Oliver (Unit 16) - Editing Techniques

Parallel Editing or Crosscutting is an editing technique that involves alternating between multiple scenes that are happening at the same time. This is usually to add intensity to a scene and will continue until it reaches a climax. An example of parallel editing would be in The Silence Of The Lambs where Jack Crawford realises he is wrong about who is doing the killings. This is shown in this clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ts1x6uADFtM.

A jump cut is an editing technique that shows two shots of of the same subject that are taken from camera angles that slightly vary. This technique gives the idea that the film has jumped forward in time. There are many examples of jump cuts in media and films as it is one of the most common types of editing. Here is an example of jump cut editing that I found on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e3YEU7EgUuE

Following the action, or match on action refers to following all of the movements that a subject makes in a scene. There is usually more than one camera to do this type of editing and the multiple cameras will watch the subject wherever they go and whatever they do. There will usually be a multitude of angles in this shot, such as over the shoulder, medium shot and sometimes even panning. This gives the effect of a deeper understanding of what the audience is watching, instead of feeling a disconnect that sometimes just one camera can give. An example of match on action would be in this clip of The Matrix (00:00 - 00:27): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o7WUnnDzIc

A multiple points of view shot is a technique that will show an entire scene from every character’s point of view but cutting from character to character. This is often used so that the audience can see what is happening from each point of view, and will usually be used in scenes that are quite busy so that the audience doesn’t lose any of the details. This type of editing also adds a intensity during scenes such as fight scenes. An example of this would be this clip from youtube (00:48 - 1:07): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfWoPARqnIM

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IooPPi1YzkM

The Sprinkler Sprinkled (1895) -

The editing of the clip is very simple due to it being a film made before the 1900’s. It uses one camera in the same position for the entire scene, even when the chasing goes off screen for a moment. This gives the audience a chance to soak in all of the details of the scene and focus on the comedic aspect without being too overwhelmed by complicated editing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w_Hnzuyyg84

James Williamson - Fire (1901) -

This clip uses a lot of jump cuts in its editing, this is to give the effect that time is moving forward without taking up too much of the overall film time. It is a very simple editing technique and does not make the clip feel weighed down, it also adds an intensity to the scene which fits very well with the plot, and gives the entire thing a sense of urgency.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MxxH0lZSYgU

Ronin Paris Car Chase -

From the very first moment of this clip the editing technique of multiple point of view is used. The technique is used during a car chase scene because it will mean that the audience can see the chase from every possible angle and point of view, which doesn’t leave them feeling underwhelmed. All of the shots are short and fast-paced which builds a tension in the audience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjwLkKih1hQ

Grizzly Man 3/11 -

In this clip we see a lot of cutaways. This is a technique that is used frequently in documentaries so as to show footage that is vital to the film without taking away from the interview. The voice from the interview is usually put overtop of the cutaway footage which is useful at keeping the audience entertained through extra shots, but still informed the whole way through.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-p0CxW87pg

Baby&Me Evian Advert -

In this advert there is a lot of use of the eye-line match technique. This is a technique that involves showing what a character is looking at when they look off screen, usually in the following shot. This is used in the Evian advert when we see the man look off screen, and the next shot we see that he is looking at himself in the mirror. This technique is used so that there is an intrigue from the audience but they aren’t left wondering for too long and therefore distracting from the film.

Bibliography:

1. Terms, P.I. (2016) Editing techniques/principles. Available at: https://prezi.com/lfbwuxtgrfha/editing-techniquesprinciples/ (Accessed: 17 May 2016).

Emma (Unit 33) - Animation

Emma (Unit 33) - Task Five

Emma (Unit 33) - Task Four

For my Animation, I wanted to do it on something that interests me and that might interest others too. I’ve decided to do my stop-motion on some of my favourite book quotes. The animation will show some of the quotes being drawn, without showing my hands, so that it gives the illusion of appearing on its own. The book will also be in the corner of the animation so the viewer always knows what book it is from. The animation may also feature paper cut-outs of characters interacting within the quotes themselves, to make it more interesting.

The script in this video will just the quotes that I’m including in the animation. There will be music placed in the background to make the video more enjoyable to watch and add to the feel of the animation.

Intro (Title):

My Favourite Quotes: A Stop Motion Animation.

Clip One (First Quote):

“‘You look like you.’ He said. ‘You with the volume turned up’”

Clip Two (Second Quote):

“The great thing about this life of ours is that you can be someone different to everybody”

Clip Three (Last Quote):

“The sky is everywhere, it begins at your feet”

End (Last Scene):

Thank You for Watching!

The length of the animation will be 22/24 frames per second which means that it will be around a 30 second stop-motion. I will use lights around the animation to make sure that it is properly lit and the viewers can see everything that is happening.

The psychographics of the target audience of this animation will primarily be people who enjoy to read as they are the type of people who are more likely to watch the video, they will be any age or gender as people of all ages love to read.

Emma (Unit 33) - Task Three

Animation 1:

For this animation we chose to use Lego as our format instead of playdough or paper. We chose this because we thought it would give a better effect where the theme of a disaster is concerned. For this animation we had to take roughly 100 pictures so that we could edit them together into one moving animation. We had the idea of our animation being about two girls who are on a camping trip. The animation shows them competing in a boat race until one of the girls jumps off the boat and starts climbing a tower, the theme if disaster comes to a head when the second girl pushes the girl off the tower. The target audience for this would be people who are interested in mysteries, because the characters are girls I think it predominantly speaks to the female audience of 15-18 year olds. For the animation we used green card in the background so that we would be able to edit in a green screen if we needed to. We made sure to shine a light directly onto the animation but set the light at an angle to minimise shadows in the piece. In editing I decided to add some background music to make the animation seem that much more intense.

Animation 2:

For the second animation we wanted to use playdough as our format, this is because the theme was A Happy Event so we thought that because playdough has a lot of brighter colours this would better convey a message of happiness. This particular piece of animation was 40 frames per second which meant we had to take 480 photographs in order to get the full animation. While thinking of our idea for this animation we bounced around different ideas and settled on a birthday party, this, however, quickly changed into our final idea ‘A Few Days On The Pond’. We had 6 characters in the beginning of our animation, two ducks, three frogs and a cat who lazily sat in the background. However, as the animation grew on we wanted to show the life cycle, so we included 3 chicks who hatched and 3 frogs who were also born. The target audience for our animation is children who have already learned about the life cycle - because our version is not scientifically correct - but who are interested in learning about pond life and animals. We used green card in the background of our stop-motion animation so that in editing we could use it as a green-screen to edit on a proper garden to make the animation seem more interesting and 3D. In editing I decided to use nature sounds, specifically that of a duck pond so that the feeling of being on a pond is not lost to the audience, I also added some clips of frog noises to add a more wholesome sound.

Emma (Unit 33) - Task Two

Whilst I was conducting some research into the Pioneers of Animation I realised immediately that I wanted my own animation to be inspired by the two classic animators, The Lumiere Brothers. I was immediately drawn to their ability to animate such simple things and for it to resonate so well with the people of their time. In the end, I decided that my animation would reflect the animation that they did of the moving train. I thought that this would be a great animation to be inspired by because there are so many ways to reflect this style in the modern era. Instead of using a train, I decided to use animate a drawn rollercoaster. Theme parks and rollercoasters are something that everybody loves to do nowadays so what better way to reflect the Lumiere Brothers than to animate this.

(for video: https://youtu.be/4LV6NWYlmiE)

Emma (Unit 33) - Task One

1603:

The principle of The Magic Lantern, an image projector using pictures on sheets of glass, dates all the way back to the ancient Greeks.

1824:

The Thaumatrope used a rotating mechanism with a picture on each side so when the device was turned it appeared as if both images were one whole image. The invention of The Thaumatrope is often credited to either John Ayrton Paris or Peter Roget although it is hard to know for certain.

1832:

Belgian physicist Joseph Plateau created and introduced the Phenakistoscope, or the ‘Spindle Viewer’. The Phenakistoscope uses the persistence of motion principle to allow for an illusion of motion. The device had two discs on the same axis, the first had slots around the edge and the second had images of successive action. When the discs are spun, and viewed in a mirror, the images on the second disc will look like they’re in motion.

1834:

In 1834 the Zoetrope was made by a mathematician called William George Horner. This first known form of animation consisted of a drum filled with still images which when turned gave the illusion of a moving image. The Zoetrope was also featured in hit film ‘The Woman in Black’ in 2012.

1868:

This is the year that the widely used flip-book was invented. This is a form of animation that is still used amongst artists and animators today. Another name for the flip-book is the kineograph, this was coined by John Barnes Linnett when he invented the flip-book and translates to ‘moving picture’.

1877:

The Praxinoscope was the work of Frenchman Emile Reynaud. The Praxinoscope is essentially an adaption of Horner’s Zoetrope, which at the time was very popular. This device is also used using a drum that revolved, however the difference is that the images are viewed in the reflection of prism mirrors in the centre of the drum.

1880:

After Edward Muybridge was released from jail for shooting and killing his wife’s lover, he headed to the University of Pennsylvania and entered a very productive period of his life. He produced countless numbers of images of animals and humans in motion. His animation of the horse was groundbreaking as up until then people thought that horses always had one foot on the ground, but his animation proved this wrong.

1891:

In May of 1891 a prototype of Edison’s Kinetoscope is unveiled, he had been tinkering with the device for years trying to get it to work and finally they had promise. The mechanism of the Kinetoscope is driven by an electric motor which charged the sprocket wheel at the top of the device which then transported the film around the Kinetoscope. An electric lamp was set up to shine on the images, but was set up on a shutter so the light shone intermittently on the images producing a moving image.

1895:

The Lumiere Brothers were sons of portrait painter, Antoine Lumiere, both of the brothers did very well at school and were very technically minded. The brothers were invited to the reveal of Edison’s Kinetoscope and after working closely with the machine they wanted to develop the idea and fix some issues that people were having, firstly the size. By 1895 the brothers had developed their own device, using a camera with a printer and projector. The coined this the Cinematographe. This was much smaller that the Kinetoscope, lightweight and could be used by hand. The film speed of this was 16 frames per second which meant that you did not have to use as many images in order to animate them.

In the beginning of the 20th Century we see the start of theatrical cartoons spreading around the United States and France in particular. Many animators began to form studios to create these cartoons with Bray Studios proving to be the most successful.

1906:

In this year ‘Humorous Phases of Funny Faces’ was made and become the first film made entirely of stop-motion photography.

1908:

Fantasmagorie was made using hand-drawn animation and is considered widely by film historians to be the first animated cartoon.

1925:

Willis O’Brien was born in Oakland, California and worked as a Cowboy and a Boxer for a short time before going to work for the San Francisco Daily News as a cartoonist. He soon began to get interested in sculptures and realised soon after that by moving his sculptures he could make short films. In the 1925 feature film The Lost World, O’Brien was asked to create prehistoric creatures for the film, these dinosaurs not only moved and fought in the film but they also were able to breathe by using a bladder in the skeleton of the model that could be inflated and deflated. The audiences loved the film upon it’s release, collecting feedback saying the monsters were “marvels of ingenuity”, and most never realised that the dinosaurs were miniature models.

1928:

This is the year that Steamboat Willie featuring Mickey Mouse was made and became the first animated film to use sound. This was also the first notable success for Walt Disney.

The 1930-1950s is considered to be the Golden Age of American Animation. This describes a time when theatrical cartoons became an integral part of pop-culture. This also marks the years of the rise of studios like Walt Disney, MGM, and Warner Brothers.

1937:

This marks the release of the first animated feature to use hand-drawn animation, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs by Walt Disney.

During the 1960-1980s the animation industry started to adapt to the idea of television being the entertainment of choice for American families. By the mid 80s there were channels such as Nickelodeon and Disney Channel that helped cartoons take over TV.

1949:

George Pal was born in Cegled, Hungary into a very theatrical family, both of his parents were famous stage celebrities in Hungary at the time. Paramount Pictures signed Pal to a long-term contract, alongside animators like Gene Warren and Ray Harryhausen. In 1949 Paramount assigned Pal to his first feature film called “Destination Moon”, this did very well and was a huge success with both the public and critics and even went on to win an Academy Award for special effects. This was just the started of Pal’s career as he went on to make classics like War of the Worlds and The Time Machine.

                           

1950:

Ray Harryhausen was an American visual effects creator, writer and producer who created a new form of stop-motion model animation that he titled ‘Dynamation’. It was on a film called The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms that Harryhausen first used this technique, which worked by splitting the background and foreground of live-action footage, this made two separate images which enabled him to animate models, seemingly intergrating the live-action with the models. This gave the film the effect that the model was sandwiched between the live action elements, right into the final live-action scene.

1960:

This is the year that Hanna-Barbera released the Flintstones and it became the first animated series on prime-time TV.

1964:

During this year, The Pink Panther series wins the Academy Award for Best Short Film and DePatie-Freleng Enterprises continues to create shorts for theatrical release.

In the 1980s - 2014, the years known as the Modern American Era, CGI revolutionised animation, this means that drawing is replaced by 3D modelling.

1984:

Tim Burton, perhaps one of the most famous animators of the modern era, was born in Burbank, California and majored in Animation at the California Institute of Art. In 1984, Burton created live-action short called Frankenweenie. After seeing this and being impressed by it, Paul Reubens commissioned Burton to direct the comedy Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, the success of this allowed other opportunities to come along which led to the creation of widely celebrated films like Beetlejuice, Edward Scissorhands and The Nightmare Before Christmas.

1987:

This is the year that brought The Simpsons to our TVs. The Simpsons is not only the longest running American sitcom but is also the longest running animated program.

1988:

Jan Svankmajer was born in Prague but later assimilated to Czech. When Svankmajer was a child he was gifted a puppet show for christmas which had an influence on his artistic development. Stop-motion features in most of his films but in more recent times he started to lean towards live-action. He is a widely celebrated animator and one of his best known works is his 1988 version of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

1989:

Aardman Animations is a British animation studio based in Bristol. Aardman is known for making films using stop-motion clay animation. Probably one of their most popular works are the Wallace and Gromit movies including the 1989 feature A Grand Day Out.

1995:

Everyone’s favourite Toy Story was released by Pixar and was the first fully computer animated feature film, ever. Toy Story made roughly $362,000,000 and is still so popular today that two sequels have been released since, and have also done extremely well in the box office.

2010:

Toy Story 3, created by Pixar, is released in 7.1 surround sound and was the first animated film to do this, leaving it nominated for five Academy Awards.

2014:

Big Hero 6 is released and becomes the first Disney animated film to feature characters from Marvel Comics.