion and helps to emphasise the sense of entrapment that the viewer feels.   

Pain and longing are conveyed to the audience by facial expression and body movements. The feeling of pain, longing and being trapped is felt by the viewer before they even understand the story.






Without a narrative to relate to, how does an audience relate?

Experiments.
I did some experiments to try to see the different effects that I could use to effect emotions.

I took a picture on a dull day. I wanted to see how the lighting affected the image. I liked the mess in the picture. I thought that the gloomy sky combined with the untidiness created a feeling of chaos and instability as well as depression.  

This made me realise that if I want to try to capture the feeling of instability and chaos it would probably be better to make things appear messy and out of place. I was thinking that, should I decided to create an animation clip at the end of this, maybe if I'm trying to convey a mood of instability or confusion I could draw in a sketchy, almost unfinished looking style. If I want to convey a sense of depression, I could use a darker colours or blues and greys like in the photo. 

In the next experiment, I filmed a fire in slow motion. I decided to try this to see how the speed you see something in affects your emotional response to it. I noticed that the clip was very calming to me. At the same time, I noticed that I was seeing fire in a way much slower so I was able to see things that I had never noticed before. This made it more interesting and I found I was more likely to try to anticipate what was going to happen next because my mind had more time to process what it was seeing than it would have if I was watching lots of different things happening fast. Altogether this showed me that using slow motion to film a fire had a calming effect, while also giving you a feeling of anticipation and wonder. I imagine that these emotions would differ depending on the subject content though. I think that this technique seems to enhance the mood already shown on the screen by dragging it out so your mind has time to process what it is seeing. For example, if the clip was of something disturbing to watch, you would probably feel even more disturbed and disgusted by what you were seeing if it was slowed down and in your focus for longer. 

This film was taken randomly. It was coincidental that the song "Just like fire" was being sung in the background while I filmed a broken lighter. When I watched the clip later I realised the irony and I found it humorous. From this I realised that your reaction to something can depend on how what is being filmed is being portrayed, and under what circumstances. I realised that if the lighter was not broken, or if it was being held with a flame coming out the end of it, the story being told would be much different, and therefore the emotions felt would change. I enjoyed the paradox being created and the accidental symbolism that came with it. I liked the metaphors and juxtapositions that this hinted. I also liked the irony of filming a broken lighter, while in the background an upbeat song plays that uses fire metaphors in the lyrics that are about being free and powerful. In a way, this irony made me feel sorry for the lighter that would never light a ciggy ever again-even though it's just an object.  

More experiments:

I wanted to see whether colour has more influence in affecting emotions or whether what the photo is of has more sway in the emotions affected. 

First I experimented with cold colours. 

I found the colder colour scheme made the photos appear less comforting and therefore less 'safe', leaving a feeling of instability. However, because of this there is a sense of mystery and adventure in this unknown, unstable place. This gives the viewer a nervous anticipation. This feeling of adventure felt in both photos. It could possibly be more understandable of a feeling in the landscape photo as it is of a landscape so therefore, inspiring adventure. However, the photo of ice on a window is not a landscape but I still feel the sense of wonder and adventure while looking at it so this could suggest that the colour scheme is more influential than the subject matter in raising an emotional response. 

 Then I experimented with warmer colours

The warmer colours convey a sense of comfort, complacency and laziness. I found the photo of the cigarette interesting because in almost every photograph that we are shown of cigarettes in society, they are portrayed negatively so now, when we see a photograph of a cigarette or someone smoking one we automatically tend to react with negative feelings. I wanted to see how the feelings of disgust inspired by the cigarette balances (or doesn't balance) with the feeling of comfort and safety felt as a result of the warm colours. I found that the warmer colours diminished some of the negative connotations we feel when we see a picture of a cigarette, making it look far more friendly. However, despite this, there is still a negative implication that doesn't fully go away, this underlying uneasiness interests me and I am interested to focus on this safety vs lack of safety in my project. 

Emotion Elicitation: A Comparison of pictures and films by MK. Uhrig, N. Trautmann, U. Baumgartner. R-D. Treede, F. Henrich, W. Hiller and S. Marchall. 

A published study was done. This discusses past studies done that prove that seeing a picture or a short clip is one of the more successful ways to evoke emotion in people. 

This study itself aimed to see whether there is more emotion affected in a moving clip or in a picture.  The findings found that there is little difference between the level of emotional response between seeing a picture for a six second duration and seeing a six second clip. 

I found this relevant because it means that each individual action/clip in my short doesn't need to be particularly long in order to evoke emotion. 

Multimedia content analysis for emotional characterization of music clips by A. Yazdani, E. Skodras, N. Fakotakis and T. Ebrahimi. 

This describes studies that have been done that prove a strong relationship between features of motion, colour and shot cut rate and emotions of fear, anger, joy and sadness. 

I will be considering each of these techniques during the creation of my project. 

Works that I will draw inspiration from:

Walt disney and Salvador Dali's Destino (2003). It is a short animation finished and released in 2003. It is an example of a cshort clip with minimal obvious narrative that evokes emotion. 

It succeeds in doing this by use of movement and shapes that are seen as the woman dances and morphs from one this, into another. 

I will draw influnece from this in my own workas I have seen how the constant movement and dreamlike state has evoked emotion in me and I will hopefully replicate a similar quality in my own project.
















Fantasia (1940) is a feature length film that follows a musical score. The visuals follow the music which makes them more emotional because even though there is no plotline they capture the emotion of the music visually, showing the emotions in a tangible form for the audience.
I think this is an interesting idea and I will keep it in mind as I create my project as I am inspired by how the meld movement, shapes, colour and rhythm together to show each emotion in a visual way.




I practiced drawing a short animation clip that dealt with growth and destruction. This portrayed a tree that grew and then ripped another, smaller tree out by the roots. This affected my emotions because I noticed that as the tree was growing it seemed uplifting and optimistic, however, when the grown tree ripped the smaller tree out by it's roots and threw it away therefore preventing it's growth, I stopped feeling good about the growth of the first tree because it had destroyed something smaller and that meant the initial growth the tree had had resulted in something bad.

This is the clip that shows the growth and destruction of the tree. 

After this I started to begin my actual clip. 

I thought up some concepts in my mind. 

I read some published studies such as "Emotion Elicitation: A comparison of pictures and films" by MK.Uhrig, N.Trautmann, U.Baumgarter, R-D. Treede, F. Henrich, W. Hiller and S. Marchall.

This discusses a few studies that were done on what can elicit emotion, paying particular interest in the power of photos vs clips. It was found that visuals such as photo and film are some of the better ways to evoke emotion in people. It was also found that there is little difference between a photo and a short clip, stating that a clip needs to be only six seconds long to evoke a strong emotion in people. I kept this in mind during the creation of my project because it meant that I could make the clips move quickly from one scene to another and, done well, I should still hopefully be able to capture the emotions that I am trying to. 

Another thing I read was "Multimedia content analysis for emotional characterization of music clips" by A. Yazdani, E. Skodras, N. Fakotakis and T. Ebrahimi. This study showed that there is a strong relationship between motion, colour and short cut rate and the emotions of anger, joy, fear and sadness. I considered these techniques as I was creating my project. 

I decided that there needed to be fire in my piece. I also thought there should be growth and destruction. I wanted to have a growth and then "melting" aspect in my piece. 

I drew the rough outline of my clip first. I found it was way too fast to stir any form of emotion, however, I had the rough outline of the action in the clip done. 

Screenshot from my clip during the initial drawing stage of my clip. 

After re-doing the speed a bit by adding in extra frames to try to speed up and slow down things, I then started to add colour. 

I wanted to add colour much like how the clip moves and flows rather than just blocking in colour in everything. 

Putting colour into eye

This technique can be seen here. For example, I made the eye go from not coloured at all to then filling it with colour.

I had been experimenting with the idea of fire the whole way through the project, mainly because I love the paradox of fire being both warm and comforting, but also potentially dangerous. I wanted to use fire in my piece because of this.
I decided to make the eye go on fire because I thought the visual of a burning eye would evoke feelings of fear and disturbance as humans tend cringe when they see something that would cause pain even if it isn't directly happening to the person in question.

Eye on Fire 

I made the pupil slowly sort of "fall out" to try to convey the sense of destruction as the fire slowly overtakes the eye and consumes it completely. 

I wanted to end the clip where it began, on a scene of a town road with houses at the left and right. To do this I slowly made the fire stretch out to the general shape of a city, then I slowly made it become like blood because that is also quite a hard-hitting visual. I thought that it would make sense as the eye was just burnt up so the blood-like look would place more emphasis on the pain and destruction caused by the fire. I thought it fitting that the fire should turn into the blood. 

Blood running into the houses.

The thing about this scene is the blood runs backwards, into the building until it disappears, which isn't what you'd think blood would do. I think that this is an uplifting way to end the sequence of fire and pain because it goes from chaos and destruction into a scene of stability and familiarity - especially because the opening shot is of a town scene similar to the one above. 

After I was happy with the clip I decided I needed to find some background music. This was found online by searching for royalty free music. I went though a lot of songs until I found one that I thought suited the clip that I had created. I chose one that was quite mellow and not too fast or aggressive because I found that, to me, mellower songs seemed to suit the visuals in regards to time and rhythm and how the clip and audio melded together. 

Overall, I am happy with the result of the finished project. I think that I succeeded in my aim to create a clip that inspires the viewer to consider what they have seen and what emotions they may have felt as a result. One part that I am less happy about is that I would have preferred more time possibly as that would have meant that I could have made the timing even more to my liking as some parts could have been better. However, I think that this project had the potential to go on forever so if I hadn't had a deadline to work towards as I would forever be finding more ways to change and improve it, so the deadline was also helpful to me in that regard. 

Either way, I enjoyed working on my project and learned quite a lot while working on it - ideas that I am interested explore further and expand upon in future.