I first came into contact with interactive film work in 2017, called “Late Shift”, which was shot by a real person and required the audience to choose various plots with different endings. At that time, I was really attracted. After that, I began to pay attention to the interactive film works, and also experienced various interactive narrative styles. There are excellent pictures of “Detroit: Become Human” and the unique interactive form of “Her Story” and “Last Day of June”, even the small work “Father and Son” on the phone. The experience brought by the combination of interaction and narration deeply attracted me.

I searched for some papers on Google Scholar. After reading their opinions, I think I can discuss two directions. One is the narrative design method under interactive works, and the other is the appropriate interaction in the narrative design. It can be understood as the relationship between narrative design and interactive design.

Recently I experienced Quantic Dream’s old work “Heavy Rain” again, and I began to think about the relationship between interactive design and narrative design. Sometimes the interaction gives the audience a more immersive experience, but sometimes it seems that inappropriate interaction design makes it difficult for the audience to focus on the story.

In the interactive movie “Heavy Rain”, there is a scene that I am very impressed with. The protagonist’s child is lost in a crowded shopping mall. The only thing the player knows is that the child is holding a red balloon. At this time, the player needs to control the protagonist to walk around in the mall. , But because there are too many people around, it is difficult for the player to control. At this time the player will naturally put themselves into the protagonist and will have a kind of anxiety. And this is the emotion that the director wants the player to experience. This emotion is conveyed through the simplest form of interaction. This is also the difference between interactive works and traditional film works. In addition to visual and auditory, interactive works can also arouse the audience’s emotions inside from another dimension.

In addition to interactive movies based on real-time rendering, there are also interactive works shot by real people, such as “Black Mirror: Bandersnatch”. I have heard about it for a long time but only recently have I experienced the complete process on Netflix. The form of this work is very similar to the 2017 “Late Shift”, but the black mirror has carried out a deeper exploration of interactive narrative in the plot. From the very beginning, players were given the goal of developing a game, and then some designs of “breaking the four walls”, this is a story without a so-called perfect ending. But at the same time, I noticed that purely selective interaction can easily break the coherence of the narrative, and in the process of repeated selection, the audience’s own consciousness is gradually suppressed, and the entire selection behavior has become a process for the audience to consider the creator’s logic. This easily brings fatigue to the audience.

I have also tried an interactive form based on real-time rendering, which uses the multi-line narrative structure of traditional movies. each story is connected by shots or props. The audience can trigger the switch Story by controlling the camera or clicking the props while watching. The purpose of this experiment is not to substitute the audience into any role, to maintain their identity as a bystander, and to observe the audience’s experience in this form. But during the actual exhibition, I noticed that some audiences would not try to operate the works of this kind of movie lens, even if they knew it could be operated. When some audiences try to operate, their attention is easily distracted and it is difficult for them to focus on the plot. As an observer, the viewer has no entity in the work, no role to be substituted into. And they do not know who they need to watch.

In conclusion, the relationship between narrative design and interactive design is very important in interactive works. A narrative structure suitable for interaction and an interactive form that provides more immersion. At present, I can think of some text adventure games or text decryption games that are better at these two points. For example, the independent work “sally face” or “escape cube” series. Next, I want to continue to try to design interactive works based on real-time rendering, maybe write a little story or something first.

After watching so many films, when someone said I need to choose 3 movies to talk about, the first choice came in to my mind was the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy.

Edgar Wright is one of my favorite directors. I also watched the Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, Ant man, and Baby Driver. I really like his absurd comedy way to express various themes.

The first work of the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy is Shaun of the Dead. The protagonist, Shaun, is a guy who can’t accomplish anything. He spends all day in the bar. He has no sense of responsibility. His only friend is Ed, who has also accomplished nothing.

But this day the whole city has undergone serious changes. Zombies have invaded, and anyone who is bitten by them will turn into zombies. After recognizing the situation, Shaun plans to save his mother and girlfriend, and kill the stepfather who he doesn’t like and has been bitten by the zombie. He imagined it very well, and at this time he was still the loser who thought he could easily achieve it by just talking casually.

However, when Shaun and Ed departed, they realized that everything was different from what they had imagined. First, the stepfather did not turn into a zombie, and the girlfriend was still with his hated friend. After experiencing a series of chaos, Shaun ‘s stepfather died, and his last words had a great impact on Sean. This is how he started to be the leader. He would yell his dissatisfaction with Ed, who was confused, and he would direct everyone to imitate the behavior of zombies to protect himself, and even stand up to save people after Ed attracted the zombies.

And when his mother was also infected, Shaun finally grew up, he could tell all his dissatisfaction, sincerely express his love for his girlfriend and his concern for friends.

This is a story about responsibility.

The second work is Hot Fuzz. Nicholas Angel works as a senior police patrol in London. It seems his greatest pleasure is catching thieves and solving crimes. For this reason, he became the most dedicated and capable officer in the police station. But this aroused the jealousy of the sheriff, so he was transferred to a remote and peaceful town as a policeman.

There have been no serious crimes in the town for decades. Nicholas was very depressed there, he felt that his ability to capture thieves had no room for display. What annoyed him even more was that Danny, the son of the chief of the police station in the town also came to join in the fun and became his partner. This new partner was extremely troublesome, asking about police officers in big cities all day long. Nicholas was worrying about the town. When the trivial affairs and the stupid partner around him, a case happened in the town, Nicholas smelled the opportunity to show his fists, and the thrilling battle began.

In this film, Nicholas and Danny influence each other. From the beginning of the stranger to the last good friend, Nicholas also learns how to relax himself, and Danny has also become an excellent policeman.

This is a story about society and justice.

The last work is The World’s End, which is my favorite in this series. It can be called drinking to the end of the world. The story is like the title of the film. In order to make a promise when he was young, Gary King, who is overly indulged in alcohol, finds his friends who now have their own families and careers. They meet to return to their hometown of Newton Haven to try again. Find the happy hour of 5 people, 12 bars, and 60 beers all night.

At first, the protagonist Gary’s paranoia disgusted everyone. Everyone lived their own lives. Happiness and difficulties coexist. Gray didn’t have a family, but he was also very unhappy. The only thing that made him happy just a hangover when they were young. Sometimes I don’t understand gray’s madness. He is just a lunatic. And tt was confirmed later, and it really is. But he didn’t want to be surrounded by a bunch of mental illnesses and lead a boring life. This is a story of nostalgia and friendship. After the unfriendliness and contradictions between the characters are gradually enlarged, the whole movie is full of grievances and trivialities.

At this time, the sudden situation changed the tone and the risky drama was staged. The process of fighting with robots adds a touch of thrill and fantasy to the movie. Everyone has become united because of the robot, and when they are in danger, they naturally forget some trivial things. In the end, the Gray and his friends really defeated the threat.

However, the Gray’s stubbornness and madness angered the aliens, and the aliens launched a large-scale electromagnetic disaster. The earth’s civilization has been extinct and returned to the dark Middle Ages. The ending is good for Gray, but it is a disaster for the earth. But I think the what the director wants to say is that instead of becoming a screw of the mechanical society, even if it is gilded, it is better to fight for the freedom of your heart.

Every story in the Blood and Ice Cream Trilogy has something in common, that is, persistence and devotion to a certain feeling. “Shaun of the Dead” insists on responsibility and friends, “Hot Fuzz” insists on justice, ” The World’s End ” insists on youth. Each of the three stories has a sentimental opening, followed by an unbelievable situation, and after a happy battle, there is an ending that still sticks to the heart. No matter what the world becomes, the protagonist walks better on the original path in his heart. This is more directly expressed in the ending of ” The World’s End “.

About my assignment brief, I have no specific ideas yet. I was playing Detroit: Become Human recently, and I have always been interested in interactive movies. (Quantic Dream is the best!!!)

For me, I can do some real-time technology research, but I am also very interested in the narrative strategy of this kind of work. I think I can decide after reading some more articles. The following link is the article I read.

A tool for the interactive drama – HOT TECH: FEATHER

Quantic Dream & Me – Interview with Ingrid, Motion Kit Lead

The inspiration for Heavy Rain

Kara : achievement unlocked

HOT TECH: MAYA

Joseph Campbell is an American writer who studies comparative mythology. In his book “Heroes with a Thousand Faces”, he proposed the prototype of the “monomyth” narrative model. That is, the core formula that the heroic adventure must follow: separation ⇀ initiation ⇀ return. It is divided into seventeen stages.

For decades, Joseph Campbell’s analysis of mythological stories has attracted writers on literary, television, and film platforms, providing a well-known guide for the characters’ journey to begin-and the many stages of challenges and conflicts they are responsible for overcoming.

Chris Vogler later simplified those seventeen stages into twelve with his book, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers.

His version compressed Campbell’s seventeen stages to better adapt to the narrative process of novels and scripts.

Dan Harmon came up with an algorithm of sorts that compacts a story’s narrative into an eight-stage circle theory — similar to what Campbell and Vogler developed in their own writings, but a bit more accessible and broad.

1-A character is in a zone of comfort,

2-But they want something.

3-They enter an unfamiliar situation,

4-Adapt to it,

5-Get what they wanted,

6-Pay a heavy price for it,

7-Then return to their familiar situation,

8-Having changed.

Harmon then goes into detail about what each stage means, and also classifies the words for each stage into a single word to simplify more for the author.

That’s what I wrote while reading an article called How Screenwriters Can Use Dan Harmon’s “Circle Theory of Story.”

For Dan Harmon’s theory, I’d like to dissect his Rick and Morty, which is one of my favorite animations.

When I saw his theory, I immediately thought of Rick&Morty’s season 1 episode 6.

The story of this episode is very clear. Morty wanted to win Jessica’s love, so he asked Rick for help; Rick made a potion that would make anyone like Morty (except his immediate blood relatives), but the flu caused the potion to spread. In order to solve the crazy suitor, Rick twice created the antidote, only to turn all mankind into a monster “Cronenberg”. Rick chose to find another parallel world, where Rick and Morty were already dead, and the two replaced Rick and Morty in this world and continued to live.

Although the story is simple, the structure is fully in line with Dan’s theory.

First of all, the first point, The character is in a zone of comfort. It was a flu party in school, Morty tried to invite Jessica as always, but failed as always.

After that, they Want Something, Morty found Rick and proposed that he wanted a potion that would make others fall in love with him.

3, They Enter an Unfamiliar Situation. Morty came to the party with the potion rick made for him and successfully made Jessica fall in love with him, but an accident happened. Jessica’s flu caused the virus to spread rapidly among the crowd, making the party uncontrollable.

4, Adapt to It. At that moment, rick ran to the school to rescue Morty and explained what happened.

5, Get What They Wanted. What They Wanted here is actually that Morty got Jessica’s love, but the price paid is the madness and mutation of people all over the world.

6, Pay a Heavy Price for It. Rick studied various potions, but in the end, they didn’t work, and people all over the world became the monster “Cronenberg”. In the end, Rick and Morty can only give up this world and go to a parallel world.

7, Then Return to the Familiar Situation. Rick and Morty traveled to a parallel world, where they died unexpectedly, there were no monsters, and the family was just like the world they faced. The protagonist returns to a familiar state here.

8, Having Changed. But something changed forever. Morty gave up his original family and buried the bodies of himself and his grandpa in the yard.

In Rick&Morty, the role is also a very important part. Why do the audience like this work so much, and why do they like Rick so much?

Psychologically speaking, if the protagonist of a story gains strong love or hatred from the viewer, the character likely represents the viewer’s own psychological projection.

Rick is set to be the person with the highest IQ in the universe. His IQ is so high that he can create any technological invention at will in a short time. He is never short of money, anti-system, anti-moral, and kills anyone. Almost the strongest person in the universe, of course, from the perspective of drama, if a character has only advantages and no shortcomings, it will not look good. So Rick’s stubbornness, lack of compassion and empathy, and childishness all add points to this character. Let the audience feel the authenticity of this character even more in such an unbelievable work.

Visual culture is the aspect of culture expressed in visual images.

Mise en scene

In the previous blog, I briefly recorded some learning content of mise en scene and some basic concepts. Here I re-summarize the content of mise en scene.

Scene scheduling comes from French, meaning “placed in an appropriate position” or “placed in the scene.” Starting to be used in stage plays, movie scene scheduling includes two levels: actor scheduling and shot scheduling, in addition to the internal elements of the screen such as light and shadow, space, scenery, and clothing.

Actor scheduling The director uses the change of the actor’s movement direction and position, as well as the dynamic and static changes when the actor communicates with the actor, etc., resulting in different shapes and scenes of the screen, revealing the changes in the relationship between the characters and their emotions.

Camera scheduling The director uses the change of camera position and various perspectives to obtain lens images of different angles and viewing distances to show the changes in the relationship between the characters and the atmosphere of the environment.

The combination of actor scheduling and Camera scheduling constitutes the scene scheduling of the movie. Its flexibility can make the actor and the camera in motion at the same time so that the performance and action of the actor can go on without interruption, and the emotions are not interrupted. At the same time, it is conducive to show the relationship between the characters and the environment, and achieve the effect in one go.

Scene scheduling not only refers to the scheduling within a single shot but also includes the scheduling of a complete scene formed by the group of shots.

Scene scheduling and long shots are regarded by the French film theorist Bazin as the historical development tendency of film language realism, and they have become the relative aesthetic spirit of expressionist montage aesthetics.

This theory influenced the French “Movie Notes” critics to establish the relationship between scheduling style and “authorism”. After this group of commentators became the main players of French New Wave films, their films all attached great importance to the function of scene scheduling. The term “scene scheduling” has become a very important topic in film theory and aesthetics after the 1960s. In terms of creation, many directors have paid more and more attention to the expressiveness of the elements of “scene scheduling”.

I refer to some materials, and most of them analyze some classic shots in movies, such as the dialogue shots in “Rashomon”, the “silent film bridge” in “Blood Maze”, and the opening shots of “Playing Time”. But I also saw a saying that the scheduling of each movie is not only for the plot but also for the content that the whole movie wants to express. When we evaluate a song, shouldn’t it start with its interlude?

So I think this blog mainly focuses on the analysis of an animated film “Perfect Blue” that I have been paying attention to recently. The scene scheduling, visual metaphors, and color composition of this movie are all worth discussing.

The heroine Mima is an idol singer, but at the request of the agency, she began to transition to the career of an actor, but in the process of transformation, Mima, the agent of Mima, and the fanatic fans of Mima, three people All of them were mentally split to varying degrees, and a series of events occurred.

Regarding the scene scheduling, one of the more outstanding sections is that Mima just discovered a website about her life record, and her heart is full of anxiety. And the uneasy emotions generated by this plot, Director Satoshi Kon uses the following scene to convey.

We know that in movie scene scheduling, the motion direction of the subject will form an invisible straight line, that is, the “axis”. In the shot scheduling of a scene, the range of camera position changes, and the shooting angle of adjacent shots are restricted by the axis. If you set the camera position randomly across the axis, it will cause confusion in the direction of movement of the characters in the picture and the visual discontinuity of the audience. In this shot, the first three shots used close-ups and extreme close-ups, as well as rapid and repeated cross-axis, to combine the inner chaos of Mima with the visual chaos of the audience, and in order to avoid overstimulating the audience’s viewing habits, these few The motion and background of each lens reduce the sense of movement. Then, a balanced depth lens and a slightly longer and gentle panoramic lens gradually calmed the intense emotions. The nervous piano sound in the background gradually disappeared, and the slowly moving clouds in the sky were also used to calm down. The mood of the audience. Later, in the final shots, in several TV sets for sale, Mima was ingested. This is a metaphor after the previous emotional preparation. The TV set illuminates Mima’s heart like a mirror. Tell the audience that the source of her fear is actually the other-self in her heart.

Visual metaphor

The image modeling language is used to make the image no longer an object in daily life, but a certain meaning in the film’s prescribed situation. The visual image constructed by the modeling language has a metaphorical function.

In “Perfect Blue”, in addition to the above-mentioned TV screens, there are many other visual metaphors, such as mirrors. Director Satoshi Kon likes to use mirrors very much. He frequently borrows “image in the mirror” to show the protagonist’s personality imbalance and split between Mima and the murderer Rumi staying in the United States. Among them, in order to show Mima’s struggle and reconstruction in the process of transforming into an actor, Mima and the mirror image of himself appeared 21 times.

At the end of the film, The murderer Rumi in the hospital and the idol singer in the mirror looked at each other affectionately. Unlike other animals who are dismissive of their own mirror images, humans are a kind of mirror-loving animals. Lacan’s psychoanalysis of people and mirror images provides us with help in interpreting the deep connotation of images in mirrors in movies. He pointed out in his discussion of the “mirror” theory: “The process by which the child in front of the mirror refers to his image in the mirror as another child to recognize that it is himself includes a double misunderstanding: when he When he refers to his mirror image as another child, he refers to the “self” as the “other”; but when he refers to himself in the mirror image as himself, he regards the illusion of light and shadow as reality—confusing the reality And fiction, and from this, I began a lifelong fascination with my own mirror image.”

Aesthetics

I think, to put it simply, what aesthetics is discussing is the question of “what is beauty”.

There are different aesthetic styles in different films, and this almost establishes the atmosphere of the entire film.

In “Perfect Blue”, some people call it “horror aesthetics”, that is, the coexistence of horror and beauty. Generally speaking, horror is a kind of negative emotion of people, and it is completely opposite to comfortable beauty. But the ingenuity of this film is that the alternate between virtual and reality is seamlessly connected under montage editing, which allows the film to carry a considerable amount of interpretation and provides the audience with a rich imagination. It makes people look forward to the development of the story while they are nervous, and they still have an aftertaste after watching it.

There are a lot of sexual and violent scenes in the film, and the audience is not disgusted, but attracted. I think this is the unique horror aesthetic of this film.

Color composition

Color Theory is also pretty unique in “Perfect Blue”, and it’s worth analyzing. Instead of using traditional theories, such as red for danger and green for jealousy, Satoshi Kon used them in a more nuanced way to show the progress of a story.

What is obvious in the film is the large area of red. This is especially true for the first shot of Mima’s room with many red areas. And when she first found another self on the network, the red color of the whole room was more intense, while her whole face was in front of the red background, which indicated that the Mima involved in the madness and red start to as the dominant.

Since then, whenever a large area of ​​red appears in the film, it indicates the gradual madness that Mima experienced, and Mima’s mind is gradually collapsing. Until Mima faced her fantasy for the first time, the tone of the picture gradually shifted to red.

And this makes sense throughout the film, not only on Mima but also on murderer Rumi. When the film is nearing the end and the identity of the murderer who stayed in the United States is about to be revealed, there is a scene where both Mima and Rumi are in front of the red background, indicating the next thing.

This film uses red to the extreme, and each picture has an intention to convey. I think this is also the difference between animation and live-action movies. In live-action movies, the camera shots are not as fully controllable as animations. There may be some stuff in the shots that the director did not expect. However, the appearance of the objects in the animation screen is all moral and all have their own functions.

Rhythm

In movies, the rhythm not only refers to music but also related to pictures, stories, performances, etc. In my opinion, the simplest understanding of rhythm is the speed change. The film itself is also an art form that attracts attention. Therefore, the rhythm cannot be fixed. It will make people feel bored, and it will not change all the time, making people feel confusing. Excellent works can affect the audience’s attention and allow them to focus on the work. Give the audience a new rhythm in the familiar rhythm, which will always remain attractive.

In “Perfect Blue”, there is a plot where the writer is killed, and the rhythm is used very well.

Politics and media relationship

Politics influences all kinds of media, the values expressed by the media, the level of violence in games, the characters in movies and so on. And the wide spread of media will affect politics in turn. For example, the South Korean film Hope has made the South Korean Parliament raise the sentencing standard for child sexual assault crimes through its realistic content. So politics and the media are close, and today, they are more closely related.

What politics affect media?

I think basically, it often influenced the values, like most movies are good over evil, or they have a happy ending. Of course, there are also some influences of social concepts, such as violence or cigarettes, etc. Most films or online streaming and TV will express views that are more in line with public concepts, and generally will not encourage violent behaviors or smoking.

How do politics shape what is being made in media?

In class, Luke mentioned a scene in The Avengers 4: The End Game where all the female superheroes fight together. Nowadays, the society pays more and more attention to the rights and interests of women. The addition of this plot in the movie also echoes the reality.

For films, games, online streaming and so on, the influence of politics on them is mainly reflected in plot design, lens language, and in deeper aspects, which may affect the content they want to express.

• Game

When it comes to politics affect games, it’s often associated with violence, such as how bloody the game is. In Call of Duty 6: Modern Warfare 2, there’s a level called “No Rassian”, which has a bloody reminder that might be uncomfortable for the player to jump through.

And I also noticed another thing, some of the early games will try to make the female characters more sexy to attract the players, but now there is a view that this is materialized women, it ‘s disrespectful. On the other hand, it also ignores a lot of female players. So now some game makers will avoid too sexy female character design, Laura of Tomb Raider is a good example.

• Film

In class, we mainly discussed the placement of advertisements in some movies, and how these affect people’s consumption concepts.

What impressed me most was the Transformers series, which was made to show cars, and I still remember my excitement when I first saw bumblebee become Comero on the screen. A nd Comero is so cool!

In fact,  product placement has existed since the birth of movies. In the spring of 1896, when the Lumiere brothers, the fathers of motion pictures, were still practising in various “micro-films”, a Swiss businessman named Henri Lavange saw a business opportunity and asked for a bar of soap to be implanted in the short film, promising to help them release it. So here’s the shining sun brand soap in the Parade of the 8th Battalion.

But not all ads fit into the movie so naturally. I want to focus on Transformers: Age of Extinction. There are too many ads for this movie. And I don’t know if it’s because the story takes place in China, there are too many Chinese products in the movie, and the story doesn’t fit that well, especially for a Chinese milk brand, which appears repeatedly.

“Can I finish my Shuhua milk first?” It’s embarrassing to say. It’s like saying that we’ve received an investment from Shuhua Milk. We can see a lot of other product placements in this movie. Like the Beats speakers and Oreo crackers. Of course, it’s easy to understand when you consider the huge amount of money needed to make a sci-fi blockbuster. But I have to say these ads are so embarrassing, and it’s hard to get into the story.

• TV & Advertising

In TV media, whether news or TV programs, the topics and opinions discussed are closely related to politics or public opinion.For example, the attitude towards cigarettes, which are harmful to human health, has basically become a common sense. Therefore, international restrictions are usually imposed on cigarette advertising. Before the public realizes the harm of cigarettes, cigarette advertising is quite common.

(Advertisements for Winston, a cigarette, appear in the American animated series The Flintstones)

The lack of cigarette advertising on television is also justified by the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), the first global treaty to come into force under the auspices of the World Health Organization (WHO), which came into force on 27 February 2005.Under the Convention, all cigarette packages are required to carry health warnings that “smoking is harmful to health” on at least 30 percent of the surface area, and all tobacco advertising, including all forms of image advertising, promotion and sponsorship, must be banned for a certain period of time.Widespread prohibition of tobacco advertising, promotion and sponsorship in radio, television, print and, where appropriate, other media, such as the Internet.

In my opinion, this is the positive influence of Politics on media, which has a positive effect on people’s physical health and concept.

• Online Streaming

I think online streaming is similar to film, game, TV and so on in many aspects, and they are also influenced by politics.And some plot design, to some extent, is more influenced by culture.There is a point here that, regarding the protection of children, in the American film rating system, there are corresponding regulations for every level, while works rated below PG are prohibited from the death or serious injury of children.And this is in some eastern works, sometimes the death of a child is used to reflect on the war or to warn people.

For example, Japanese director Isao Takahata’s “Grave of the Fireflies” features the death of a child.

I think there is no right or wrong, but in different cultures, people’s different ideas and policies have different influences on media.

In my opinion, the influence of politics on the media reflects the development of society, the change of people’s ideas and the diversification of their thinking.A lot of influences that didn’t exist before, not only are people not paying attention to such problems, but also new solutions are emerging.The media is always a reflection of The Times.

As for the political issues of the current era, I think maybe two topics can be mentioned for discussion of future politically related animations.One is the current cultural integration and conflict, or cultural invasion.Another thing I would like to explore is the influence of political opinions carried by various media on individuals.

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.