2/19/2008

Today we viewed Jan Svankmajer's "Dimensions of Dialogue from 1982" which uses stop motion animation. It begins with oddly enough, opening credits with natural sound of people talking. Then there is a vegetable man and a clock man ad the "clock" man cuts up the food/vegeie man. And then he walks away But he encoutners office supply man. And offie supply man crushes poor clock man. he barfs him out as a new creation. Then office supply gets eaten by the former vegetable man. who in turn barfs out the new office supply man. Then veggie and clock meet yet again and eat eachother. and veggie ma is turned into sand man.
office supply then turns clock man into shrapenel man. sand man then eats office supply and turns him into refuse man. then someone else eats someone and barfs them out into clay man. this repeats itself again. so now we have 3 clay men. who keep barfing out more clay men.
part 2- we have a clay man and a clay woman. they love eachother, its cute. they kiss and literally, suck face. the rub each other in intimate places. and begin to make hot clay love. he doesnt last very long though, but long enough to create a clay baby blob. which they smack around. they throw it at each other and and then fight.
all in all it was interesting. the music soundtrack played an important part. it was all very surreal. it was okay, honestly, it didn't grab my attention much. i thought it was neat but nothing to write home about.

The second piece we viewed was oculart. it was a duck bouncing off a duck while a woman watched. it was very strange and surreal. different pieces moved like the umbrella. i did not understand what exactly it was trying to say about anything. it looked cool and i got a spooky vibe, but other than that nothing overwhelming. it looked nifty but left a bitter after taste in my mouth.

The 3rd piece we viewed were the title credits of Lemony Snicket. The end credits. It was a surreal portrait of an ocean with three children stranded at sea in a boat. then lemony lifted them up and threw the boat into the sky. the children rode bikes through a graveyard. all the while lemoy snicket's profile would appear and his eye. the animation was all dark colors. the children looked somewhat like paperdolls. it was similar to that other animation we saw, the german one. they put alot of effort into the end credits, which is a shame, because no one ever watches them (excluding this class). it was all rather dark and moody. it seemed to re tell the movie.
seemingly all surreal work is dark and moody.

week 4 (2/12/2008)

Today we viewed Walt Disney's "The Old Mill" (1937). The animation opens with a ws of a spider-web, intact, and slowly zooms into an old mill. It has gentle serene music playing as it shows ducks, and love birds all enjoying the old mill in peace. It goes up the mill to introduce an owl and sleeping bats. The bats awake and fly out of the mill. You then see frogs with very expressive eyes croaking in harmony with the crickets. Then a storm batters the old mill and the music becomes menacing and evil. The owl gets soaked, the mother bird almost gets crushed and mayhem generally ensues. The storm passes the bats return and the camera zooms out and the final shot is off a broken spiders web.
This movie was brilliantly animated and the music added much to its atmosphere. The whole animation exuded an atmosphere which took the viewer to a cartoon world, which was clearly cartoon, but felt of so realistic.

Blog 3 (radiohead)

This weeks animation "Low Morale: Creep" by munkee hub(2006). It was a flash animation set to an acoustic version of the Radiohead song "Creep". The basic story outline is that there was a egg head shaped man who was mouthing the words to the song. He starts out alone with a plant withering and dying next to him. Slowly an office setting begins to be born around him. Eventually it fills wit desks, cabinets and co-workers. There is also a city scape outside the window. All the while he is singing along. Eventually he throws himself out the window and lands in a dumpster. The dumpster dissolves and fades away and he is left alone.
All in all i really enjoyed this one. The colors were all very drab and very grey. A great deal of looping as far as objects and motions of characters go. All the transitions were very smoothly done. The lip synching was perfect. And the animation fit the general mood set by the song.