Film Studies and Cinematography - Exercises
27/8/19 - 27/11/19 (Week 1 to Week 14)
Exercises (Lead up to Project 1)
Instructions:
Module Information Booklet:
This post contains a compilation of the exercises done in class, aiding in the process and techniques of storytelling, observing films and analysing them into a deeper context.
Legend:
Reflection: (Experiences, Thoughts, Problems, Questions, Solution to Problems)
Homework:
In-class Exercises:
1. Pixar short exercises:
INSERT THE LINKS FOR VIDEOS
1. What if?
Exercise 1: Give a published movie a twist with a 'what if' question.
Movie: Incredibles 2
What If: there was a superhero baby that was super intelligent and taught his dad how to babysit his other kids because the dad was bad at it?
Exercise 2: Create a what if question for a movie you selected as if it wasn't out yet.
Movie: Spirited Away
What If:
1. Pick 3 of your favourite animated films and make a what-if question for each of them.
1. Monsters Inc.: What if there was a world where monsters harvested the tears of children through portals disguised as doors, and used those tears to generate electricity like a water turbine, and when one monster had to make his child cry, he cried instead and felt bad for the kids that cry because of the monsters?
2. The Incredibles 2: What if a superhero family became celebrities like the kardashians instead of living a normal human life, had a reality tv show and were praised for their powers and used them for the entertainment of others, then forgets how to use them for actually stopping evil until they had to go through training together as a family?
3. Finding Nemo: What if there was a clownfish in the sea who lost his son and wanted to find him, but met another clownfish that was his son’s age, and they went on the journey together to find his son, but one day the day clownfish started calling the new clownfish as his son because he was getting old and forgetting who his real son was?
I think that what if questions help and train storytellers to think creatively and not just logically, the most bogus yet interesting ideas can be made by using this practice.
2. Characters:
Character Characteristics Exercise:
Honestly I think that the main character has to have something different from the rest of the characters in the world for the story to start rolling, but on the other hand, everyone has a story to telling, it’s just how you tell it to make it interesting, but ultimately characters that people can relate to is what I think we should come up with, and the best way is to include your personal stories that others can relate with into your stories.
Character Outer and Inner Appearances:
We talked about what we saw on the outside of our favourite characters, then described what their personalities were inside.
I think that these outer appearances are what make the audience turn their heads for a second look and make them want to know more about their background story, but what really makes the character get into the audience hearts is the characters’ inner personality and characteristics. Both are similarly important in creating a character, one for piquing interest, and the other for retaining interest (which could definitely be useful for marketing purposes hahaha merchandise etc).
3. World:
Small character in a world of the movie I chose is the guy playing the ukulele for Hector. Even though he appeared for just awhile, that one scene alone told a lot about the land of the dead. The creators used his as a point for showing how far they’ve expanded the idea of the land of the dead, where there are dead souls also being forgetten in the real world and that is how they die off from existence, not just the living world. I think that it was a great concept and using this character to show how dangerous Hector being forgotten is is a great storytelling technique.
4. Synopsis:
For Spirited Away:
What if a girl and her parents went on a road trip but the parents turned into pigs because they greedily ate food without paying, and the girl goes to a bathhouse in the middle of nowhere to find a witch to undo the curse of her parents, meeting a boy who's actually a river and saving her parents with his help only to bid him good-bye as his curse is undone as well, turning back into a river
Revised:
What if a girl's parents turned into pigs because they greedily ate food without paying, and in order to save the parents, the girl goes to a bathhouse in the middle of nowhere to find the witch who owns it to undo their curse, but ends up as her slave, will her hard work and love for her parents be able to save them?
I think that the shorter and more precise the synopsis is, the better it is. I also think that having a hook in the synopsis is really essential to capture the audience’s attention, and to sell your story. I think that not everything should be revealed in the synopsis, but it should be enough to want the audience to read/ watch your story. Synopsises that reveal almost everything would just ruin the feelings of curiosity and suspense for the story.
5. Character Wants and Needs
The wants and needs of a character from the story that I chose can be found in this sheet:
I think that identifying the wants and needs of a character helps the storyteller to have a goal or direction for where the story will end up at. Sometimes while creating a story, I would have soooo many other ideas and write them all down, and I have no idea what I would be doing after writing down those ideas because there’s too many of them. But when I identified the motives and goals of the character, life became so much easier for me and I would have different ideas but they still relate to the characters wants and needs.
6. Conflicts: Risks and Obstacles
The risks that the characters need to take in order to achieve their wants / needs is what drives the story to a point where it gets too interesting to stop watching it because you’d want to know if they’ve succeeded by risking this or that. Alternatively, the high the risks /stakes, the bigger the chance your audience would turn their phones off and focus solely on the movie / story. Also, I think that obstacles are created to give these characters a higher stake, but they could also be used as part of the storytelling, and relate to the themes and values of the story as well.
7. Story Spine
We moved on to the last part of the exercises, creating story spines. We first did a fun exercise that required us to start the story and our friends continued the stories randomly in the Google Sheets we used. It turned out horrible. Read it if you dare:
After that we made changes to our own starters based on the finding nemo story spine template given, and each section had questions that would aid in helping us write them. Here’s my story:
We then chose a movie each and wrote on the template given.
From this exercise, I learned that there are acts and beats, usually 3 acts in a story. Act 1 contains beat 1, 2, and 3. Beat 1 introduces the story, beat 2 contains the what if question and additional info, and beat 3 is where the readers would as what will the character do next. Act 2 is mainly the journey of the character and how he / she overcomes the obstacles faced to get what he / she wants or needs. The last beat (6) of this act is where the character’s stakes are raised to the highest, where he or she is usually in grave danger or on the verge of death. Act 3 has the last two beats, in beat 7, the character usually realizes something great or reflects on his / her actions to do what he / she needs to do. In beat 8, a wrap up of the story is given (unless you’re a meanie and make it a cliffhanger).
I used this story spine for my Project 1 Story Idea as well as I thought it was really effective.
2. Hayao Miyazaki Recurring Themes
Pick one of Miyazaki's movies, analyze the themes in it and write about it, find the 3 recurring themes in his movies.
Movie: Spirited Away
Write-up:
3 recurring themes: Family love, friendship, relationships between man and nature (live in harmony with nature), strong female characters, growing up / maturing
I learned about themes and values that relate to us all through this exercise. We were required to watch Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli) films and make a presentation on what the recurring themes were in his films. These were the notes I made when thinking of this exercise. I chose Spirited Away as my favourite movei from him (bcs I watched it thrice and cried all three times THAT ONE SCENE WHERE [redacted] HAD TO SAY [redacted] TO [REDACTED] AND NEVER {redacted} AGAIN. #myblogisspoilerfree
Below are my presentation slides:
Feedback: Mr Mike said that I did a good job in preparing and presenting. I was happy to hear that.
3. Piper Short Animation Analysis
This in-class activity required us to watch a short film, Piper (insert video link), and make an analysis out of it with the template provided by our lecturer. This is the document that has all of our answers. My name is Jasmine btw if you’re looking for my answers (just in case).
I really liked this exercise as it trained my brain to think about many different aspects of the short film that I usually would not have. I think that if I keep practicing with this template, my brain would evolve into a very observant and interpretative one. What I didn’t like about this exercise is that it felt like a race against time when we did it in class because I’m super slow but thankfully we had a time limit or I wouldn’t even be done with it by now.
4. Sanjay’s Superhero LINK
We watched this short animation in class and talked about it among each other. I really like the clours used during the superhero scene, it was very appropriate to show the uniqueness of having Hindu Gods as superheroes in my opinion. I also like the approach taken by the storyteller, he used his personal experiences to create this short film. What I learnt from this is that I started to think more about my own experiences and culture, and how I could involve it in my own stories. I would feel really proud to turn my own culture or religion into a short animated film so that people from all over the world can be more aware about it.
5. Penguins of Madagascar: Animation Timeline LINK
Week 6: Dreamworks Animation Studio Pipeline: Script to Screen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGcBlhZYCCo
This video scared me. :D Well it also reassured me that I would have a few job opportunities to look at other than being an animator sooooo it was an educating video. I knew that the process of creating an animation would involve many jobs, but I didn’t know the exact details and timeline of it all. I think that the scariest job is the rigger. Good luck to everyone who aims to be one of them (haha jk). I wanted to ask why sound was left for last. Why is sound always left for last? I’m writing a dissertation on sound design and everyone leaves sounds for last, but when I animate I already have the sounds that I think would fit this scene in my mind and make mental notes of them.
6. Angles, Composition and Cinematography Shots LINK
2D and 3D differences
2D can change the depth of field easier - blur the bg -
In 3D the cameras usually don't move,
find the right settings that will create the composition of the characters vision
Why you choose those shots and what does it mean
Normally its the emotional impact of the shot that determines everything
Camera Movement - humanized errors for realism?
Draw attention for where you wanna focus
technical constraint becomes a storytelling tool
Extreme shots and meanings - extreme wide shot extreme close up
static shots ^
dynamic shots- dolly, zoom, tracking
Handheld - spontaneous feeling
sparingly use dynamic shots
stereotype scenes - action scenes
This was also another educating video. We learned about Cinematography shots in video and sound production last semester, but it was good I could refresh my mind. I personally researched on angles and their uses before this too but if I don’t practice drawing I would forget about it until I’m reminded of it again. The high angles are used for showing insecurity of a character, usually used for weaker characters, while the lower angle shots are meant to show superiority of a character.
Notes taken during class:
Jasmine Teoh Lee Suan (0331993)
Film Studies and CinematographyExercises (Lead up to Project 1)
Instructions:
Module Information Booklet:
This post contains a compilation of the exercises done in class, aiding in the process and techniques of storytelling, observing films and analysing them into a deeper context.
Legend:
Reflection: (Experiences, Thoughts, Problems, Questions, Solution to Problems)
Homework:
In-class Exercises:
1. Pixar short exercises:
INSERT THE LINKS FOR VIDEOS
1. What if?
Exercise 1: Give a published movie a twist with a 'what if' question.
Movie: Incredibles 2
What If: there was a superhero baby that was super intelligent and taught his dad how to babysit his other kids because the dad was bad at it?
Exercise 2: Create a what if question for a movie you selected as if it wasn't out yet.
Movie: Spirited Away
What If:
- What if a young boy in Mexico who’s family bans music, aspires to be like his idol that passed away and finds out that he might be related to him miraculously
goes into the land of the dead in order to find his family history to prove that he is destined to be a real musician
- What if a girl’s parent turns into pig in a road trip because they were being greedy and she has to undo the curse of her parents back and meeting a boy who was actually a river and saving the parents with his help only to bid him goodbye?
1. Monsters Inc.: What if there was a world where monsters harvested the tears of children through portals disguised as doors, and used those tears to generate electricity like a water turbine, and when one monster had to make his child cry, he cried instead and felt bad for the kids that cry because of the monsters?
2. The Incredibles 2: What if a superhero family became celebrities like the kardashians instead of living a normal human life, had a reality tv show and were praised for their powers and used them for the entertainment of others, then forgets how to use them for actually stopping evil until they had to go through training together as a family?
3. Finding Nemo: What if there was a clownfish in the sea who lost his son and wanted to find him, but met another clownfish that was his son’s age, and they went on the journey together to find his son, but one day the day clownfish started calling the new clownfish as his son because he was getting old and forgetting who his real son was?
I think that what if questions help and train storytellers to think creatively and not just logically, the most bogus yet interesting ideas can be made by using this practice.
2. Characters:
Character Characteristics Exercise:
1) Pick favorite hero / chara and what did he/she do for you – chara match
- fell in love
- funny / approachable
- relatable
- Coco – Miguel – defy his parents / destiny
- Koro sensei – human- monster – learns to teach – inspire others
- Shield hero – discriminated – plot twist – funny – comedy
-life lessons
-dark ethnics
-what make you find it ?
how you find it
*Characters could be more real
Honestly I think that the main character has to have something different from the rest of the characters in the world for the story to start rolling, but on the other hand, everyone has a story to telling, it’s just how you tell it to make it interesting, but ultimately characters that people can relate to is what I think we should come up with, and the best way is to include your personal stories that others can relate with into your stories.
Character Outer and Inner Appearances:
We talked about what we saw on the outside of our favourite characters, then described what their personalities were inside.
Mike Wazowzki : Moster – one big eye – big mouth – round
Buzz Ligktyear – purple thing on scalp (bald) – toy astronaut suit
Merida Red frizzy hair – blue eyes – furrowing bushy eyebrows – big chin
Mike :
Memo :
Mr Incredible : egoistic has his pride, competitive, insecure / needs confirmation, cares for his family
I think that these outer appearances are what make the audience turn their heads for a second look and make them want to know more about their background story, but what really makes the character get into the audience hearts is the characters’ inner personality and characteristics. Both are similarly important in creating a character, one for piquing interest, and the other for retaining interest (which could definitely be useful for marketing purposes hahaha merchandise etc).
3. World:
Design thinking
-human centeredness
-empathy -worldbuilding
-elevator pitches – short, “hooky” -attention to detail
-animate a sense of
realistic world in a fantasy
-physics, movement
-well-established
-great stories can come from everywhere
Write a story on the internet about small character in the movie you chose:
Small character in a world of the movie I chose is the guy playing the ukulele for Hector. Even though he appeared for just awhile, that one scene alone told a lot about the land of the dead. The creators used his as a point for showing how far they’ve expanded the idea of the land of the dead, where there are dead souls also being forgetten in the real world and that is how they die off from existence, not just the living world. I think that it was a great concept and using this character to show how dangerous Hector being forgotten is is a great storytelling technique.
4. Synopsis:
For Spirited Away:
What if a girl and her parents went on a road trip but the parents turned into pigs because they greedily ate food without paying, and the girl goes to a bathhouse in the middle of nowhere to find a witch to undo the curse of her parents, meeting a boy who's actually a river and saving her parents with his help only to bid him good-bye as his curse is undone as well, turning back into a river
Revised:
What if a girl's parents turned into pigs because they greedily ate food without paying, and in order to save the parents, the girl goes to a bathhouse in the middle of nowhere to find the witch who owns it to undo their curse, but ends up as her slave, will her hard work and love for her parents be able to save them?
I think that the shorter and more precise the synopsis is, the better it is. I also think that having a hook in the synopsis is really essential to capture the audience’s attention, and to sell your story. I think that not everything should be revealed in the synopsis, but it should be enough to want the audience to read/ watch your story. Synopsises that reveal almost everything would just ruin the feelings of curiosity and suspense for the story.
5. Character Wants and Needs
The wants and needs of a character from the story that I chose can be found in this sheet:
I think that identifying the wants and needs of a character helps the storyteller to have a goal or direction for where the story will end up at. Sometimes while creating a story, I would have soooo many other ideas and write them all down, and I have no idea what I would be doing after writing down those ideas because there’s too many of them. But when I identified the motives and goals of the character, life became so much easier for me and I would have different ideas but they still relate to the characters wants and needs.
6. Conflicts: Risks and Obstacles
Stakes . Coco
1) important choice they make where the stakes where high
( listening to mama Imelda and going home / find album not person
- Miguel had to choose between going home to see his family members or his love for music
When mama Imelda wanted to give him her blessing / chose music / finding truth instead of going home
2)What were the stakes
- if Miguel chose to receive his blessings at that time , he won’t find out his grandpa / truth and continue your swing music
- if Miguel chose to not return to his family, he might have been trapped there forever
3) Identify them as internal, external or philosophical
- internal because its about his passion and what he wants to do
4) difficult choice you had to make in your own life
What was at stake?
When I had to choose between doing design and engineering. ( regret , mom bday ambition)
My passion and my parents expectations ( my position them to make)
5) Obstacles? ( mama Imelda, Ernesto de la cruze ) Chooses this obstacle forces them
to make.
- What are the possible stakes of this choices
@ if Miguel went back / because of mama Imelda he would’nt find out the truth/ wont meet hector/ hector forgotten x pursue music
Come up with an internal ext. phil stake ahiyuh appotes to this choice?
- internal – Miguel might x have passion /sad
- external – Miguel might X play music anymore / no meaning in life
- philosophical – the world will never know that Ernesto stole hectors song and murdered hector
Ernesto de lacruz – prevent Miguel from leaving the dead
L - so that no will find out that he stole hector songs
L Miguel
Miguel feel sad bcs hector will die be forgotten too
The risks that the characters need to take in order to achieve their wants / needs is what drives the story to a point where it gets too interesting to stop watching it because you’d want to know if they’ve succeeded by risking this or that. Alternatively, the high the risks /stakes, the bigger the chance your audience would turn their phones off and focus solely on the movie / story. Also, I think that obstacles are created to give these characters a higher stake, but they could also be used as part of the storytelling, and relate to the themes and values of the story as well.
7. Story Spine
We moved on to the last part of the exercises, creating story spines. We first did a fun exercise that required us to start the story and our friends continued the stories randomly in the Google Sheets we used. It turned out horrible. Read it if you dare:
After that we made changes to our own starters based on the finding nemo story spine template given, and each section had questions that would aid in helping us write them. Here’s my story:
We then chose a movie each and wrote on the template given.
From this exercise, I learned that there are acts and beats, usually 3 acts in a story. Act 1 contains beat 1, 2, and 3. Beat 1 introduces the story, beat 2 contains the what if question and additional info, and beat 3 is where the readers would as what will the character do next. Act 2 is mainly the journey of the character and how he / she overcomes the obstacles faced to get what he / she wants or needs. The last beat (6) of this act is where the character’s stakes are raised to the highest, where he or she is usually in grave danger or on the verge of death. Act 3 has the last two beats, in beat 7, the character usually realizes something great or reflects on his / her actions to do what he / she needs to do. In beat 8, a wrap up of the story is given (unless you’re a meanie and make it a cliffhanger).
I used this story spine for my Project 1 Story Idea as well as I thought it was really effective.
2. Hayao Miyazaki Recurring Themes
Pick one of Miyazaki's movies, analyze the themes in it and write about it, find the 3 recurring themes in his movies.
Movie: Spirited Away
Write-up:
Themes in Spirited Away: Does the story resolve around the theme? Character and how it relates.
1) Growing up / Maturity – Chihiro was whiny – grow up – save her parents
2) Greed is not good – parents eat food – Yubaba stingy(?)– bath house people attracted to no face money – no face reacts to greed
3) environment / treat nature well – river spirit that got polluted
- Haku – destroyed by humans ( build apartments)
4) Family love – save her parents
5) Friendship – coal man, the strong woman, Yubaba’s sis, no face, haku
6) strong female characters personalities
7) Power of Words and Names – bathhouse – name take
- at end Chihiro has to choose words carefully
- Haku regain his name
I learned about themes and values that relate to us all through this exercise. We were required to watch Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli) films and make a presentation on what the recurring themes were in his films. These were the notes I made when thinking of this exercise. I chose Spirited Away as my favourite movei from him (bcs I watched it thrice and cried all three times THAT ONE SCENE WHERE [redacted] HAD TO SAY [redacted] TO [REDACTED] AND NEVER {redacted} AGAIN. #myblogisspoilerfree
Below are my presentation slides:
Feedback: Mr Mike said that I did a good job in preparing and presenting. I was happy to hear that.
3. Piper Short Animation Analysis
This in-class activity required us to watch a short film, Piper (insert video link), and make an analysis out of it with the template provided by our lecturer. This is the document that has all of our answers. My name is Jasmine btw if you’re looking for my answers (just in case).
I really liked this exercise as it trained my brain to think about many different aspects of the short film that I usually would not have. I think that if I keep practicing with this template, my brain would evolve into a very observant and interpretative one. What I didn’t like about this exercise is that it felt like a race against time when we did it in class because I’m super slow but thankfully we had a time limit or I wouldn’t even be done with it by now.
4. Sanjay’s Superhero LINK
We watched this short animation in class and talked about it among each other. I really like the clours used during the superhero scene, it was very appropriate to show the uniqueness of having Hindu Gods as superheroes in my opinion. I also like the approach taken by the storyteller, he used his personal experiences to create this short film. What I learnt from this is that I started to think more about my own experiences and culture, and how I could involve it in my own stories. I would feel really proud to turn my own culture or religion into a short animated film so that people from all over the world can be more aware about it.
5. Penguins of Madagascar: Animation Timeline LINK
Week 6: Dreamworks Animation Studio Pipeline: Script to Screen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vGcBlhZYCCo
This video scared me. :D Well it also reassured me that I would have a few job opportunities to look at other than being an animator sooooo it was an educating video. I knew that the process of creating an animation would involve many jobs, but I didn’t know the exact details and timeline of it all. I think that the scariest job is the rigger. Good luck to everyone who aims to be one of them (haha jk). I wanted to ask why sound was left for last. Why is sound always left for last? I’m writing a dissertation on sound design and everyone leaves sounds for last, but when I animate I already have the sounds that I think would fit this scene in my mind and make mental notes of them.
6. Angles, Composition and Cinematography Shots LINK
2D and 3D differences
2D can change the depth of field easier - blur the bg -
In 3D the cameras usually don't move,
find the right settings that will create the composition of the characters vision
Why you choose those shots and what does it mean
Normally its the emotional impact of the shot that determines everything
Camera Movement - humanized errors for realism?
Draw attention for where you wanna focus
technical constraint becomes a storytelling tool
Extreme shots and meanings - extreme wide shot extreme close up
static shots ^
dynamic shots- dolly, zoom, tracking
Handheld - spontaneous feeling
sparingly use dynamic shots
stereotype scenes - action scenes
This was also another educating video. We learned about Cinematography shots in video and sound production last semester, but it was good I could refresh my mind. I personally researched on angles and their uses before this too but if I don’t practice drawing I would forget about it until I’m reminded of it again. The high angles are used for showing insecurity of a character, usually used for weaker characters, while the lower angle shots are meant to show superiority of a character.
Notes taken during class:
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