Film language
As a form of expression, film has its limitations. It is more suitable to express conflicts and dynamics. However, some thoughts and concepts in film are difficult to express clearly like words.This is because the film can only record the external results, namely the action response caused by the motive, thought or desire, but can not record the inner thoughts. As Robert J.Flaherty once said, “You can’t express as much as writing, but you can say what you want to say with great persuation.
Camera
Film is a kind of modern art which is composed of continuous images and images, and combines the visual and auditory senses.These continuous images are from camera imaging, so the creator should first understand camera if he wants to create.
Dolly zoom was first introduced in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1958 film Vertigo.I think that’s why it’s also called the Hitchcock zoom.
In the above film clip, in the scene looking down the stairs, you can clearly feel the perfect pressure from acrophobia.
Mise en scène
All these things create a space in a frame, they just like the words of the film language. But to learn how to use them and put them together, we have to learn about editing.
Editing: create and control the space and time
Sequence shot: usually over a minute and takes in a lot of action in a scene
The cut: it’s the transition between the end of one shot and the beginning of another (Dissolve; wipe; fade in/fade out;…)
Continuity editing, the creators use the lens language to connect the shots taken in different time and space without being noticed by the audience, as if they happened at the same time.
Continuity error: the logic and something doesn’t match with what shows up on screen
To make it right, we should notice the screen direction, match on action, eyeline and 180 degree rule. Sometimes this rule is broken, it’s called crossing the axis.
The basic scene will start with an establishing shot, this shows where the scene takes place, then the master shot, a wide shot that shows a scene in its entirety to everyone’s location, and moving into a close-up, then cut to the reverse angle, and the more important detail should be shown in close as an insert shot
We can use these single shots to combine a clear, attractive story that can express our idea.
Cross cutting, this is the unique advantage of the film. It can tell different things in different time and space at the same time. These things may have external connection or not, which gives the audience more association. I think it is also called discontinuity editing.
Montage: Connecting some images together organically can convey new meanings and exchange feelings and thoughts.
History
Here I want to talk about the development history of film, animation and VFX together, because I think they are interrelated and inseparable.
“The Magic Lantern” was invented by Jesuit priest Athanasius Kircher in The 17th century. This is animation, as it were, and the beginning of all movies. The magic lantern is an iron box in which a candle is placed. A small hole is cut on each side of the box. The hole is covered with a lens. A piece of patterned glass is placed behind a lens and the pattern is projected onto the wall by a light passing through the glass and lens.
In 1800, the first real animation appeared. It was a toy, a disc with different images on both sides. When people rotated it at a very fast speed, the images on both sides seemed to appear simultaneously.The same thing goes for the lantern, which is called the visual retention phenomenon, and I think that’s the basis of all motion images.
In 1895, the lumiere brothers with their own inventions improved camera shooting a film in the history of “factory gate”, the first film I have seen the film, although only one camera, shows the factory workers leaving the scene, but it also shows the beginning and the end of a shot, this is the beginning of the exploration of lens language. And the first film to be shown was the Water Gardener by the Lumiere brothers.
In the 20th century, thanks to the appearance of the camera, film and animation developed rapidly. In 1906, The American Blackton produced an experimental film which was close to the concept of modern animation. The film was called “Humorous Gesture under a Funny Face”. Meanwhile, French magician GeorgeMelies brought his own form of magic to the big screen when he released his first film, Indian Rubber Head (1901). The following year, he released A Journey to the Moon (1902) and Dancing Dwarf (1902), using just about every special-effects technique in use today. This is arguably the first film to use VFX.
In 1914, American Winther McKay created the animated film Gertie the Dinosaur. The background and foreground characters were repeatedly drawn in each frame, and the total number of animated films was more than 5,000. Although the picture has a sense of shaking, the whole film looks vivid and natural, and the effect of hand-drawn shaking has been continued to this day, which has become one of the methods that experimental animation artists are fascinated by.
In 1928, Disney released the cartoon steamship Mighty with Mickey Mouse as the main character, which was the world’s first sound animation with simultaneous sound and painting.Before that, silent films mostly required live music.Up to now, the picture of Mickey whistling and sailing has been used in the opening title of Disney animation. This form of music matching the picture has also been used by artists for a long time, and the cat and mouse that I have been fond of watching since childhood are also in this style.
In 1932, Disney released Flowers and Trees, which was shot with color film for the first time, making it the world’s first color cartoon and the first film to win an Academy Award for animated Short film.
In 1933, King Kong was released. The combination of stop-motion animation and live-action shooting ushered in a new era of full-length animated films.Getting characters to move was difficult, though, until Ray Harryhausen’s “Jason and The Argonauts” (1963), which included the famous stop-motion “skeleton battle sequence” that still inspires filmmakers today
In 1937, Snow White, the first theatrical animated feature film in the history of world animation film, was released.
In my opinion, the 40-plus years since the introduction of the camera have been a time of rapid development of film language and creativity, and some of these ideas are still in use today, such as inverted, mask, discolouring and so on, which can be basically seen in the special effects on Tiktok (haha).
Throughout its history, creators have persisted in creating fancier images and inventing more advanced technologies, all of which were greatly accelerated with the development of computer graphics in the late 1960s.Animation, VFX and film have all entered a new era with the development of computer technology.
By The 1990s, we could see such realistic animation effects on The screen as classic works such as The Abyss, Terminator 2 and so on.In 1993, Spielberg’s Jurassic Park almost revolutionized the process of computer graphics, the skeletal, skin, and muscular systems that have been used to make creatures until now.
Later, in the 21st century, more computer-based technologies emerged, such as motion capture, facial expression capture, three-dimensional reconstruction, etc., all of which allowed creators to put more energy into creating interesting stories. Of course, some excellent outdated technologies are not discarded, they just appear on the computer in another form, such as the Japanese anime that I like very much. Nowadays, celluloid is almost no longer used, but computer drawing is used, which has been greatly improved in effect and efficiency.
From the beginning of the emergence of animation and film as art forms, they have been inseparable with the development of technology. Throughout their history, every breakthrough in art has been related to the update and development of technology, no matter in hardware or software.In my opinion, for art forms such as film and animation, it is not enough to just study the composition and color of the surface layer. Each new effect and new creative idea are closely related to the underlying technology. New technology gives rise to new art forms, and new art forms guide the development of technology. It goes hand in hand.