FILM STUDIES AND CINEMATOGRAPHY - EXERCISES


27.08.19 - 23.09.19 (Week 1 - Week 5)

Helen Angelia (0336203)

Film Studies and Cinematography

Exercises



EXERCISES

03.09.10 (Week 1)

Ghibli's Recurring Themes
  1. What are Miyazaki's recurring themes?
  2. Pick a Miyazaki film and analyze the story's theme and how the protagonists' journey is told in relation to the theme.

Presentation Feedback: 
Keep it simple. In Studio Ghibli, there were always 99% fantasy and 1% drama. Since it's not really similar with other Ghibli's style, some movies like Whisper of the Heart was not well-known. "I guess you're one of the 1%, but it's fine really."

Exercise 2: Analyzing Internal and External of Characters in Animation

Choose 3 characters and tell the external features that differentiates them from other characters!
Joy - Inside Out
Buzz Lightyear - Toy Story
Princess Merida - Brave
Mike Wazowski - Monster University
Woody - Toy Story
Nemo - Finding Nemo
Bob / Mr. Incredible - The Incredibles
Remy - Ratatouille

From 3, I chose: Merida, Nemo, and Remy.
Merida: fierce, brave, adventurous, ambitious, dare-devil
Nemo: innocent, full of curiosity
Remy: slacking off, carefree, open mind

Feedback: External, not internal. Going too far.

After receiving feedback, I tried again and this time, it's external and what Mr. Mike meant.

Merida: fierce, big curly red hair, bow and arrow
Nemo: orange, innocent, small fin
Remy: blue, big nose, weird shape teeth, airhead

Mr. Mike and the Pixar videos taught us that if we want to make an animation, either we start making a world for the characters, or the characters to be placed in a world. It's better to start from visual first, then internal.

06.09.19 (Week 1)

For today's exercise we worked on analysis about Pixar short movie "Piper". 


Feedback: Mr. Mike said I made a few mistakes which is I need to explain more about external factors, more detailed but straightforward and I had too much words which made it a plot, not a synopsis.

10.09.19 (Week 2)

For this week, we need to choose 3 favourite films, which I picked Coraline, Ratatouille, and Mulan.
We need to analysis:
  1. What does the character really wants the most?
  2. What did he/she want to become in the film?
  3. What does he/she need to do to succeed?
13.09.19 (Week 3)

Then we also learned about Character Arc, which is something like internal stakes, external stakes, and philosophical stakes.

17.09.19 (Week 3)

The next exercise we're doing is Story Spine. We learned about writing story beats from pixar movies and we made some of our own too and we discuss it together in class.

23.09.19 (Week 4)

After we learned about the story spine, we moved on to learn about theme and story structure of how it leads to moral of the stories, what our characters need, know or learn in order to succeed in their life and how to hook the audience with act 1 and learn the characters more.

When I was doing exercise about Ratatouille, Mr. Mike said that I should need to add more about what he aspires to be. Explain more about the world, about him going to the restaurant's kitchen and think more about the turning point.

27.09.19 (Week 4)

For this time, we then learned about Act 2 in a story where our character gets beat up a lot and the low point where everything is lost to our character.

While Act 3 is all about pulling everything together and have a solution into the story.



Here is my Google Drive Link for full compilation:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1NuMIMieOHfeT8u3AobqMHDi6TRMI5R7N



REFLECTIONS

EXPERIENCES

As the beginning week of class is about theories and all (and I'm not really that good in theories), I got confused for some times and need to process the new knowledge I gained. But by working on our work and have an open discussion together in class, Mr. Mike made it easier for me to learn and having fun in the class. He doesn't forced his students or make them pressured, he just made us go with the flow. I actually enjoyed this class really much.
OBSERVATIONS
Because this module is about learning film and cinematography, Mr. Mike made us analysed some movies and ask us questions to see whether we understand the movie or not. If before I didn't pay attention to the stories, effects or anything about film and animation, now I paid attention more towards them and it's kind of fun watching while analysing. If someday I wanted to make an animation myself, my instinct could tell me what to do what the analysis I've done while watching movies.
FINDINGS
I found out and learned a lot in this module. Even though it's just still an exercise, I feel like the material is really about theories and it discuss about films and such in a deep and detailed way. It kinda of makes my brain tired for a while but I like it. The class is fun and we were trained to imagine something crazy like how kids does.

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