Skip to main content

BVA303 Homework

Looking into a reading schedule for my Major Project.

Working Title: Tales from the Kitchen Cupboard.

Intended as a web series. I am intending to make the pilot episode, and possibly develop some concepts for further episodes.
The story follows a rat as he watches a group of young flatmates trying to figure out their place in the world.
My research question is; "Capturing Subjectivity on Film; with particular focus on the use of multiple film techniques to differentiate between the observers world and vs. the world outside them."
By this I mean I want to create a narrative that deals with one character viewing the world from their own perspective in such a way that the audience relates to the character. I want to combine this with the idea of there being a "wider world" (the world that the observer is observing). The "wider world" will not necessarily interact with the observer, however, I intend for the audience to learn more about the "wider world" as a result of what the observer (the rat) sees.

To do this I will need to think about a few things:

  1. I will need to think about techniques used by filmmakers to draw an audience into viewing a scene from the point of view of a character. For example:
      1. I have to think about perspective, proportion and how a rat would see. 
      2. I have to think about colour and form. 
      3. I have to think about movement and time. 
      4. I have to think about filming techniques that could be used to draw the audience in to the rats mind. 
      5. Finally, I have to decide whether to go more for realism or surrealism and how much artistic license I want to give myself to skew things into my own interpretation.
    1. I need to think of ways to show the differences vs. the similarities between the rat's world and the humans' world, as well as their own understanding of their places in the world. 

    Keywords that I will use to research this are:
    • Subjectivity in film
    • Point of view in film
    • Character identification in film.
    • Establishing Empathy.
    • How rats experience the world.
    • Realism in dialogue. 
    • Proportion. 
    • Perspective.

    I will read: A Theory of Narrative Empathy, Histoire(s) Du Cinéma (The english bit), Feeling the Gaze: Narrative Empathy in "A Time to Kill", FOCALISATION IN FILM NARRATIVE, Empathic Engagement with Narrative Fictions, Psychology of Entertainment, Film after Jung: Post-Jungian Approaches to Film Theory, Point of view in the Cinema: A theory of Narration and Subjectivity in Classical Film. 

     Here's another book that might help :  "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" by Laura Mulvey.


    Labels:

    Comments

    Post a Comment

    Popular posts from this blog

    BSA126 Animation Character - Tim Lockwood, Cloudy with a Chance of meatballs.

    Tim Lockwood Tim Lockwood is Flint's father in 'Cloudy with A Chance of Meatballs'. I picked him because I think he is interesting because he doesn't have any eyes that we can see but the animators are able to show us his emotions purely by his eyebrow movements. Structurally, Tim's face is made up of very simple shapes, His eyebrows are a simple rectangle shape that has been given a hair-like texture design to show they are very bushy. His nose is also a rectangular shape with little realistic design apart from the flat rectangular shape. His mustache is similar to his eyebrows, only a slight curve to show gravity and to make his face seem more realistic. It also doubles as a mouth shape in many ways, similar to how his uni-brow doubles as eyes. The head shape itself is basically a conical shape with curving lines which indicates a chin. Tim Lockwood's personality is quite bland and conventional. Therefore, the shirt he wears is a pale, greyish b...
    Post a Comment
    Read more

    BSA126 Head turn and dialogue

    Head Turn I animated the character to turn his head from left to right, dipping his head during the transition. The result was just a guy looking left to right, to left, to right, to left, to right. He's very confused, don't judge.  Dialogue I animated my character to say, "I had a feather, where did my feather go?!" I seem to be a fan of confused characters, I guess. Anyway, I did animate a feather falling behind him but I animated it in white so when I exported the clip out, the feather was put against a white background so you can't see it. Struggles.  I drew the mouth shapes and added them as I needed. I used about five or six different shapes. I tried my best to sync up the movement with the voice, and I'm fairly happy with the result. I mean, it could have been better but it's not awful so I figured that it would do. The first bit, ("I had a feather") I was very happy with. It is just very slightly out in the second part of ...
    Post a Comment
    Read more

    BSA106 German Expressionism.

    German Expressionism in film came about after WW1, after Germany lost the war. Germany wanted to revitalise the film industry and to create a better impression for the country. The German government subsidised the UFA (Universum-film AG), whose studios were the largest and best equipped in Europe. This became Germans golden age of cinema. German Expressionist film lasted from 1919 to 1933 when Adolf Hitler came into power. Unlike other Western films of that period that focused more so on creating realism, German Expressionism distorts reality to create an emotional effect. Expressionism films employed stylised set design, elaborate costuming, shadowy lighting that emphasises bold contrasts of dark and bright highlights and unnatural make-up. The settings are typically distorted and exaggerated, with key themes being madness, criminality and fracturing of identity. German Expressionism was a huge influence in developing the horror genre. They began to tell the story ...
    Post a Comment
    Read more