Tuesday 24 March 2015

COP2 - Censorship and 'Truth' continued - Censorship in relation to animation

+ Censorship: The practice or policy of censoring media
   Censor: A person given the authority to filter through media in order to cut anything considered to      be too obscene or objectifying.

+ Morals: Principles of behaviour in accordance with standards of right and wrong.

+ Ethics: 1. A code of behaviour, especially of a particular group, profession or individual
               2. The moral fitness of a decision, course of action etc
               3. The study of the moral value of human conduct

"Everybody everywhere wants to modify, transform, embellish, enrich, and reconstruct the world around him - to introduce into an otherwise harsh or bland existence some sort of purposeful and distorting alleviation" (Theodore Levitt, The Morality (?) of Advertising, 1970)

Animation and censorship go hand in hand when aired, depending on the amount of gore or sexual themes that the feature contains, this also depends on the time that the animation is aired.
For example in the animation, Terra Formers the gore added to the action is blacked out with the use of circles, to the point where it becomes confusing. As the black circles are so circular, the censorship stands out more than the main narrative in the animation, the scene becomes confusing through how the circles become something that seemed to have just been added, not to really censor out the gore.
I find that subtle censorship for gore scenes need to be used as even through the worst of the gore is censored out in the example of Terra Formers, the blood around the bodies is till apparent, if the airing of the animation was at an earlier schedule, the use of the blood should be censored as well.



In contrast Tokyo Ghoul uses a gradual censorship that is not as noticeable as the previous example. However some of the censored scenes are so manipulated to the extent that the screen is nearly black and the actual movement of the character is lost as it is hidden from the audience. I felt that the people whom censored the show realised that the censorship was eating into the image in which they changed the colour of the censorship to white and in a few scenes turned the whole scene into a negative. I wasn't too sure how turning the scene into a negative acted as a form of censorship as the blood and gore was still apparent in the scene, just in a different colour set. I felt that the use of using a silhouette and showing the gore in negative would have worked better as it suggests that this was the kind of censorship they were looking for. The use of the silhouette would work as it can impact the atmosphere of the scene well when used with an emotional narrative.


Another example with actions being censored in animation is smoking. In Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, the main character Jotaro is portrayed with a dark patch over his mouth whenever he smokes, which could possibly work if the cigarette and smoke was hidden as well. I understand that the censorship is used due to the character being underage, so he cannot smoke, however for the age range that it is aimed at their shouldn't be a need to censor only this out compared to the amount of gore that is with in the action scenes of the animation. Another example can be seen in the animation One Piece,  in which the company 4Kids censored over one of the characters cigarette with a lollypop. Even though it felt a little bit silly compared to the original animation, the censorship worked with the audience that they had aimed the show to the western audience. However, even though they had censored over the lollypop, they had not censored over the smoke that emitted from the cigarette, creating a smoking lollypop. It was a shame that they were not able to remove the smoke as it did not make sense in quite a few of the scenes, in which 4Kids skipped quite a few of episodes and scenes, and sometimes merging episodes together from the amount of cuts they have made.





COP2 - Censorship and 'Truth' notes


+ Censorship can be seen to have taken the form of photographic manipulation seen from the early 19th century with the invention of the dark room, allowing people to develop and edit the photography as it begins to be captured onto the light sensitive paper. In contrast photography can be seen as a documentation of truth being able to capture vital information to relay back to the public and media. However how do we truly know that these pieces of visual information haven't been manipulated for political or other personal gain?

+ Ansel Adams, American Photographer, was interpreted to be an important figure with in photography through his imagery of american landscapes, being able to manipulate the image during development, altering the truth of the image.

Stalin with, and without, Nikolai Yezhov

+ In this example we can see the manipulation on the photography to the extent that they have removed a figure, interestingly this relates to the Soviets established newspaper, Pravda. Pravda served the Soviet Communist party in terms of censoring and filtering through news, ironically, the name Pravda can be defined as 'truth'.

+ Kate Winslet - GQ Magazine cover, her image was manipulated to elongate her legs, interestingly inside the magazine, another image of her is depicted alongside a mirror, in which the reflection has not been altered proving the use of manipulation within her image - a sense of false beauty - false concepts.

+ Robert Capa, 'Death of a Loyalist Soldier' 1936 - can we be sure that this photograph is real? A huge debate over this image through whether this image was real or was created. Interpretations show that a small detail of a bullet passing through the soldier's hat - this photography shows something that is emotionally impacting on the public, showing a mild version of the true horrors on the battlefield. Some suggest that the matter of the photograph being real or not does not matter - the impact being so huge on the public, thought provoking. Unfortunately Capa died on the field.

+ Simulacrum, a representation of an object or someone - an imitation of the real thing, being unsatisfactory.

"An image or representation of someone or something: a small scale simulacrum of a skyscraper, an unsatisfactory imitation or substitute: a bland simulacrum of American soul music" (http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/simulacrum) + Jean Baudrillard constructs phrases in which this would take place, the first stage reflects the basic reality, to then mask and perverts the basic reality, masks the absence of basic reality and bears no relation to any reality; it becomes its own pure simulacrum. "In the first case, the image is a good appearance: the representation is of the order of the sacrament. In the second, it is an evil appearance: it is f the order of sorcery. In the fourth, it is no longer in the order of appearance at all, but of simulation." (Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulations, 1981)

+ Baudrillard continues his work in his book The Gulf War Did Not Take Place, in which he argued that the Guild War was not actually a war but was something that was masqueraded and distorted into war. From the western point of view, the war did not take place through the lack of causalities and not engaging directly in combat, the only impact being the sheer amount of airpower that the American Military used, creating an illusion of sorts to the public, making it become a war.


COP2 - Adding to the Final Design of the main perspective

I wanted to edit the main perspective further adding to the main action, showing the consequences of these actions, what occurs after which. Even though I had created the final designs for the practical I wanted to take it further as I felt there was room to add these additional scenes and an opportunity to improve my skill sets further. I began the next scene with portraying the main character continuing to run through the crowd, showing the distance that he would run through a long shot of the crowd. This then leads to a medium shot of a few of the crowd being in depicted in detail compared to the shaded figures that had previously represented the crowd. I wanted these two characters to be portrayed in detail to show that the main character would interact with one of these characters in the following scenes, feeding the audience information on possible future events of the narrative. 


Board 2

Board 3

Board 4
The character then pushes into one of the crowd characters causing her to begin to fall, the next two scenes being portrayed in extreme close up shots to show the split second interaction that they have with each other. The following scenes then show her bag on the floor before showing her on the floor, I did not want to show her on the floor to begin with as I wanted the audience to perceive this for themselves before being shown the following consequence. After which the narrative is continued from another perspective from a different character from the cafe environment, before ending the shot on the coffee that the character was drinking. I found that I had created too many inbetweens for the last board, as I had originally incorporated scenes with the cafe character walking out of the cafe and ending on the waitress taking the coffee mug away. I felt that these scenes were not needed as with these frames, it made the narrative seem stretched with unnecessary actions.  As I needed to cut out these frames, I edited the structure of the panels in Photoshop adding the description of the scenes digitally. 

COP2 - Final Designs

For the final designs I ensured that the Cafe and Passerby perspectives were coherent and followed the main narrative. I wanted the viewer to see parts of the narrative that would carry on from the main perspective, allowing the viewer to perceive information from varying depictions that connect to the environment that the main plot is situated within. Designing the Cafe and Passerby perspectives using Photoshop, helped me to roughly plan the main action within each frame and add grayscale shading to the background to show the depth of the scene. I found that using this process helped me to consider the movement of the pan or zoom into the shot, alongside portraying the movement of the action with easily visible arrows. I purposely wanted the main perspective to be designed using graphite and shading to bring a more intense and engaging atmosphere to the storyboard. I found the varying perspectives and angles to be a challenge to create through how I found it difficult to keep the characters and environment within the same proportions. Through his process I was able to learn and improve my skill set towards perspectives and layout of storyboards with both digital and traditional mediums.

Main perspective

Cafe perspective

Passerby's perspective 

COP2 - Passerby's and Cafe's Perspective

For the Passerby's and Cafe perspective I first sketched out the main movement of the action before adding a more developed and coherent structure to the sketches. For the cafe perspective I needed to be able to show that the main character from the original perspective, run past the window. In order to create this sense of depth I needed to show the character in a smaller scale compared to the characters depicted and use a grayscale shade to further enhance the sense of depth. I wanted to show this action from different angles and perspectives to make the action seem disjointed to the viewer as new information is relayed to them. As he dialogue from the two characters shown in the storyboard, is not particularly important to the narrative, I felt that the use of a low murmur from the cafe would be successful in creating an ambience that would create curiosity, matched with the viewer only being allowed to see what the limited vision from the window can give them.

For the Passerby's perspective I wanted to show a link to the main narrative in a closer environment, using the crowd as a basis to be able to create this perception. As I wanted to create this close encounter with the original depiction, I wanted to weave a close up of the two characters passing each other before it continues in the main narrative. I treated the Passerby's perspective to be the overall beginning of the narrative, introducing the audience into the environment before the main action. I represented the crowd through the use of shaded figures which I felt aided the narrative well through how it absorbed an atmosphere of bewilderment and almost alienation through how the audience cannot see detail of the figures, they cannot see their faces making it something unknown and hard to relate to.

After scanning in the thumbnail sketches, I edited the designs within photoshop to ensure that the frames were legible and easy to follow. Using photoshop allowed me to easily show the main shot and movement of the camera using a different colour to show the framing and the direction of the camera. The contrast against the white and the grayscale portrayed the sense of depth well in which represents the window of the cafe. 


Thumbnail sketches - Cafe
Thumbnail sketches - Passerby

Example of Photoshop design

Monday 23 March 2015

COP2 - Academic Text Analysis

Narration within a Fiction Film by David Bordwell

Although this book is not primarily aimed at the Animation discipline, it incorporates the main structure and theories of narrative that can be applied to animated works. From the Russian Formalism conception of Fabula and Syuzhet, the basic structure of a narrative piece, to the Gestalt theory referring to how the perception of text/imagery can change the narrative to something completely different. Bordwell's studies are written in depth and easy to depict to be able to compare to previous theories that have been mentioned; being able to piece a distinct connection between theories before Bordwell describes them.

Analysing Chapter 5 - Sin, Murder and Narration

In this chapter we can immediately read a distinct connection to the basics of narration in which the Fabula and Syuzhet are applied within detective films. Here we can see how the actions of the syuzhet are applied to the crime part of Fabula; the syuzhet being the beginning of the crime becoming structured by the detectives progress throughout the narrative, with the Fabula being explained gradually and withholding information from the audience to create suspense. In a previous chapter we learn about Meir Sternberg, one of the many theorists within the book, whom created the Suspense Hypothesis; information that is unknown is linked to the known in the past narrative, and the possibility of future narrative. This develops a sense of anticipation and curiosity to the viewer through the connection between these events. This can interestingly refer to another theory described in a previous chapter, a form of Gestalt theory. The audience create expectations of the film through their own experiences, as they already know the genre before they watch the film; From this expectation, the viewer knows that anyone can be the murderer.

One of the main examples used within this chapter, The Big Sleep, is used to describe the use of the fabula and syuzhet. Interestingly the film bases the fabula around the construction of the investigation rather than the construction of the crime. This take on the chronological events only allows the audience to depict the events through the detectives eyes, learning information when the detective does. This works well with restricting information from the audience to create tension and curiosity with past events.  The audience need to know the information/clues that the detective finds as he investigates, however with this set fabula the use of restricting information becomes harder to apply to the structure of the syuzhet. Somehow the communication of information needs to be retained from the viewer. This could be shown by not allowing the viewer to see the detectives own deductions and only allowing the viewer to perceive the clues that reveal themselves throughout the fabula. Bordwell refers to Dorothy Sayers, a famous crime writer in which her solution involves variations of depth in representing the detective. For instance, only allowing the viewer to know the detectives conclusions when they voice them,

Bordwell then further depicts the connection between detective films and retardation narrative, holding back information to make the viewer unsure about what they are watching and curious as to what will happen next. This theory aids the communication of the information stated in the previous paragraph, it aides the presentation to the audience and how the fabula will eventually reveal the information, becoming gradually known. An example given is seen in the film, Murder My Sweet,  in which the main character is shot in the face and all information becomes halted to the viewer, the viewer perceives what he perceives. This interesting take on narrative and perspective for the audience leaves the atmosphere engulfed with suspense as no information is being relayed back to the viewer, begging the question, did he survive? Fortunately the audience discover that he did as the visuals fade back and the narrative continues.

Even though I have only gone in depth with one of the chapters within this book, I have learnt so much from Bordwells studies within narration. I have discovered theories that have helped me to not only write my essay but to inform my own practice, to consider the amount of information that is relayed to the viewer and how I can take advantage of this to create a narrative that grips the viewer.


COP2 - 99 Ways to Tell a Story

I recently discovered Matt Maddens, 99 Ways to Tell a Story: Exercises in Style, in which the first page depicts the main narrative with the following pages containing different portrayals in both visual and text formats. I found this book to be a huge inspiration as it helped me to generate ideas for practical through the use of both narration and perception. The different viewpoints shown through out the book are innovative and work with portraying the same narration. I felt that this format of showing the simple plot in different portrayals would work well for my initial idea, linking with the theme of my essay. The majority of Maddens work was shown in black and white compositions with a few of the pages being colour and grayscale depending on the depiction of the narrative. I was quite inspired by his 'Inking Outside of the Box' portrayal in which he shows an extension of each panel of the original plot but in humorous and bizarre ways. The examples of perspective in some of the pages helped me to consider the layout of my own boards. Using Maddens work as an influence I decided that I would first depict the original story, an outsiders view and then a passerby's portrayal of events. 

The 'Original' Story
Persons perspective
From a outsiders view

COP2 - Researching into Perspective



Throughout the storyboard process I found it difficult with the perspective of the frames, particularly the first few and middle frames of the narrative. To be able to improve my skills I researched into perspective using Pinterest to store tutorials and guides on perspective. I found that using Pinterest as a visual moodboard made it easier to be able to organise and find my research to help me with drawing perspective in each frame. Pinterest also allowed me to be able to find similar tutorials that I had found from other sites in order to inform my practice. I also found layout and rules of third sheets helped me to plan the majority of my storyboard especially with scenes in which the main focal point was situated within the edge of the frame rather than the middle.

I referred to The Storyboard Design Course by Giuseppe Cristiano for inspiration and planning for the storyboard. This book was extremely helpful with tips on both the variations of storyboards and how much information needs to be relayed to the audience. Along with tips on perspective of frames and how low/high angles can change a scene, there were distinct examples of how clean and well presented the storyboards needed to be. Interestingly the majority of storyboards are presented with clean black lines and grayscale shading, this is to clearly represent the source of light, the mood of the scene and to be able to see what is happening within the scene. 

COP2 - Using the Lightbox and adding shading






To adopt the perspective into my traditional boards, I needed to use the light box to ensure that the perspective of the shot would be correct and work successfully with the rest of the frames. Using the light box aided me with the ease of redrawing the main frame/editing the design with the digital version being a rough guideline for the frame. With this process I was able to easily correct any problems with the anatomy of the character and the background perspective. The use of the light box also helped me to consider the pacing of the narrative and where to include the additional inbetweens which were needed to help depict the action more clearly. I wanted to show the crowd however the frame would have been too crowded for the viewer to understand the action occurring in the frame. I decided to represent the crowd using a shaded figure to show the placement of the surrounding characters and to show the depth within the frame. The use of the shading helped me to portray the perspective of the characters and the lighting of the scenario. I found that using graphite was not only easy and quick to use but it was effective to show the atmosphere and detail within the frame to a good standard. 

COP2 - Digital Development: Planning Perspective

After noting the edits that I needed to change on the thumbnail designs, I scanned the pages into Photoshop and made rough amendments into the storyboard sheets. I found planning these rough layouts helped me in terms with perspective as I was able to use the pen tool and guidelines to plan the angle before I began to draw the frame. After cutting alot of the thumbnail frames from the final rough layout, I felt that the narrative ran quite smoothly and worked in terms of depicting the narrative to the audience. I did however find one perspective in particular to be hard to design, the first frame in the edited layout in which the main character of the perspective bumps into another character. It was difficult trying to show the viewer that he had bumped into her; in order to solve this problem I need to show either a medium or long shot to show the character sat on the floor with her bag/someone helping her up. I still felt that a few frames needed to be added before I could complete the final main perspective in which I decided to continue in traditional graphite so that I could easily add grayscale tones and extra detail to the characters whilst incorporating additional frames.

Rough Layout
Edited layout - Board 1
Edited layout - Board 2


COP2 - Thumbnail design: Original Perspective


Board 1
Board 2
For the original perspective I began to sketch out how the narrative would begin with shots of the crowd whilst zooming in to locate the main character of this narration. . After the character is seen within the crowd he receives a message which makes him shocked and filled with this urge to get to his destination as quickly as possible making him run through the crowd. This kinetic action causes him to run into someone and without a second thought continue to run, leaving the person he knocked over on the floor.  After drawing this sequence I felt that this took too long for the viewer to see the main character. In order to solve this problem I decided that I would cut out the first few frames so that the narrative would begin when the character is in view within the crowd. Immediately the narrative felt smoother in depiction of events, it did not feel as fragmented with the exclusion of the first three frames. I then noticed a similar problem with the following scenes with the character reading the message he has received, this took 9 frames for this action which was immediately too long for the viewer to perceive these visuals. In order to solve this problem I decided to cut straight to when the character is holding the phone and cutting out the view of the message he is reading. I felt that allowing the viewer to see what was within the message does not hold as much as an impact compared to when this information is kept from the audience, Retaining this information makes the audience curious leading to Meir Sternbergs Suspense Hypothesis, when something is unknown and refers to something that is already known a sense of curiosity is formed leading to anticipation and suspense. Another problem with the initial thumbnails was the pace of the last 5 frames and the visual way that they were depicted. The sequence was not interesting enough, there needed to be variation in perspective and angle to make the viewer more absorbed within the story. To solve this problem I needed to add a few inbetweens with the reaction of the other character and change the perspectives of the rest. 

COP2 - Initial sketches




Before I began creating thumbnails for the main storyboard perspective, I first created some warm up sketches to get into the drawing frame of mind. I tried to visualise what some of the characters could like, drawing mainly heads and a few poses. I did like the top three heads which could work for the passerby and the sat down pose which would work well for the perspective from a cafe or shop window. I believe that using a cafe window from this perspective would make the narrative simpler through how both the background and the amount of characters that could be within the shop would make the image complicated and most likely miss the main point being depicted within the shot. Using a cafe would make the perspective seem more secluded which is one of the points that I want to get across, I wanted this perspective to be one that views the action from afar, and has no real immediate connection to the other two narratives. The top three heads that I have drawn would work well for the passerby through the simplicity of the design and how I would be able to develop this further by adding detail to the face through the shape of his jaw and cheek bones to make the character hold more personality. 

COP2 - Building the idea






I developed the mind map idea further by noting down simple points for narrative onto post it notes, such as watching tv or making breakfast etc. I then underlined parts of the notes to what I thought could work well, in which I narrowed down the choice to walking through a crowd, as I felt that I would be able to create an interesting narrative and chain of events. Through the use of the crowd narrative I would be able to make use of different perspectives from a range of characters walking past or even looking from a shop/cafe window. From this I created three perspectives in which could be changed or merged into 2 perspectives depending on how long the narrative would become. I wanted the first perspective to be the original view of events, with the second having a different view on the main action that has happened and the third viewing this from outside the situation and possibly altered slightly to change the original depiction, referring to Satoshi Kon's and Miyazaki's works.

I thought about the order in which these events could be seen, with the second perspective stated previously being shown last to make the audience question what actually happened, however I still need to work on this order of perspective as the main narrative has to be clear to the viewer.

COP2 - Initial thoughts on Practical




For my COP Practical piece I needed to be able to link the work that I will create to my essay, in this case it needed to depict narrative and different perceptions. I wanted to create something that would relate to how a simple narrative can change from additions of different perspectives. I first created a mind map, writing any ideas that could help me generate and develop points that could be refined into my final practical piece. I considered the possibility of designing a character but with a twist. For example create a character based on a description from someone else or from memory, this could be in the form of someone I knew or a celebrity and I would then have to draw this person. However it did not really reflect the points that I had made within my essay, it did depict how people perceive others but not in a narrative form. Continuing with the character designing theme, I developed another idea that takes influence from Miyazaki's narrative on his film The Wind Rises. In this animation he uses his own personal experiences that he went through during the Second World War weaving it into his own depiction of his hero, Jiro Horikoshi. Using this as an influence I noted how I could also choose an historical figure and add my own experiences to a narrative that they would be included in. I did however have my doubts about this idea, for my own experiences to be added to this historical figure I would have to adapt this character to suit themes from modern day, which would be interesting with the narrative and perceptions but still a challenge to create and stumbling away from the theme of my essay.

I then began to look at ideas that would involve storyboards or narrative visually displayed in this format, to depict influences from my essay. I found that these ideas worked more successfully than the character design ideas as there was a distinct connection between these points to my theme of narrative and perception. For example, the practical would include 3 storyboards, one being the actual event, the second being slightly altered and the third being completely changed with fantasy like elements to relate to both Satoshi Kon's and Miyazaki's works. I felt that this idea would work well as it would not only aid my essay but help me to develop my own skills within storyboarding, visually depicting actions and narrative.