My Artefact for Submission:
Blogs for Submission:
https://emilyhorleryr3.wordpress.com/category/360-for-submission/
Monthly Archives: November 2013
Spectacle – Evaluation and Conclusion
I took my idea and created a short stop motion from the narrative I spoke about in my previous post. The artefact in general looked very unprofessional although I was proud of the narrative and how clearly the messages came across. From using plasticine to make my character it’s become incredibly obvious how much upkeep it requires. I ended up shooting at 6 frames per second. This made it look very juddery so for the next two artefacts I shot at 12 frames per second. The set was also quite amateur which is something I would improve if I were to repeat this task.
I had read a lot on Baudrillard and how he believed that consumerism is responsible for the destruction of reality. This quote seemed very relevant so I used it in my artefact. It was also behind the influences that I had for the narrative.
Once I had shot the whole thing I found that it was very short (only 20 seconds) I then took advice from a feedback session and repeated several shots to give the impression that I’d shot more. This worked really well and is something I will use a lot more in future.
Memory – Research and Production
The idea for my memory artefact is to emulate a situation told to me a few years ago. We had a session in school about driving safety and heard talks from various victims and professionals who are involved in the field. One man was a paramedic first to the scene of a horrific car crash. He helped a young woman who was severely injured. Whilst he was there he observed that she wore the same perfume that his girl friend at the time wore. I distinctly remember it was Charlie Red! He then told us how the memories of the crash came flooding back to him whenever he smelled the scent on his girlfriend. He has to ask her to change her perfume because of the association it had with his memories of the tragic accident.
This would obviously be incredibly difficult to recreate in live action, but as I wanted to experiment with stop motion animation as practice for my fmp, I decided to give it a go. I looked at a few different types of animation and 2D cut out animation appealed to me. Here is a short film titled The Invention of Love. It inspired me to try this type of animation as I’d never done it before.
I decided that silhouettes were a great idea as it allowed me to simplify such a complex story. As well as silhouettes I decided to make everything in black and white, except for a few items of significance. This technique is used in a variety of films, such as Sin City and Schindlers List:
This draws out attention to specific items. Firstly I want the audience to be very conscious of the perfume, done so not only by using close up shots of it but by making it pink. This draws the audiences eye and implies that it is relevant to the narrative. I secondly make the characters work jacket yellow so that when he enters a different scene, the audience is aware that it is the same character.
By using silhouettes it is very easy for people to miss things or get confused. Through the film we meet 4 characters: the couple at the beginning (the paramedic and his girlfriend) and then the young couple in the car. To make it very obvious that these are different people I have given them different hair styles: (I created a front facing and a profile face for each character to allow them to turn their heads)
Once I had my set and characters created I began to plan my shots and something I struggled with was the car crash scene. I had an establishing shot and a side shot but it was the collision itself that I wasn’t sure how to create 2D. I then watched some scenes of car crashes in films to understand which angles to use and little details like how the vehicle would change speed and certain points. Here is a video I watched to get some ideas:
Final Artefacts
Here is a brief pitch and explanation of each of my artefacts and their narratives.
Power – (For Submission)
After exploring conceptions of gender I used scenario from personal experience as the narrative for this piece. It shows a girl walking home alone at night and she sees a figure following her. The figure comes in the shape of a man, looming over her. She becomes increasingly nervous and the music builds tension until the climax where they bump into one another. As she collides with the ambiguous figure she is made aware that it is a woman and not a man. This immediately changes the feel of the piece, as she does not perceive the woman as a threat. This explores the power of gender preconceptions and demonstrates how dramatically these influence our behaviour/mood.
Spectacle
A few of the ideas I had for this artefact were very simple but as I wanted to practice stop motion for my final major project I had a lot more flexibility in terms of narrative. I had an idea about an ostrich digging its head under the sand as an allegory for escapism from reality through sources like film and television. I then created the narrative of the bird running from a wild cat and when it puts its head under the sand there is a television playing. Whilst engrossed in the programme the predator eats him. This shows that his ignorance and denial is the death of him. The narrative explores the role of the spectator and the importance of not letting yourself get wrapped up in the ‘spectacle’ and to maintain awareness of your own reality.
Memory
https://vimeo.com/groups/360mc2013/videos/80579263
There was a story that I’d been told a few years ago that came straight to my head when we were given the task of creating a memory artefact. A paramedic who worked as first response staff at crash sites told the story of a girl who had been injured in a very serious crash and how she wore the same perfume as his girlfriend. When he smelled the scent on his partner it brought back painful memories of the crash. This explores the association of smell and memories.
Power – Conclusion (For Submission)
Through the process of making these artefacts I feel like I have developed technically in production of stop motion animation. I took this module as an opportunity to gain a wide knowledge of elements such as frame rate, bodily movement, editing animated sequences, lighting to scale and the importance of folly and accurate sound. I explored various methods of stop motion animation, with clay animation, figure animation and 2D cut out animation.
The first was very difficult due to the heavy weight of the plasticine. I used a ping pong ball as the animals body in order to make the model free standing. The material gets very messy so I learnt that a lot of effort must be put into the creation and upkeep of the model. The figure animation illuminated this problem but in hand created others, for example the proportions of the dolls made them impossible to stand, and the hard material made them very difficult to move about. Lastly the 2D animation was something I had never done before but was actually the one I found gave me more freedom as I had no restrictions in terms of set or character.
After showcasing a few still from my animation online, a film maker approached me and asked if I would be interested in creating an animated sequence for a feature film he is directing. This was incredibly flattering as I feel my skills have progressed to the point that I am being offered to work on a film as an animator.
For each of the tasks I confronted very different issues, one on consumerism, one on trauma and one on gender. My memory and spectacle artefacts were a little superficial as they were issues that I don’t feel so passionately about. They are more intriguing independent ideas. In contrast, my power artefact covers a topic that I feel very strongly about and that I have in fact chosen to write my 305 essay about. I found researching the topic really exciting and easily spent hours listening to talks or reading articles on the subject. By engrossing myself in the topic I found my work became multi dimensional. This taught me to always make content that you means a lot to you as this is reflected in the quality of your work.
Power – Evaluation and Reflection (For Submission)
For my artefact I took the scenario I had explored in previous posts and decided to create it through stop motion animation. For my Final Major Project I will be making a stop motion so I decided it was imperative to practice many elements in creating a stop motion. I learnt an incredible amount of information and tips from not only tutorials but a lot of trial and error. The first element I tested was lighting. When shooting animation with small figures and small sets it’s important to create small lights. If you were to use regular sized lights you will wash out your scene creating very little light/shadow. Here is the scene I wanted to emulate:
The lighting was very orange and created harsh shadows on my face due to the high bright lights. This creates quite a tense atmosphere as people associate this type of lighting with dangerous situations. It’s also quite hard to see someones feature (especially eyes) This alone is quite intimidating. Here is how I recreated this lighting in my set:
First thing I did was purchase some small torches to recreate the spotlight type lights. I strapped them up inside some orange shot classes to create an orange tint. They weren’t quite orange enough so I white balanced with a blue sheet of plastic, as the shot glasses didn’t cut out the whiteness of the light completely. This is how it looked:
I positioned my doll under the lights at an angle that mimicked how my face looked under the real street lights. I also printed out images of the walls, pavement and road to recreate a miniature street. By making a believable set and realistic lighting I made the scene very atmospheric. This lent itself well to the narrative and aided me in building tension.
As well as lighting I developed my skills in terms of shooting and editing stop motion. After watching various tutorials on frame rate and animation technique I learnt that the best thing to do is to make 12 movements per second, shoot in 2’s (two stills of each movement) and then work out how far you want the character to move in that space of time then divide it by 12. Then you know how much to move your figure each time.
I also developed professionally as I have been asked to create an animated sequence for a feature film after a film maker saw some short segments of my artefacts. This has given me a lot of confidence to try different styles of animation and get get out of my comfort zone.
Power – Analysis (For Submission)
When I was making my artefact it was clear to me that my target audience is not children despite it being an animation. This format is often associated with a young audience because of its narrative flexibility and ability to show fictional characters. I feel like stop motion animation has much more potential to appeal to a more mature demographic. Animated television programmes such as The Simpsons, Family Guy and South Park have paved the way for animators to reach a primary adult audience as opposed to adults being the frequent secondary audience. Also, films such as Scanner Darkly and Persepolis confront more adult themes and subtle elements such as their colour palettes reflect a more mature audience.
By tackling gender issues and giving the artefact a quite sinister and serious tone, I feel I have achieved this.
The artefact explores gender representations in multiple ways. On one hand, it shows the woman as vulnerable, using extreme close ups to create empathy (Below on the left). In contrast the silhouette and shadowy shots of the man elicit a sense of mystery (Below on the right). This implies that the man is powerful and thus a threat. The characters mood then changes after the reveal shot, where the figure turns out to be a woman. This is something that the majority of the female audience can relate to. I personally have experienced this sort of thing, where i’ve found the presence of a man more intimidating than a woman. This is not an irrational fear as I myself have been verbally harassed by men whilst walking home alone at night.
The theme of power also has multiple meanings within the piece as it demonstrates how powerful our conceptions of people are due to their demographic, regardless of their individual behaviour.
Contextually the topic is very relevant to 21st Century society as it explores a very large issue. “One in five women are victims of sexual offences” The article later goes on to state, “The analysis adds that 90% of such victims knew the perpetrator.” So it is very unlikely that something will actually happen in that situation, having no previous contact with an attacker. This then reiterates the point that we have scapegoated men as predators when it’s the extreme few (who often have a personal motive) that commit these crimes. Instead it has been ingrained in us, whether consciously or unconsciously, that we are in permanent danger when in these situations.
http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2013/jan/10/sex-crimes-analysis-england-wales
Power – Research (For Submission)
The initial piece of research I decided to undertake was exploring the feelings and behaviours in this scenario (How preconceptions of men and women will alter behaviour when walking alone at night). I looked into Autoethnography: “Autoethnography is an approach to research and writing that seeks to describe and systematically analyse personal experience in order to understand cultural experience.” I therefore drew from my own experiences as a young female walking alone at night to build a critical understanding of these conceptions/misconceptions of gender. There is a noticeable difference between how I felt walking amongst women and walking amongst men.
A blog entitled http://whoneedsfeminism.tumblr.com/ looks at why people believe feminism is still important in the 21st Century. One person writes
This first shows that people (often but not exclusively women) have altered elements of their lives because of the reality of crime. This is not gender specific and does not always relate to sexual assault, but it would be ignorant to deny that women come into more harm in this situation than men do.
This image expresses the other side of the situation, where a man feels the need to alter his behaviour to avoid being seen as predatory. This shows that these conceptions not only alter the behaviour of women, by actively avoiding dangerous situations, but as well men who do not want to be seen as aggressors. This again brings up the question of what is power? Are we exploring something that can be measured or is power perceived and interpreted.
Project Unbreakable is a project set up to empower rape survivors and shows women and men holding signs with quotes from their attackers as well as words of encouragement from friends, family and current partners. (http://projectunbreakable.tumblr.com/) This project explores the position of power and demonstrates that these people have not let what happened to them define them. They have given themselves the power to get past that.
She writes ‘I AM STRONG and I’ve taken power back!’ This is such a relevant statement it touches on the idea that power can be physical and in the mind. No matter what has happened to her she won’t let anyone overpower her. She, and only she, is able to take the power back. I want to do something like this for my artefact, exploring power and how women feel about men and the power they posses. Whether they agree or not I want to see what women have to say.
Power – Process and Development (For Submission)
When confronting the term power there are many different avenues you can go down. There are the more obvious topics such as physical power in regards to strength and hierarchy in terms of leadership and followers. It also holds connotations of magic and fictional heroes (if you could have a super power, what super power would you have?) Then we can look into more subtle connotations such as the illusion of power and the role power holds in terms of wealth, class, authority and relationships.
Power is a very relevant term when understanding gender equality and inequality as it holds intriguing subtexts both material and intangible. Power within this topic is quite ambiguous and it’s hard to understand what power really means. Is it something tangible or are we exploring something internal and impalpable. It is important to consider the history of the sexes and that women have reached their current state from oppression and inequality.
This leads us to the conception that men are more powerful; financially, politically, professionally, historically and certainly physically. One hundred years ago women had no rights purchase property, to vote in elections. Women were not entitled to the same education that men were, disallowing them to get the jobs that men could get. Are the inequalities that we see now simply echoes of early discrimination? Or are we still reinforcing the beliefs that women are the inferior sex?
Colin Stokes talks at TED ‘How movies teach manhood’
He explores the characters that our children are identifying with and aspiring to be like. He then touches on how we are preparing our daughters for a world where women are sexually assaulted. But what we are teaching our sons? “Is girl power going to protect them? If at the same time actively or passively we are training our sons to maintain their boy power.” Are we reinforcing the idea that our sons have to win fights to get girls? He then goes on to say “I think we really have to show them and model for them how a real man is someone who trusts his sisters and respects them. Who wants to be on their team and who wants to stand up against the real bad guys; the men who want to abuse women.”
This makes us wonder about the role of social influence and gender identity in infancy. Why is it that men are perceived as more powerful? Are men becoming sexual assailants due to the pressure to be powerful and strong when they are children, or is there anything ingrained biologically that determines a need to overt physical power. If our parents have been brought up to follow these gender stereotypes (which are much more subtle is modern society) it is only natural to continue reinforcing these in our children.
There are preconceptions of men and women, some positive and some negative. These influence our behaviour and the way we interact with a person. Imagine a scenario where a woman is walking home, alone late at night and she sees a woman walking towards her, she is unlikely to be nervous of that woman. Now imagine that it was a man walking towards her, a lot of women would be uneasy by this as men have often been scapegoated as rapists and murderous predators.
For my artefact I wanted to explore this scenario, imagining a girl sees an unidentifiable and androgynous figure and becomes scared. As soon as she realises the figure is female, she is no longer fearful. This emphasises the power that our preconceptions have on our own behaviour as well as on another level exploring the assumptions of physical power of both men and women.
Bibliography
Claire. (2011). Socialization of Gender. Available: http://loosegarments.com/2011/06/05/socialization-of-gender-picking-a-category-really-a-requirement-for-healthy-development/. Last accessed 27.11.13.
Spectacle Task Process and Development
I had one or two ideas for this task, but all of which were quite hard to film. One was set in a foreign country and the other about an ostrich. This made my decision to do stop motion animations very easy. I am making a stop motion animation for my final project so now is a good time to practice!
The first idea was to recreate a personal experience that I had when in Morocco. I experienced something that was quite eye opening; being a spectacle. I have experienced being part of an organised spectacle before, ie performing in plays and festivals, but this was unwanted attention to a ridiculous level. Being very pale and blonde, I do not blend in well in many other countries. The majority of people called out to me in the hope to sell things, assuming that I was naive and wealthy because of my skin colour. One or two got physical and grabbed my arm, another man followed us for mile or two hassling us, leading to police stopping to help us. It was like being a celebrity but these people only wanted your money and then for you to leave. It was so bizarre to receive so much negative attention. This explores the theme of the spectacle but I’m not sure what message I am sending, it is more of an observation.
The second idea I had was exploring the idea of an ostrich putting its head in the sand when it fears its predator. I did a bit of research into ideas that had been done in the past. A lot were very judgemental, exploring governmental and political themes.
Rather than touch on specific governmental bodies, I would rather look a escapism and using television to represent our distraction from our problems.
This is really interesting as it shows that we can’t hide forever and that our time is running out.
EMILY HORLER 