Influences
This has been the inspiration for my script: Brené Brown, Listening to Shame (March 2012)
Vulnerability character inspiration: Flubber (1997)
The way the blob moves and the sound effects used in Flubber to create character have influenced the way I will treat my blob of vulnerability. As vulnerability is an abstract concept I like the idea of giving it the freedom to be able to morph and change.
Alice (1988)
This film by Svankmajer, based on Alice in Wonderland, has dreamlike sound that I feel is similar to what I am looking to have in my film. I think this style of music can add to the conceptual nature of the film. The use of other sound effects and layered landscape is also influential. The use of puppets in Svankmajer's films inspired me to create my own rat puppets. Because they are 3D they give a realism to the character, and they are capable of more complex movements. The realism of the medium appealed to me as it brings the concepts I discuss to life.
Dimensions of Dialogue Part 2 (1982)
The way this film plays with the material, and morphs the clay and plays symbolism and our conception of reality has been very influential. The scene at 2:32 where she scrapes off his face has influenced the mask scene where the superficial layer is pulled off. The allegory to other meanings and the surrealism and subversion of reality appealed to me.
The aesthetics of Flushed Away (2006) have influenced the rat race sequence. I wanted the rats to look kind of harmless and dopey, (echoing this innocent style of animation) rather than threatening or sinister, as I think that although the system can be sinister, those who are caught in its grasp are not. The Aardman animation aesthetic allows emotion to be expressed easily and character to come through immediately.
Going West (2009)
The way the paper is used in this New Zealand Book Council piece to create depth and the use of light to create space has been very influential on my intentions for the paper forest set. This aesthetic creates a surreal element which I hope will add to the examination of an abstract concept such as vulnerability.
Papageno (1935)
The way space is treated in this Lotte Reiniger film from 1935 has been influential on the way I hope to deal with space and the setting in the rat race sequence of this film and in the forest sequence. The use of silhouette and different shades creates a world that is easy to get lost in.
Ryan (2004)
Although this film has ethical issues in the way it has treated its subject, the ways in which character is conveyed through surrealist means appeals to me. Were it possible to use some of these techniques in my film, I would to convey the abstraction and fluidity of people.
Research
(Philosophy of the Zagreb School, in Holloway, 1972: 9)
Animation is… “a mode of expression which both re-defines the material world and captures the oscillation between interior and exterior states, thus engaging with matters both of (aesthetic, spiritual and intellectual) consciousness and the reception of a pragmatic (socio-cultural) ‘reality’…this results in an ontological equivalence in the animated text which recognises the co-existent parity of perceived orthodoxies in representing the literal world and the expression of dream-states, memory and the fragmentary practice of ‘thought’ itself"
(Paul Wells, Animation and America, 2002: 7).
“However, when the artist purposely dilutes the real into the imaginary, or unconsciously incorporates these self-biographical aspects into a fictional plot, these self-biographical aspects cannot be categorized within animated self-portraits. Autobiographical films can only be regarded as self-portraiture if they fit into the margins of documentary, with the artist appealing to the audience, talking in first person”
(María Lorenzo Hernández, A Film of One’s Own: The Animated Self-Portraits of Young Contemporary Female Animators, 2010: 75)
“Bill Nichols comments in Blurred Boundaries (1994: 29) that the documentary is ‘dependent on the specificity of its images for authenticity’. The authenticity of a documentary and the power of its claim to be such a type of film are deeply linked to notions of realism and the idea that documentary images bear evidence of events that actually happened, by virtue of the indexical relationship between image and reality. Animation presents problems for this documentary ontology and, as such, animated documentaries do not fit easily into the received wisdom of what a documentary is. … The presumption goes that documentaries should be observational, unobtrusive, bear witness to actual events, contain interviews and, even, be objective…
…John Grierson’s (1933: 8) definition of documentary as ‘the creative treatment of actuality’ has demonstrated longevity through 70 years of flux and change in the boundaries of documentary…
…As Nichols (2001: xi) suggests, documentaries ‘address the world in which we live rather than a world imagined by the filmmaker’ (emphases in original)” (p.216)
“Mindful of all this, I would suggest that an audiovisual work (produced digitally, filmed, or scratched on celluloid)2 could be considered an animated documentary if it: (i) has been recorded or created frame-by-frame; (ii) is about the world rather than a world wholly imagined by its creator; and (iii) has been presented as a documentary by its producers and/or received as a documentary by audiences, festivals, or critics…
…I propose that animation broadens and deepens the range of what we can learn from documentaries… a way of thinking about the unique epistemological potential of the animated documentary in itself” (p.217)
“DelGaudio (1997: 192) prefers to class animated documentaries within the ‘reflexive’ mode because, she claims, ‘animation itself acts as a form of “metacommentary” within a documentary’.” (p. 223 (Discussing Bill Nichols modes of documentary))
“Both Strøm and Patrick see animated documentaries as examples of Nichols’s ‘performative’ mode. According to Nichols (2001: 131), the ‘performative documentary underscores the complexity of our knowledge of the world by emphasizing its subjective and affective dimensions.’…
…I would suggest, however, that to shoehorn the animated documentary into one of Nichols’s modes threatens to limit our understanding of the form…
…Wells determines these four dominant areas as the imitative mode, the subjective mode, the fantastic mode and the post-modern mode.” (p.223)
“Films in the imitative mode ‘directly echo the dominant generic conventions of live-action documentary’ (p. 41). As such, Wells claims, these films are often intended to educate, inform and persuade. The subjective mode often challenges the notion of objectivity through creating tension between the visual and the aural by combining humorous animated representations with ‘serious’ documentary voiceovers or by connecting to broader social issues through the individual expression of the animator (p. 43). Ultimately, the subjective mode uses animation to ‘re-constitute ‘reality’ on local and relative terms’ (p. 44). The fantastic mode extends the subjective mode’s commentary on realism and objectivity to the extent of rejecting realism entirely as ‘an ideologically charged (often politically corrupt) coercion of commonality’ (p. 44). The fantastic mode further challenges accepted modes of documentary representation by presenting reality through the lens of surrealist animation that bears little or no resemblance to either the physical world or previous media styles. The postmodern mode adopts the general characteristics of postmodernism in ‘prioritising pastiche, rejecting notions of objective authority, and asserting that “the social”, and therefore “the real”, is now fragmentary and incoherent’ (p. 44).” (p. 224)
“While, in the early days of scholarship on animated documentaries, the work of Patrick and Wells helped to make the case for its identification as a discrete form, it is questionable whether their modes and structures help us understand this type of film or fulfil much of a purpose beyond a self-serving one of being able to divide films up into their suggested categories…
…animating documentary broadens the epistemological potential of documentary by expanding the range of what and how we can learn” (p.229)
(Annabelle Honess Roe, Absence, Excess and Epistemological Expansion: Towards a Framework for the Study of Animated Documentary, 2011)
“Through the technologies of cinema, space is almost always captured and organized in some way, and its ability to establish the setting for action is without doubt in both animated and live-action filmmaking. Animation has a further facility to create a reverberating space that is in itself a meaningful site for a viewer’s engagement, where the process of transformation is able to emerge. Being in space, living through experience, carrying out actions, drawing on memories, imagining possibilities, all generate complex reverberations in our relationships with space. In carrying out these activities, space is inhabited in all sorts of ways, not only in terms of a multiplicity of social relations, but also through continually shifting understandings and experiences from which identities, memories and imaginative possibilities emerge” (Aylish Wood, Re-Animating Space, 2006: 150)
“Through the technologies of cinema, space is almost always captured and organized in some way, and its ability to establish the setting for action is without doubt in both animated and live-action filmmaking. Animation has a further facility to create a reverberating space that is in itself a meaningful site for a viewer’s engagement, where the process of transformation is able to emerge. Being in space, living through experience, carrying out actions, drawing on memories, imagining possibilities, all generate complex reverberations in our relationships with space. In carrying out these activities, space is inhabited in all sorts of ways, not only in terms of a multiplicity of social relations, but also through continually shifting understandings and experiences from which identities, memories and imaginative possibilities emerge” (Aylish Wood, Re-Animating Space, 2006: 150)
