Final Essay Submission – PDF Attachment

Final Essay Submission-

Note: Bibliography included at end of essay.

Investigating how humour is used in family feature film in order to relieve tension

Word count : 1732

Word count including bibliography: 1883

For my essay, I wanted to study how humour is used in conjunction with serious themes and situations in order to make them suitable as family feature films. To do this, I looked at various information about writing humour and derived a method from them which I then related to 2 case studies ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ and ‘The Lion King’, which I used to compare my findings and see how the humour was used.

When investigating for this essay, I put a lot of importance in finding my information from books and journals and more academic sources. I am glad that I chose to do this, as as an end result all of the sources used from my essay came from books and films (in regards to case study).

In order to understand humour and how it is used, it is important to know how it works. With this in mind, I focused a lot on the philosophy of humour in my investigations- reading the works of Sigmund Freud, Herbert Spencer, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Hobbes and Monro. In doing so, I was able to understand the fundamental ideas behind humour itself.

I feel as though I have progressed a lot in my understanding of essay breakdowns and layouts, as well as the placement on content. When writing about the theory of humour, I started off very broad but through multiple drafts, I was able to pinpoint certain parts that I felt were relevant to the topic and make it more understandable.

In my most recent draft feedback, I discussed how I would simplify the essay in order to include a secondary case study. I am pleased with the decision to do that as it does feel a lot more understandable to me, and I feel that the use of the secondary case study allowed for the method found when writing humour able to be expressed more clearly.

Overall I am pleased with the research paths taken and the content of my finished essay. The outcome of the research taken in my essay answers the question of how humour is used. Through research, I was able to come to the conclusion that there is a pattern in which tension and release is used.

This task has given me the opportunity to broaden my research skills and put them to use. I was able to work on putting my thoughts down into words and illustrating my points more effectively and I am glad with the results.

 

 

Week 12: Final Submission – All 3 Editing Tasks

Below are my 3 final submissions for my editing tasks, with a general idea of my thought process throughout.

Note: For process of the work, please see previous blog posts!

Fairly Legal-

For this task, my main improvement came in learning about continuity. When I first started it, I focused more on shots, without concentration on whether the content was continuous. An example of this came in places such as her folder, which, before I started focusing on continuity, would be open in one shot then suddenly closed in the other. Another thing that I think I have gained a better idea of is the idea of information. We were told a lot that if a shot doesn’t hold any new information, there is no need to change it, so through my process of continuously fixing it up, I focused a lot on making sure that each cut was done for a reason and not randomly. I am pleased with the result, as the continuity and information of the edit has improved a lot throughout, and I worked on the sound to make sure that it was kept at a continuous quality throughout.

The focus of this edit, to me, was portraying the emotions that each of the characters were feeling, cutting to the necessary shots in order to convey them. If there was no need to change shot, I didn’t, as I wanted to build up momentum and not just cut as often as possible.

Delicious Peace-

In this task, my improvement came through mostly in my use of cuts. As well as focusing on continuity in audio, I wanted to use the audio in order to portray relationships between scenes. I played a lot with the placement of the audio in this task, making sure that the audio did not place focus on the changing of shots. The angle that I took for this task was a documentary including a voice over narration with interviews thrown in- in which I chose to incorporate J shaped edits. For this task, I am pleased with the outcome as I feel a lot more proficient with the way that I handled the shots and the audio itself and worked hard on making sure that the shots used complimented the audio, and that one did not outweigh the other. When working on the audio, I learnt a lot of things on premier pro such as working on key framing in the tool bin, and using things such as constant gain so that it all flowed well. When I first started working on it, I had some issues with the flow, where the scene or audio seemed distracting and one over took the other, so I was very happy that I managed to find my rhythm in editing through working on this task!

Creative Edit-

When working on my creative piece, I was very interested in the idea of intellectual montage previously discussed in class such as the idea of the Rocky montage we were shown in which the cuts, so obviously different, were linked. I wanted to do something a bit different and have the opportunity to experiment with montage for my editing module. As well as doing that, I also chose to try and combine the idea of symbolism and parallelism with it and show an ambiguous relationship between the battle and the woman shown in my piece. I liked the idea of linking them both, when they were so obviously from different time periods. The way I combined these was through parallelism, in which I tried to match the cuts so that they seemed link. Some examples include in the beginning, when the wing turns, it cuts to her arm moving in the same location, and later on, when there is a canon pointing upwards, she looks upwards. Some inspiration for linking scenes in such a way came from Satoshi Kon and some of his works including ‘Paprika’ in which the idea of parallelism is incorporated in a way which I found very interesting.

A lot of changes were done as I worked on this. I played with the idea of enforcing the symbolism and montage by having a person writing, indicating that both scenes were linked with his memory, as he spoke out what he was saying. The main problem with this was that he spoke a lot more than he wrote, which made the story less believable in terms of continuity and flow. It was because of this that I made the decision to remove the talking and the writing outright, where I then proceeded to edit around the shots, including more parallelism, and done them in a way so that the story, through visuals and cuts alone, would have highs and lows.

Once doing this, I had to think about audio, I had previously played with adding a song, which made the whole thing seem too dramatic, and the audio that I had of writing would not be relevant anymore as I had removed the talking and writing scenes.

I played around with different audio for talking and music, but all of them seemed to direct too much attention. I wanted the story to speak for itself, and let the symbolism and cuts tell a different story to whomever was watching it. When I tried adding different types of audio, each seemed to direct the story in a certain way too much. Without the audio, when I gave it to other people to watch, each person that watched it came out with a different interpretation of what the story was, ranging from a mentally disturbed girl, to war, all the way to star crossed lovers. I loved the idea of letting people come up with their own ideas in this way, but on the other hand, I did not want people getting distracted by the lack of audio, since as people we are used to being constantly surrounded by audio. with this in mind, I looked into finding atmospheric music instead of an actual song or lyrical/instrumental piece (As can be seen in previous blog posts with tests).

With this in mind, after a few combinations, I chose to use some atmospheric music found online (YouTube) which I felt was not distracting, but acted as an under layer to the story. Although I feel this in itself was a risk in terms of it possibly being too directive to the audience, I did not want to have no audio and distract from the story. With my creative piece having only a low slightly dramatic atmospheric sound to it, I feel it allows viewers to focus on the connection between the alternating scenes and come to their own conclusion as to what is happening.

The type of atmospheric music that I chose to use is a bit dramatic, as stated above, but I edited in a way so that it is low in the background, there to keep the viewers attention trained on the video at hand, by making them feel something. This could be apprehension all the way to feeling sad, but I wanted them to be able to connect the audio to the video, making their own connection between them. I am pleased with the music found, and when edited it, I also tried to pay attention to the highs and lows in the footage, so that it would compliment it and work together with it, not against it.

I am happy that I chose to emit the talking and writing, as well as the distractions of lyrical/instrumental music and use atmospheric sound, as my main focus for this edit was the idea of intellectual montage combined with symbolism and parallelism. I think that the story arc is effective with that kind of atmosphere running in the background.

In this case, the main focus of my creative piece is in the cuts and the footage itself. The audio acts as a secondary thing, which is there in the background without being the main focus.

Note: The footage for this edit task was found by searching ‘Raw Footage’ with the downloadable option into Vimeo. The audio was found from YouTube under Atmospheric sounds.

I am happy, overall, with the outcome of all my edits. I tried to challenge myself throughout this module and use different methods and techniques discussed in class. Through continuity all the way to montage, I tried doing something different according to what I had learnt throughout each task, and am pleased with the results. I feel a lot more confident, not only in my use of premier pro and its features, but also in recognising when certain shots need to be used and when it isn’t necessary to change them, and how to direct the flow of a story.

 

Week 12: Creative Edit- Latest Changes to tests and Finished piece

After my previous test in which I changed the music to be more atmospheric, I started looking through my creative edit more thoroughly, trying to see where I could improve it. Whilst watching it through a few times, I started to notice some inconsistencies in the story which just didn’t seem to make it very believable. The main thing noticed was the talking and writing. When he writes, it shows, if you pay attention, that he only writes around a sentence or two, and he speaks a lot more than that. When weighing the options, I chose to remove all the talking and shots of the person writing completely. In doing this, I also allowed for the video to be more open. Without the writing or talking, there wasn’t as much direction controlling the video and people would be able to more easily come up with their own conclusion. As well as this, without these things telling people how the story is or directing the people in a way like ‘ok, so he is writing a love letter’ or ‘ok, the music is sad, so the story is sad’, it made the whole thing a lot more broad.

As I then removed the shots of writing, I then had to work on the content of the shot changes in order to make sure they flowed and had parallelism, as well as adding more in there so that it reached the required time. I am pleased with doing that, as I made sure to keep the story having highs and lows throughout and keep a story arc.

After doing this, there was the issue of sound. Since I had done the sound linked to the writing on paper, it did not make sense anymore. On the other hand, I did not want to have the kind of music that would direct the audience too much, and I liked the idea of everyone easily being able to come up with their own ideas for it. Having said this, I looked through a lot of different atmospheric music and tried to see if I could incorporate any into my edit. Below is a test of this.

 No audio (as will be submitted)-

Being that my focus of this edit was on the story itself and interpreting it, I did not want to ruin that by adding audio that makes the story only possible to be interpreted in one way. Without sound, the story has a lot more possibilities open to it. Although I like it without sound, I do worry that without it people would be distracted and wonder why it is silent, as we are so used to having sound all around us continuously. Because of this, even though I do like how open it is without sound, I chose to try and find some music that would match with the piece and not direct the viewer too much.

 Attempt at audio for Final Piece-

This test was an attempt to add audio to my edited piece. After all the cuts in order to give the story an arc and trying to do the montage in a way that would allow people to come up with their own ideas, I didn’t want to have audio that would direct the viewers too much. Although this music is a bit dramatic, I do think it works and it does help people in paying attention to it, as if it were silent their attention might drift.

Week 12: Revised Essay Draft and Feedback

Revised Essay-

Revised essay Draft 2

Taking on board feedback from my previous essay and the new breakdown that I made thereafter, this essay focuses a lot more on specific parts of humour and how they work. When working on this one, I cut out a lot of unnecessary things and worked on looking more in depth at the case study of The Hunchback of Notre Dame.

As I was focusing on individual elements of humour, such as gags, and linking them with the characters, when looking at the philosophers writing on humour, I focused a lot more on what they said in regards to that. Doing this would enable my essay to have more direction, something which the previous draft lacked.

Overall, the essay reads a lot better in this draft. Some issues were found however in terms of the complication of the content. Although I do focus a lot more on related topics in this essay, there is a bit too much theory in it and I let the words of the philosophers take up too much space in the essay, so my opinion does not come through enough.

Moving forward, the main changes that I will make will involve simplifying my essay. Additionally, I will discuss the idea that there is a method in humour, in this case, my idea that there is a continuous theme of build up and release in the chapter in order to get the main point across. From this, I will work on the case study to reflect these changes, and use the words available from simplifying the main chapter in order to add another case study (The Lion King), so that I will have another example of what I am trying to explain. From this, the essay should come off as more understandable, and have relevant examples. With having both ‘The Hunchback’ and ‘The Lion King’ I am hoping to be able to discuss the similarities of the method of how humour is used, and whether they were effective or not.

 

 

Week 12: Completed Task- Animating to Sound Submission

When doing this task, I wanted to challenge myself and try to do it animated and not just as an animatic. Additionally, with the idea I had in mind, I chose to attempt all 47 seconds of the sound so that my idea would make sense.

With the below submission, I have added in a fade effect on premier pro when the earth shifts to the surface, as the scene jumps when it goes to include the people. The reason for this was that when I was working on it, since I was doing it in sections, after joining the section of the surface view and then the townsfolk scene, as they were meant to be the same location, it then jumped. This is something I will take into consideration next time I am working on an animation.

Completed Task:

*see link to process at end of post*

Overall I am pleased with the result and proud that I tried to do the whole thing and challenge myself. When doing this, I placed a lot of importance in planning and process, as I felt that this helped in keeping my work organised and understandable.

Another thing that I took into consideration were the 12 principles of animation. I wanted the work to be imaginative and a bit abstract with colours and the way I drew the miner, but I wanted to use the principles to make it more believable. Some principles that I followed the most are timing, which I did by making sure that the timing of the animation matched with the sound. I worked mostly in 2’s (frames) in order to practice my timing.

The technique I used from the 12 principles was pose to pose. When the people show up, with the women mostly, I tried to use secondary action with their dresses, as they flow behind them when they work. I did not really use any exaggeration or squash and stretch, but I tried to use staging to make the story follow through better.

I feel that I have improved a lot in not only my understanding of animation and timing in itself, but also with using TV paint. I used things that I had never used before, such as camera panning and cropping, so I feel as though I learnt a lot when trying to figure these out. I am pleased that I am much more efficient in TV paint than I was before.

Below I have posted the process of my work.

Links to blog posts of process:

https://bethanyborg.wordpress.com/2015/04/27/week-10-process-of-animation-through-print-screen/

https://bethanyborg.wordpress.com/2015/04/29/week-11-video-process-of-animation/

Note: Please see previous posts for creative process including inspiration, sketches and storyboards!

Week 12: Cecil The Cat Submission

Below are links to my submissions on Vimeo. We were told that only around 30 seconds were required of this audio task, so the first link is that of my chosen 30 seconds, which I thought were the best of  what I had done. The second link is my attempt at adding sound to all of it except the talking, and editing it together.

Considering that I had done all of the audio except for sections of him talking, I chose to edit the animation in order to omit the pieces where he talks. The reason for this was so that I could show the ‘completed’ animation with audio, as I imagined it. The second link is the whole animation with audio added to it.

Submission:

Chosen 30 Seconds:

Full Edited Version:

When working on this task, I used websites such as ‘free sfx’ and ‘free sound’, where I was able to find copyright free audio to use. When it came to adding sound, I did not search literal terms for certain parts. I wanted the sound to have dept and tried hard to create overlapping sounds in order to give it a certain atmosphere. With sounds such as the own blink, and where the characters walk, I searched for odd sounds such as tinkling bell and patting on certain objects which I then sorted to ones which I felt would work.

Something that I also took into consideration the background music. I wanted to add some themed music to the piece, such as when he is sneaking, and jumping, in order to keep that kind of sneaky vibe throughout to add to the ambiance, but as well as this, I also added background sounds such as owls and outside noises to give people an idea of location. When the scene changed to indoors, I tried keeping true to this by changing the ambiance music from an outside theme to that of one indoors, with bells chiming and such.

Overall I am pleased with the result of this task and the knowledge gained on working with Adobe Audition. Below I have posted a link to the process of the task.

Process of Task: (Link to blog post)

https://bethanyborg.wordpress.com/2015/03/14/week-6-current-process-of-cecil-the-cat-audio-task/

Note: Credit for all footage used in this task, for the work of ‘Cecil the Cat Burglar’ goes to Jamie Cartwright

Week 12: Creative Edit- Working on Audio Tests

When searching for music for my creative piece, I started thinking about what kind of mood I wanted to have, and whether it would compliment the piece. Below are some attempts at adding audio to my creative piece.

Test 4-

For this test, I attempted to add some instrumental music to my piece. When thinking about what kind of audio I wanted, I thought that this song would match well with the shots in the piece. This test is just audio, an attempt done before adding any form of voice over. The music used is from a film called ‘Amelie’.

Test 5-

After editing the above music to match the highs and lows of the piece, I next worked on finding audio for a voice over. I found this really difficult, as I knew that I wanted to have a sort of memory feel to it but did not know where to get the audio. In the end, I managed to find some letters read out by the same person, and listed down words or phrases he had used which I felt would match the scene at hand. After I had listed the and cut the audio in the correct order, I worked on changing the levels of audio for both the talking and the music for them to work together.

Test 6-

Although I liked the previous test in which I used music, after some feedback and discussion, I decided that the music itself seemed a bit excessive, and directed the audience too much. The music was quite dramatic and made the story seem as much, so it did not give people much opportunity to come up with more of their own conclusions. Through this, I decided to remove it and add some ambiance music instead. To do this, I took the sound from the footage used of the writing, and edited it in a way to make it longer. I then played with the volume so that the end result was a constant yet low background noise through out.

I think that both sounds worked overall, but for my idea of wanting the story to be more loose in which people viewed the montage, I felt it best to go down the route of not using music.

Week 11: The Concept of Elliptical Editing

This is used to show time passing by skipping big portions of time. It involves being symbolic in what you show. Below are some pointers on the concept.

-To condense time and prevent the audience from seeing something unimportant (skipping over parts).

-A film may skip over details of, for instance, a journey from one place to another. An example can be seen in the clip below taken from ‘Batman’.

-This can be seen in most films and TV programs and is often a means of reducing the duration of a film.

-There is also an artistic philosophy to this; an audience is left to imagine what the film maker chooses not to show.

Below is another example of elliptical editing with more explanation.

One can also see this concept portrayed a lot in the film by Yasugiro Ozu ‘Tokyo Story’.

This concept, however, can be turned on its head by doing the complete opposite. Some film makers, such as Tsai Ming Liang, purposely show something in its entirety. The idea of this is that these mundane actions reveal more about a character than simply narrations, plots and dialogues. These can give them substance and show their character. An example of this is ‘Stray dogs’ by Tsai Ming Liang.

 

Week 11: Soviet Montage- Pudovkin’s 5 editing techniques

Vsevolod Pudovkin was a soviet director, screenwriter and actor. He was one of the great innovators in the early days of film and was inspired to study film by D.W Griffiths ‘intolerance’. Though he was a director and screen writer, his most influential role came in his 5 theories of editing.

Pudovkin noted that editing is an aspect of film art form which is completely unique from all other art forms, stating that editing is ‘The basic means of expression which is unique to motion pictures lies in the  in the organisation of the shots which in themselves contain the elements of the larger forms; the scenes and sequences.’

He also understands that editing is not merely a way to string shots together that make up a scene, which he called structural editing, but rather it is a way to guide the thoughts of the viewer, which he calls ‘relational editing’, stating that ‘Editing is not merely a method of the junction of separate scenes or pieces, but is a method that controls the “psychological guidance” of the spectator’

Editing can be a way of creating visual metaphors or a way of suggesting a relationship between 2 seemingly unrelated shots. Pudovkin gave 5 examples of relational editing that could be used to control the psychological guidance of a spectator, in other words, conveying an emotion or idea without actually saying it. The 5 editing techniques are below.

1) Contrast – This is done to force the view to compare 2 opposing scenes in their mind. An example of this can be seen from ‘The Godfather’. In this scene he is ordering murders whilst he renounces Devil during a baptism. The film cuts back and forth between the sacred ritual and the murders happening. The contrast in these scenes help to illustrate how far he is willing to go and the depths of his deceitfulness.

Another famous example can be seen in the clip below, where the ape man throws the bone, a primitive tool up into the air and then cuts to a space station. The placement of these shots forces the spectator to consider just how much man kind has evolved over the years.

2) Parallelism- This is used as a way to connect 2 scenes visually by matching certain aspects of a scene. An example of this is in Hugo, which uses the inner workings of a clock to connect it to the workings of 1930’s Paris. It is often used to jump from one time period or location to another in a more elegant way. Another example of this is in Indiana Jones, where the film cuts from a young Indiana Jones then cuts to a much older Indiana Jones. In ‘strangers on a train’, Hitchcock cuts to scenes of the feet of 2 strangers walking on a train platform. We don’t know who they are, but the cut indicates that there is a relationship between the 2 of them. Another example of parallelism can be seen in the clip below.

3) Symbolism-  This is about telling stories by being suggestive. Below is a clip from a film which is possibly one of the most famous examples of symbolism. This cut is done to underscore the heat and the harshness of the desert. As the match blows out, the scene is cut to the sun rising on the horizon.

Another example can be found in ‘Psycho’. The drain scene is a metaphor for ‘a life down the drain’.

4) Simultaneity- This is also called ‘cross-cutting’ and is a term used when there is a continuous cut alternating between 2 or more scenes that often happen at simultaneous times but at different locations. A famous example of this is in ‘silence of the lambs’. The scene cuts back and forth between scenes. We then realise that the swat team are in the wrong house. This throws the viewer off, and the situations are reversed as it turns out the main actress is the one in danger.

5) Leit Motif- This is a musical term that describes a recurring musical phase associated with a particular person, place or idea. Some examples include the Indiana Jones theme which is associated with the man himself, the Emperors March in Star Wars which shows a recurring shot and the Jaws theme which appears with the underwater viewpoint, where one knows that there will be danger as this appears.

These techniques were very influential and continue to be seen today and can give you clues to what the film maker wants to say.Some more information on all of the above can be seen in the video below.

Week 11: Counter Culture in Animation

In today’s class we discussed our essays. We talked about the importance of having a point when talking about things and explaining, something which is prevalent t in animation and not only in essay writing.

We moved on to discuss how themes such as propaganda, social commentary and subversion are part of counter culture in animation and can also be included when it comes to our essay.

Like with animation, there is a lot of weight in the above, and people can hold a lot of different views, the important thing is being able to get them across well. We compared this to that of a Trojan horse, where on the surface it could be something simple, but hold something different underneath the surface. It is an interesting thing to be able to have a subversive effect to ones essay.

To further illustrate the point that things can have deeper meanings than that of first glance, we went on to look at some old banned animations.

Betty Boop- banned for drug use

The Ducktators- political messages

Kino Circus- soviet propaganda banned in certain places.

These animations were banned in different countries for the messages they told, in some countries they were acceptable but in others they were not. This goes to show how having different themes and subjects can be viewed in different ways when seen/read by others.

Going back to the idea of the Trojan horse, an essay can be more than it seems. One should make statements and back them up, there can be interesting metaphors to ones essay and this can help to illustrate broad straights of contextual information.

Once our discussion was over, we proceeded to go into groups and, with Ross, discuss our chosen essay titles in order to get a better idea of peoples opinions and how we might possible go about structuring it.