Context & Review : Comments

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Context & Review (Atmosphere/Mood/Design) : The Nightmare Before Christmas

Working individually this time, I was tasked with choosing a short film or clip that showed Atmosphere/Mood/Design in an interesting way.

After much deliberation, I decided to go with the 1993 stop-motion classic - "Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas". I decided to use the film's introduction, which featured the song "This Is Halloween", sung by many of the characters 'starring' in the movie. Unfortunately, the HD clip could not be embedded, so the SD version can be seen below;

Alternatively, if you absolutely must see the HD version, it can be found here.

Starting with the atmosphere of the clip, the story begins in a abandoned forest which features a narrator introducing the story (setting the scene). This use of narration immediately gives the film a fairytale atmosphere, and (almost) prepares us for the visual diversity and creative setting we are about to enter.

As we travel through the graveyard, one of the most prominent visual features is the carefully controlled lighting. There are lots of shadows and areas of darkness, which add to the anxiety of the scene, playing on the human fear of the unknown - there could quite easily be monsters hiding amongst the shadows. This effect is continued, with silhouette characters appearing on gravestones - we know they are monsters, but without details, our mind creates a stronger monster than is probably there.

After this graveyard scene, we are then introduced to monsters we can see, although these 'conform' to familiar stereotypes - such as the monster hiding under the bed, vampires or werewolves. The careful use of lighting continues here, and spotlights are used to draw focus and lead us through the scene. Coloured lighting is also used to highlight particular characters or props (such as the well, which glows green).

All of these elements contribute to enhancing the atmosphere of the world we are entering, which is clearly a dark, gloomy, monster-infested graveyard.

However, the mood of the clip is very different, and this is primarily thanks to the cabaret-like style of the song and music. Although the lyrics describe the atmosphere, and introduce the monsters, they do so in a light-hearted way. Bearing in mind the likelihood of a younger audience, this ensures that the night-time graveyard does not become too scary, and encourages viewers to continue watching.

The design of the characters and locations is exquisite. Although there are a huge amount of characters introduced in such a short space of time, they are easily identifiable thanks to a large amount of diversity in the character design. Also, all of the buildings are skew, and out of alignment, adding to the visual interest already created.

Most importantly however, is the careful use of exaggeration. Using Jack Skellington as an example, he is a skeleton character - although not dimensioned as he should be, he is 'extra-lanky' which makes him more interesting to look at, and certainly more memorable (he is definately a well-remembered, iconic character in today's culture). Halloween Town's Mayor is also another great example - he has different sides to his personality, represented by a head which has a face on each side, and rotates to a different expression as his emotions change.

One important point to consider here, is that even though we have this extremely colourful musical piece, during which we meet our two main characters (Jack and Sally), neither of them sing. By introducing contrast in this way, it identifies their importance, by showing that they are different from the rest of the characters.

Overall, I chose The Nightmare Before Christmas for many reasons, and without even realising what many of them were. After looking closer, it has only made me want to watch the rest of the film even more...

Context & Review (Animation) : Ren & Stimpy

Alongside my fellow zookeeper Mark Haldane, we were tasked with choosing a short clip which showed 'animation' in an interesting way.

After looking around online, we decided to go with a clip from a Ren & Stimpy episode, titled "Sven Hoek";

First things first - some of you may not be familiar with Ren & Stimpy (as it premiered in 1991), so here is a brief overview;

The show features two lively characters, Ren Hoek (a chihuahua) and Stimpson J Cat (a cat, as his name suggests). The show was known for its crazy characters, situations and events. It also featured a large amount of comic violence, alongside quite dark humour (for a cartoon). One of the regular featured techniques used throughout the show, was the inclusion of detailed 'paintings' - these would often be far more gruesome and detailed than the animation itself, adding only to the intensity of any on-screen antics.

We chose this particular episode, as it portrays the strengths of the animation style which The Ren & Stimpy Show used.

The most obvious thing to notice, is that all of the animation is extremely exaggerated. We both agreed that this was used effectively, and although it ensured that the cartoon had a crazy look/feel to it, it was not simply crazy for the sake of crazy - the exaggeration was used to clarify all of the expressions and movements, leaving very little to interpretation.

When comparing this over-exaggerated style to a real character, it becomes almost impossible to replicate realistic movement. It is for this reason, we felt that Ren & Stimpy needed an over-exaggerated style, because then their actions and expressions would be even clearer than normally possible. It also ensures that the story is being received as it should be.

Throughout the clip, Ren's anger is very obvious, and this is enhanced by theatrical movement, and strong staging/posing. It is so obvious, that whilst watching this character, it became clear that the clip could also be watched without sound, and the action would not be confused or misinterpreted.

Although this is the case, the show's creators decided to add to the intensity of the situation, by using very focused shots, which used eerie music, and removal of the scene's background to build tension. By removing the backgrounds, we are forced to relate with Ren and his anger'; by alternating backgrounds quickly, it adds to the intensity of the scene, and makes us connect with Ren's emotions quicker.

Overall, we felt that Ren & Stimpy captured the intensity of a characters emotions well, by using exaggerated animation, and slowly building tension. Also, it's hard not to love Ren & Stimpy as characters!

My colleague Mark has also added a blog entry discussing Ren & Stimpy, which can be found here.

For those interested in seeing the full episode, it can be found online in two parts; here and here.

Context & Review (Story) : Second Wind

For this session, we were tasked with choosing a short video which dealt with 'story' in an interesting way, which we would then critique, and present our findings to the group.

Working with Mark Haldane, we decided to use 'Second Wind' (by Ian Worrel) as our short film. According to the creator, 'Second Wind' was created using 2D traditional animation, aswell as being coloured using Photoshop and composited in After Effects. The video can be seen below;

This short film tells the story of a man and his giant cat - loyal companions. They do everything together - travel, eat, sleep and play. Whilst playing together, the man enters a cave and finds a small glowing sprite. He ends up playing ball with this new-found friend, upsetting the cat. The cat then becomes angry towards the sprite and squashes it beneath a giant paw. The sprite is then resurrected but glows red instead of blue and tries to attack the cat, at which point the man sacrifices himself. We are then witness to a 'dream scene' where the man is revived, but with a windmill attached to his back - the cat can then blow on this to keep the man alive, bringing them together once again.

The presentation of this piece was excellent. Characters, although simple, were engaging and well designed. The cat's emotions were 'on show' throughout, creating a strong feeling of empathy - this was particularly important as there was no dialogue. This simplicity was carried throughout the visual style, creating something unique and colourful, but dark and mysterious at the same time (the subject matter of the story being told).

After watching the short film, we discussed the content, and decided that Second Wind was a tale of many things; companionship, loyalty, new friendship, perception of betrayal, jealousy and conflict. Less importantly, we also realised it was also about 'cool eyebrows, football and a bad-ass cat' - well, thats what we thought anyway.

When trying to interpret this story, we came up with several ideas;

• By using a giant cat, we felt that a fantasy/mythical setting was created - this created a 'lighter' atmosphere, and allowed for a small amount of humour despite the seriousness of the story being told.
• The importance of the cat's jealousy/anger - did this create the situation? Without these emotions the sprite would probably not have been killed, and the events that followed would have been very different.
• The idea of shared redemption - the man saved the cat despite being more focused on his new friend, and the cat saved the man becoming his life-support.
• A controversial idea which presented the cat as selfish - the cat struggled to feed itself and relied on the man to look after it. Was the cat keeping the man alive because it needed him? Also, did the cat want the necessity of keeping him alive to make sure the man did not 'stray' again?

An important visual feature to note was the use of colour. Throughout the early stages of the animation, there was a green atmosphere. This turned to blue when the man entered the cave, and to red when the cat 'fought' the sprite. It finally returned to green as the conflict was resolved - this was a great way of signposting the  different stages of the story.

Overall, we found that this short animation was well-received and provided a good opportunity for discussion amongst the group. Mark also added a blog entry discussing 'Second Wind', and this can be found here.

For anyone interested in more information on 'Second Wind', the creator has two blog posts which contain artwork generated during production; found here and here.