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Written by John Rozewicki
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Sunday, 16 July 2006 |
Luxurious Fakery
Filmmaking is hard work, because it's fake; all of it. Every single thing needs to be crafted, controlled, and timed. Performances need fine-tuning, sets designed, and even stupid things like where all the actors are going to stand need to be determined. There is, however, one luxury. Cameras will put to film anything put in front of them.
Draw the New York Sky Line from Scratch?
Animated filmmakers don't have this luxury at all. As many things as have to be controlled in a live-action shoot, even more things have to be controlled when producing an animated film. It's the difference between taking a snapshot of the New York sky line, and being forced to produce it from scratch on a piece of paper.
Animators = Better Filmmakers
It's not quite as clear-cut as I have painted it here. There are positives and negatives to each style. Even so, I believe when everything is weighed, that people trained in producing animated films are better at making films than those people trained solely in live-action filmmaking.
Planning
A person has to design, implement, and animate every element of animated production. With the number of hours of work it takes to create even a simple scene it is very important that there be a plan for a workable film before it goes into production.
Better Planning Through Necessity
Live-action filmmaking simply does not require as much depth in the planning. For example, the verbal script in an animated film must be more solid than a live-action one. A few minutes of extra audio here and there in a live-action movie costs relatively little money. The camera shoots what's in front of it, and the actors do the rest. In an animated film, every extra line of audio means more work lip-syncing. Brevity is key.
Better Planning Means Better Stories and Films
What all this planning trains filmmakers to do is use their resources more wisely. Those well versed in how much work it takes to produce an animated feature become very used to putting extra time into visualizing and working their vision into the most perfect script possible. Mistakes at the beginning of production mean lots of wasted time later.
This attention to planning leads to better paced and executed stories.
Visuals
As I said before, there is a luxury that is quite often taken for granted in live-action filmmaking. The camera will put to film anything in front of it. Animators definitely do not have this luxury.
As Lazy as Feasible
Live-action filmmaking can be as lazy as you want it to be. You could put together every single shot on a fake set specifically built for your shoot on a sound stage. Or, you could shoot on-location and just leave everything as-is. No matter what, animators still have to create every piece of visual information from scratch.
Important Details
Since everything is created from scratch, animators tend to know what key details are most important for getting their point across visually. Not every detail in a scene is important. The fact that we can watch cartoons proves this. Cartoons boil down visual imagery into more simple components.
The hands of cartoon characters frequently have only four fingers. We still recognize them as hands, and most people probably don't even notice. Cartoon artists know that a simplified hand drawn with five fingers ends up looking too crowded and distracting more often than not.
The fifth finger is an unimportant detail that can be left behind because the audience doesn't need it to understand they're seeing a hand. It's a side effect of how the human brain works. We never see raw imagery. We see an interpreted and idealized picture of the world around us. We categorize, split, and prioritize details as we're looking at things exactly as animators categorize, split, and prioritize details in order to get their point across.
Visual Robustness on the Cheap
Animators are trained to know exactly which details are important to the look and feel of a film. They can make their budget stretch further by making sure not to waste any time creating visual elements that are unimportant to the audience.
Unintended Consequences
All of these benefits do come with a few negatives. In short, animators tend to be control freaks. There's a funny little anecdote from the making of Amélie where Jean Pierre Jeunet talks about a day on the set where they waited for hours for this single car to move from the street so that they could shoot the rest of the scene. Jeunet felt that it was simply not his vision for that car to be there. Animators can get very used to controlling every piece of production explicitly.
Conclusion
These are just a few examples of how being trained in animation leads to better live-action filmmaking. I guarantee there are more, but I feel I've gotten my point across. I wrote this article because I tend to find the live-action films of former animators more interesting than other films, and I wanted to explore why that might be.
Films from former animators just tend to have a thicker and more developed visual style. It can definitely be seen in films such as Amélie and 12 Monkeys . They're movies that didn't have huge over-the-top budgets yet still manage to pull their looks off better than the more recent Star Wars movies. I can only imagine the kind of films a person like Terry Gilliam could produce if given substantially larger budgets.
Notable Animators/Directors:
Terry Gilliam: Brazil , 12 Monkeys, The Brothers Grimm
Jean Pierre Jeunet: The City of Lost Children , Amélie, A Very Long Engagement
[tags]Movies, Animation, Entertainment[/tags] |
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Tuesday, 11 July 2006 |
Grandiosity is Essential for Happiness
Grandiosity, very simply, is the belief that things are much much simpler than they actually are. It is comforting for us to know that we can understand the mechanisms that move society. It lets us believe that things will happen predictably and for explainable reasons.
Motives
One of the most common demonstrations of grandiosity is attribution of motives to actions. This happens very often in politics. A recent example from one of the most grandiose members of the media, Rush Limbaugh, has to do with the global warming debate.
He stated in one of his many diatribes that the whole global warming craze was created by "liberals" in order to control the everyday lives of American citizens. This was in response to some of the proposed actions to be taken in response to global warming. The people he's talking about would probably say that this is not their motive at all.
Limbaugh does this sort of thing a lot. He talks about an action, attaches a motive of his own choosing, and then rails against this motive for hours. He stacks the deck in his favor in any debate by attaching motives. It is simpler and easier to believe that "liberals" want to control American citizens than to actually discuss global warming in an intelligent manner.
Evil Does Not Exist
Our own president attaches motives in order to make foreign policy easier to handle. Most commonly, evil. He attributes the motive of evil to whomever he likes, and then announces that he's going to take them down because they're evil. There's a beautiful circular logic to it.
Evil does not exist, because nobody ever actually believes they're a bad person. No matter what a person is doing they always believe they're doing the right thing no matter what that thing is. If they didn't believe it was the right thing then they wouldn't have been doing it.
Saying someone is evil means that their motive is to be a bad person. This requires them to admit that they're a bad person. That sort of thing just doesn't happen very often. Everyone believes they are a good person because the alternative is too painful.
People who physically abuse their children believe they're disciplining them fairly. Hitler was a German nationalist who sought to empower the aryan people. Britain was defending their property from those who sought to take it over during our revolution. People who kill abortion doctors do so in the belief that they are taking down people who murder innocents.
In war, both sides believe they are doing the right thing. Both sides also believe the other side is evil. The proverbial road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions.
Evil, The Feel-Good Drug
Evil means we don't have to think any further. We don't have to look at facts. Motives like evil make it easy for us to explain to ourselves why certain people need to be taken down. Evil makes us feel better.
People never fail to do what is easiest for them. This is not to say that people are dumb or lazy. They're not. They just have no incentive to think any deeper than the hard lines of good versus evil. Oftentimes thinking deeper leads to having an unpopular opinion, a bleaker outlook on the world, and the feeling of being out of control.
Please, Give Me a Reason to Feel Bad.
People care about their everyday lives. They care mostly about things that directly affect them. Everything else falls far behind. People have no reason to think about things that don't directly affect them, especially if those things will make them feel bad.
People believe in evil because the alternative is too difficult and often painful.
[tags]Politics, Notarrogant, Philosophy[/tags]
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Monday, 26 June 2006 |
Not Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Neco z Alenky is a very thick, heavy, worked-over version of Alice in Wonderland. It is heavily adapted from the original text, pieces are missing, pieces have been added, and themes have been changed.
Visuals
The film was produced in 1988 and uses a mixture of stop-motion and live-action techniques to create the world from the children's story. The imagery is visceral and will elicit an immediate reaction from all but the most jaded of viewers.
Sadly, some viewers might not be able to get on board with this movie for technical reasons. The plainness of the backgrounds and the startling pieces used to tell the story give it a timeless dreary quality, but ultimately the movie dates itself in the smoothness of the animation.
At first the jerky style is slightly jarring, but as more of the world is brought to life through stop-motion you become used to it and view it as another suspension of reality in a story that is filled with nothing but suspension after suspension of reality. I loved it. Smooth animation was not something the director seemed to be intending.
Attempts at smoother animation might have lead to a more cartoon-like presentation. The very creepiness of the movie lies in odd portrayals of painful realism. At times real slabs of meat are animated as creatures in a way that seems altogether too natural. Animals stuffed with sawdust become beings that actually seem to care about their own self-preservation in odd ways and many creatures are portrayed by only their skeletons; as in the picture shown to the left.
Sound
The sound in the movie is quiet but rather remarkable that way. The sounds you do hear are important. You know this because they're there and repeated heavily. Neco z Alenky tends to use sound to establish just how barren and simple this world is. The deprivation of sound in this movie goes a long way in creating the proper mood. Most sounds are very pronounced versions of their real world counterparts. Things like doors creaking and keys turning are louder but slightly clipped in favor of the silence. Most people will pick up on the purpose of all this simplicity not long into the movie. I assure you it does have a purpose.
Different, But Not Bad
As I said before, as an adaptation, there are many liberties that have been taken with the source material. Changes to the source material are not altogether a bad thing. Changes mean that at the very least the audience will be surprised by this new work. When a person is making an adaptation or derivative work I feel there is a certain obligation to create something new for audiences. At the minimum the pieces of the of the puzzle should be rearranged slightly to keep the audience on their toes.
No Comparison
Purity is good when talking about the original work, but it must be clear as to which work we are talking about. We cannot view a derivative work through the same lens the original is viewed. Works of different formats are created for different purposes and through different means. Many film adaptations of books are so different as to be incomparable. Neco z Alenky is clearly not children's literature.
Not Boring
I love this movie for the reverse reason of why I've always hated going to stage productions of stories I already know. A contemporary example would be the stage production of Wicked. It is a derivative work set in the world of Oz. The stage production of this work was far more interesting to audiences than any strict purist stage retelling of The Wizard of Oz ever could be. Audiences were surprised and they loved it. They wanted something different.
Other Retellings
Alice in Wonderland is a story that has been retold in various forms an amazing number of times for a story that's only 140 years old. Most people today are most familiar with the surprisingly short 1951, Disney adaptation. It's a pretty decent telling of the story, but I do take issue with the toned down way in which the story is told. The children's book is appropriately scary at times, silly much of the time, depressing some of the time, but ultimately uplifting in the end. Disney's film is like a filed down version of a saw that once had teeth; you could probably use it to cut something, but why would you?
Irwin Allen from 1985
Interestingly, I never saw the Disney animated version of the movie as a child. We had a ton of Disney movies but for some reason this one was simply unavailable. Instead, I enjoyed a much edgier made-for-tv adaptation from 1985 that holds up pretty well today. It was aired a year before I was born, but was made a staple of my childhood through a home-made VHS copy that I still have today.
I love this made-for-tv movie. Parts of it simply horrified me as a child, but I do not view that as a bad thing. Alice, herself, was very scared of the Jabberwocky. It only seems appropriate that the viewer be appropriately afraid of this monster. The ending, when I could make it past the intense Jabberwocky scenes, felt sweeter because of this.
My childhood dream is finally coming true. On August 1st, I can retire my old VHS copy in favor of the Official DVD release. In the past, the only way to experience this was by tracking down the very rare 2-tape VHS release from the 90's or by buying a bootleg capture of it on DVD off eBay.
Conclusion
Neco z Alenky is a good movie. The visual style is compressed. There is a lot to look at. Its take on the story of Alice is constantly surprising and unexpected. This is a very odd movie. I'm sure that many people will not like this movie, but it is so unique that I feel it deserves attention still. Whether you like it or not, this movie is an interesting ride.
Links
Neco z Alenky on Wikipedia
Neco z Alenky on IMDB
Alice in Wonderland (TV)(1985) on Wikipedia
Alice in Wonderland (TV)(1985) on IMDB
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Saturday, 03 June 2006 |
Originally Written: 2004-11-13 11:42:00
A Horrible Joke
Saved! is a terrible movie and I've had about an ass full of it. When my friend told me the cast and then said, "We should see this." I thought he was screwing with me. It has quite possibly the most eclectic cast ever conceived with McCaulay Culkin(Dropped off the face of the earth until now), Mandy Moore(w-hat?), Heather Matarazzo(Welcome to the Dollhouse), and, to top it off, exec. producer Michael Stipe. It sounds like someone is screwing with you, does it not?
Wasted Potential
This movie is a classic example of writers paying attention more to where they want the story to go, to prove their point, than where the story wants to go. Saved! has lots of potential in its smaller characters. McCaulay Culkin pulls off an awesome performance. He rocks that wheelchair, and he's the most sincere character in the movie. You know who he is and what he's about at the beginning, and he delivers it throughout.
The story of him hooking up with the "bad girl" in school is entertaining moreso than the overall arc of the movie. This is the main problem with the movie. It has these really good side stories that develop, but for some reason they also force the overall story arc of teen pregnancy and religious satire on top it.
Unrealism
The movie tends to be too unrealistic. The most annoying example of this is the love interest of the main character. He's quite possibly the most perfect man ever created. He's clairvoyant. He goes after her at the beginning of the school year, and then gets forcefully shot down by her twice. He's still extremely nice to her, and somehow he knows she's pregnant when no one else in school does. He still knows, though, that she wants him. Somehow.
Terrible Plotting
He's still in to her at the end of the year and waits until then to be with her. He makes the wise decision of starting the relationship right after she pumps out a kid and it's bad times. His character doesn't make any sense. We could get rid of the overall arc of the movie, and no one would really care. I saw the movie twice, and for some reason I forgot about the main storyline between watchings. I watched the movie once, and then a month went by and I watched it again. It got to the pregnancy part and was confused why I couldn't remember it, and then all the bad parts of the movie came flooding back.
Over The Big-Top
Mandy Moore is annoyingly over-the-top throughout the movie, although I don't think it's her fault. Most of the comedy is the funny-stupid variety rather than funny thoughtful variety. I think there is inherent comedy in the movie, but for some reason they retrofit jokes on to the movie over all of this and it feels over-the-top. Over-the-top is the motto of this movie.
The Problem
Instead of staying with what's entertaining it foists tired religious satire on the audience. This just in, religion and most of the things in the Bible are unreasonable from modern day points of view. I am shocked. Thank you for telling me this. This movie exists more for those doing the making than the watching. People love this movie and want to believe it's good, because they think it has something new to say about organized religion. It doesn't. The content sucks and the ideas are tired. |
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Sunday, 28 May 2006 |
I wrote around March about the subject of gay marriage as a states' rights issue. This will be my second and final article on the subject of gay marriage. I am not gay but this is still an issue I feel strongly about. It's an issue that I think everyone should feel strongly about. I don't feel that it is right for any government to explicitly deny rights to a certain group of people. It is a very sad day when governments, instead of empowering citizens, are actively working to shut citizens out.
Sexism #1
The stance the governments(both state & federal) are taking on this issue is sexist in every definition of the word. We are currently discriminating on the basis of both gender and sex.
We are raised to believe in this country that all persons are created equal. It is the official stance of our federal government that women are equal to men. If this is the case, then by extension, shouldn't it not matter what the gender of two people applying for a marriage license is? A woman is equal to a man is equal to a woman. I'll diagram with math
X = 4 < --Declare X
X = Y <--Declare X equal to Y
Y = 4 <--Y must equal X
X + Y = 8 <--Correct
X + X = 8 <--Correct
Y + Y = 8 <--Correct
A Man = Y
A Woman = X
Constitution, "X = Y"
X + Y = Marriage.
X + X = ?
Y + Y = ?
What should be in place of those question marks if women are supposed to be equal to men? I'll give you a hint; marriage. I'm not sure there's any way to disagree with this logic. The point is that if there is supposed to be gender equality in this country then by extension marriage licenses should be granted for any pairing of genders.
Sexism #2
Everyone knows a few bullshit laws. There are laws in states across the country banning oral sex, sodomy, etc. They are unenforceable. It is everyone's opinion that the government has no business to decide what is right and proper for two consenting adults to do for their sexual pleasure.
Denying homosexual citizens the right to gay marriage is discriminating on the basis of sexual behavior. If it's not okay for the government to decide that sodomy is illegal, then why is it okay for the government to endorse sex where it involves a vagina and a penis through state-sponsored pairing(marriage) and tax breaks? Endorsing one thing over another is equal to discriminating against the other thing.
Thought Experiment
In many states a person can get a fully encompassing sexual reassignment right down to the birth certificate. If an individual jumps through all the hoops and has all the surgery to become the opposite gender, should they be able to get married in the traditional way that exists now? If not, why not?
Changes & Democracy
Unfortunately, we live in a democracy-flavored country. We do not have true democracy but democracy is the political philosophy of many people in this country. I say unfortunately because democracy is one of the most frequently abused concepts in this country. It is not right for 51% of a country to handicap the other 49%. It is not right for the majority to make any minority second class citizens; whether it be race, gender, skin color, place of birth, etc.
For things to change for the better for the minorities they have to convince the majority that they deserve rights. This requires the majority to pull their head out of their god damn asses and empathize with the minorities. This is why I am currently ashamed to live in this country. The polls show that at this moment that the majority of this country are behaving like self-centered arrogant selfish pricks.
The Right Thing To Do
Part of living in a free country is supporting causes for things you don't necessarily have need to do, but know it's the right thing to do. During the civil rights movements of the past many people who were not being discriminated against agreed that it was wrong for certain groups of citizens to be denied rights. I guarantee you there were men fighting for women's rights. There were most certainly white men fighting for the rights of minorities.
I am a straight person fighting for the rights of homosexuals because it is the right thing to do.
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Written by John Rozewicki
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Wednesday, 24 May 2006 |
It is not often I get to the theatre in time to see new movies. I love film as well as discussions of it. Last night I saw not only one new movie, but two; Art School Confidential and The DaVinci Code. They don't really relate at all on the surface but serendipity brought us to two movies instead of one. This is one of the few posts that I get to write that's actually timely while being relevant.
The DaVinci Code
The DaVinci Code is a bad movie and probably a bad book. I'm a snob when it comes to things that are inescapable in pop culture. I hate having to judge something based on how it is being perceived rather than its own merits. At this point I cannot discern if the cultural phenomenon of the book is simply reactionary or if there is more to it. The key will be if people still talk about the book in 10 years.
I have a feeling that it is a well-researched adventure story with a good overarching concept because this is what the movie was. As with any work of fiction there are lapses in logic at the points that most tenuously connect to reality. Anyone treating The DaVinci Code as anything but fiction is extremely ridiculously silly.
Unsubtlety
The film version of The DaVinci Code was exactly what was expected. Mainstream Hollywood movies have huge problems with subtlety. Everything has to be explicitly stated for fear that if it is not then the audience will not understand. If the audience does not understand then they might not like it.
This is what happens when you actually have too much money being thrown at a picture. The studio starts to feel more and more apprehensive about its success and so starts scrambling to format it so that as many people as possible like it. Unfortunately their scrambling ends up not working and you end up with a piece of drivel like The DaVinci Code.
Wrongful Death
The opening scene with the murder in the Louvre is completely unnecessary. It's a painfully unsubtle grab for suspense that makes later scenes difficult to understand. Langford's very compelling presentation on symbols would have worked well in concert with his speech at the end about how everyone can agree that Jesus is a great figure.
The opening murder scene wouldn't have worked if everyone was unfamiliar with the story. It really really doesn't work when you make explicit in the trailers that this is a story concerning a murder and the majority of the world has heard about this book at length for the last 4 years.
Better suspense and identification with the main character could have been achieved by cutting off the beginning. We would have exactly as much information as Langford does when the police first approach him. This is essential in a mystery-adventure movie.
A Hack Director
Most of the problems in The DaVinci Code stem from this bizarre need to make every single thing explicit; the comical portrayal of Langford's claustrophobia and the ridiculous flashbacks for every character. The movie tips its hand early by showing way too much of the Opus Dei. The book may do some of these things too, but that's not an excuse. Ron Howard is a filmmaker. He should know better than to fall in to the stupid cliché traps that this movie falls in to.
Best Moment:
The nun falling backward in the chair when Silas hits her. I had to make myself stop laughing so as to not disturb everyone around me. There are also many moments where things become almost unintelligible because of the horribly awful script.
Art School Confidential
I loved this movie. That's not hard to imagine as I loved Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes last picture Ghost World. If the The DaVinci Code had a painful lack of subtlety then this movie was a glorious cornucopia of subtlety. Art School Confidential is the type of movie that rewards the audience for thinking.
Truth is in the Details
I think anyone in any sort of higher education can relate to everything in the first 3 quarters of this movie. The people in the fine arts programs doubly so. The beginning of the movie is this lovely commentary of how confusing and annoying people in art programs can be. The main character is confronted with these opposing viewpoints about subjective experiences and he has trouble figuring out which side to believe.
Stop Listening to Jive Critics (But Do Listen to Critics of Jive)
While the mystery component of this movie is good, it sticks out like a sore thumb. It feels like Zwigoff and Clowes were responding to one of the criticisms of Ghost World that nothing much happened by penning a mystery in to Art School Confidential. I still like this movie a lot, but I would have been fine with it if it had been this moody low-key painfully honest movie about art school.
Interesting Implications
The mystery storyline was told in a campy, but entertaining, B-Movie fashion. The rest of the drama around it was completely golden. One of the things I noticed was that most of the action save for a few key scenes was implied. This is probably a budget issue. It's a lot easier to show a normal apartment and then later the burnt out shell of an apartment than to shoot an elaborate burning scene. The elaborate burning scene is also completely unnecessary if it is not happening to the most important character.
Much Love
I loved this movie, I would like to write more, but I fear I will become repetitive. Anyone who appreciates movies by Wes Anderson, Terry Zwigoff, Sofia Coppola, or Paul Thomas Anderson will probably love this movie also. Not to mention that attached to this movie is an amazing trailer for a movie I'm very very excited about, Marie-Antoinette by Sofia Coppola. Mmm.
Best Moment:
Any scene with the first friend Jerome makes in his drawing class is awesome. That guy and Ethan Suplee steal the show.
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