Surrealist Film - Workshop

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP-Y75usD7I&feature=player_embedded

Above is a link to a short surrealist film which we produced in a group of 3. To produce a true surrealist film, we based our short clip on a David Lynch type of style. It was quite hard to produce as expression films take alot of mental thinking. I thought our film was quite successful and fitted the surrealist genre.

The Brothers Quay

The Brothers Quay are identical twins. They originally worked as professionals in illustration but then went on to animating. They are now known for creating unique animation films which gets  categorised under surrealism. Their films tend to have no spoken dialogue but the sound effects and music are extremely emphasised. They are also known for creating music videos using their unique stop motion effects.

The brothers quay's work is very experimental. They have been very influenced by jan Svankmajor, to an extent that they made a film about him. This shows how older work has been developed into the modern world. Below, is a clip of their most popular film.

As you can see the film is very surreal. Objects appear to look like they’re moving by the illusion of movement, created using stop motion. Also puppets and Claymation appear to be in the film which makes the film come to life. As in the majority of all stop motions, The Brothers Quay have moved each object ever so slightly, in each picture, then played the series of pictures all at once, in order to give off the effect that they are moving. The setting is dark and gloomy, to create a haunting and mysterious atmosphere.

Jan Svankmajer - Developer

Jan Svankmajer is known for creating films which are very surreal, strange and imaginative, using stop motion animation. Jan worked for a range of different theatres, which later on inspired him to include theatre in some of his stop motion films.

Below, is a video of one of his films, based on food. When Jan was younger, he had a bad experience with food, so this is why many of his films are based on that theme. Jan is famous for being one of the most imaginative animators in time. I find this particular video extremely effetcive. He has used claymation to create an effective expression on the peoples faces, and has obviously used the method of taking, then manipulating the object each time in each photo, otherwise known as the stop motion technique.

His work has gone on to inspire many animators to be more daring and imaginative with their work. Due to Jan’s unusual and surreal work, his audience tends to be adults. This is because a younger generation may not be able to fully understand what’s going on and they may also find it disturbing. Jan has developed a different side of surreal and has shown how effective and entertaining the genre can be.

George Pal - Pioneer

George Pal was brought up by his grandparents. This was because all though they were celebrities, they were divorced. He studied architecture, then went on to work as an illustrator. His work was unpaid, so he immigrated to Berlin where he became head of the UFA studios cartoon production.

He soon left there and then began to animate cigarettes. However, in Czechoslovakia,  no-one was interested. So Pal decided to move to Paris as they were interested in his work. The first company Pal went to bought his idea, which made George famous due to how successful his animations were. He then opened up his own studios named ‘Dollywood Studios’, in Holland. He was then signed to Paramount Pictures where animators like Ray Harryhausen have worked. Here, he created many successful puppetoons. Because of this success, Paramount let him to do feature films. He won many awards for his special effects, which therefore lead him on to making his own films at his studio. George is most famous for The Time Machine and War of the Worlds.

Georges work has proven to be extremely popular and inspirational. For example, he used a series of different heads for different expressions for his characters. This technique is now used by many modern day animators, such as Tim Burton, which shows that Georges work has been inspirational. He also inspired other animators and film-makers because he was very resourceful and he always thought big on any project he was doing. George Pal used puppetoons to also create animation for TV such as Phillips Broadcast. George Pals work was extremely successful due to the fact that it was original and different to the previous pioneers work.

 

Research

We thought that our advert should be aired on e 4. This is because the energy drink we are promoting is aimed at a young generation and the audience for e4 are also a young generation. Therefore by advertising our product on this channel, we will reach our target audience.

To back up what I have said, I have found a diagram which clearly shows, that e4’s most popular viewers are a young audience. We, as a group discussed that our product should be based on young people aged between 18 – 35. So by adding the 2 percentages of the age ranges together, we can see that we are aiming our advert towards 97% of e4’s demographic! Through researching this, we clearly knew that e4 would be the best channel for our product.  

Research - Present Stop Motion Animations

Stop motion has been used for the whole part of the music video for Coldplay. Pixilation and illustration have been used to create a great stop motion effect for the video. They have done this by taking pictures frame by frame of a live actor moving ever so slightly each time. They have then also drawn an image, then changed the image ever so slightly, to create the illusion of movement.

 

Stop motion has been used to create the whole advert for a nokia phone. Not only is it a very effective technique for creating an advert, but they have also shot the whole advert using a nokia phone, which is an extremely effective way of promoting it. They have used pixilation of one actor, a boat and a series of lines formed using rakes in the sand, to create an image. It was filmed from a birds eye view on a crane, using 3 nokia phones. Every frame has to move, so the crew rubbed out a line, then re created it using rakes, slightly differently every time.

Stop motion is used in many computer games. For example ‘snake’. All the individual images of the different levels and the possibilities of what the snake could look like, have been created. Each image appears one by one, which creates the illusion that the snake is moving.

Stop motion is used in adverts on websites. For example, there is an advert on how to loose weight. There is a drawing of an image of a person turning from overweight to an average size. This is an effective way of advertising because it grabs the audience’s attention as it is a series of flashing images on the side of the website. The illusion of the person’s body weight changing, is created by a series of drawings, each slightly different, which are then all played after each other.

Research

We watched advertisements for energy drinks to give us some inspiration and tips for our advert. I came across an advert for lucozade which I thought was slightly similar to our idea. This is because of the way that the energy drink is travelling through various scenes and settings. I think this is a great way of advertising their product as it looks fun and effective. They have also used celebrity endorsement so more people will be attracted to their product.

I then came across the music video for blur – coffee and tv. This is a great example of something similar we hope to create. Both our idea and the music video have the same effective of an object travelling around different scenes.

Through watching various advertisements, I came to the conclusion that all adverts for energy drinks show that the drink gives a sense of relief or the power to do something. So what we, as a group need to show in our advert, is that the energy drink is the necessity.