The note of film language and the understanding of film, animation and VFX
By this week, We have comprehended that knowing how to use appropriate Film Language as well as deepening our understanding of film, animation, and VFX could be rather crucial if we want to become smarter animation moviegoers.
PART1 FILM LANGUAGE
The visual language of films requires us to learn the basics of how to speak the movie, which can be divided into three pillars “The camera“, “Mise en Scène” and “Editing“.
1. The Camera
In terms of the camera part, The video above shows us four dimensions, The Shot Length, Angle, Focus&Lenses and Movement, introducing different definitions and functions of it.
TYPES OF SHOT
The Wide Shot, in which we can see the whole subject, is just like watching a play on the stage.
The Extreme wide shot, wider than a wide shot, where we watch the whole scene from a distance.
The medium shot is a partial body shot of the subject easily from the knees or waist up.
A one-shot, which can create the symmetrical or asymmetrical images.
The two-shot is when two subjects are in a frame in this case we are looking for each character’s shoulder.
The close-up is like a portrait that shows the complete detail of an actor’s face.
The extreme close-up, closer than the close-up, in which we can’t see the whole head.
All these shot lengths can mean something on their own. As the Wide Shot, let the action speak for itself. The Extreme wide shot means to establish a place, the medium shot to show off a character, the two-shot to show closeness or extreme closeness, the close-up to show powerful emotion or lack thereof, the extreme close-up for exposition or disorientation.
ANGLE
Vertically speaking, Angle is the key to the film language. The diversity of angles express different special visual effects and the characteristics of the actor.
Eye-level(neutral); High Angle(small&silly); Low Angle(large&menacing); Dutch Angle(use canted angles to make everything seem a bit strange)
FOCUS&LENSES
Additionally, Focus&Lenses introduces the depth of field(how much in focus) and Lenses(controlling focus). Focus，Generally, can be divided into The Deep Focus(everything in the shot is in focus); The Shallow Focus(only part of the shot is in focus, used to show an important part of the frame); The Rack Focus(draw the eyes to important details;） The Fake Shallow Focus(selectively blur part of the image). Lenses include The Telephoto Lens(compresses the space); The wide-Angle Lens(gives a space more depth); The Fisheye Lens(makes some disturbing images)
CAMERA MOVEMENTS
Finally, Movement means putting the camera in motion. Effective and well-placed camera movements make for a professional-quality final product.
The Handheld: gives more freedom but less control.
The Steadicam: gives a flowing dreamy effect.
The Pan: which involves moving the camera from side to side to show something to the audience or help them better follow the sequence of events.
The Tilt: similar to a pan shot, except moving the camera up and down.
The Zoom: from wide to tight or vise versa.
The Dolly/Tracking Shot, where the camera is attached to a dolly that moves on tracks and can possibly move up and down.
The Jib/Cream Shot, the camera put on a platform and raised above the subject.
The Dolly Zoom/The Trombone Shot, the camera is dollied while zooming changing the depth of the shot.
HOW IS A CAMERA MOVEMENT USEFUL?
The particular movement of your camera can serve several purposes for your video production, including:
- Creating dynamic scenes: Since the camera is an audience’s eyes on a story, using camera movements can make scenes more interesting, add a naturalistic element to scenes, and mimic human movement. You can even make static scenes seem active with certain camera movements.
- Influencing audiences’ emotional reactions: Camera movements can imitate a person’s view during various circumstances. Shaking the camera during an earthquake scene can convey fear and chaos while swaying on a boat mimics sea-sickness.
- Directing audiences’ attention: Camera movements can obscure audiences’ vision as well as pull audiences away from certain elements on-screen.
- Controlling reveals: Adding camera movements is also a great way to provide narrative information, reveal new subjects that were once offscreen, and even foreshadow or create ironic tension that characters are unaware of.
2. Mise en Scène
Mise-en-scène is a French term meaning “Putting on stage”, which is almost everything that happens in front of a camera in a particular scene. It starts with a screenplay illustrating, action, dialogue, and the details of particular visual elements such as Decor, Light, Color, Space, everything that makes a shot beautiful, and I would like to dig into the lighting part which could be quite unfamiliar and way more attractive to me.
DECOR
It consists of costume, hair&makeup, which act as an instant indicator to use of a character’s personality, status, and job.
CAMERA LIGHTING
Lighting & Colour can be used to achieve a variety of effects:
-To highlight important characters or objects within the frame.
-To make characters look mysterious by shading section of the face & body
-To reflect a character’s material state/hidden emotions.
Three-Point Lighting, the most common and standard lighting setup, is perfect for close-ups.
High Key Lighting, bright lights, bright colors, strong key, stronger fill.
Low Key Lighting, In contrast to high key lighting, low key lighting adds more contrast and heavier blacks to a scene. Low-key lighting can make shots look dark and shadowy.
How Low key Lighting works.
Hard Lighting, means harsh key lights that create hard shadows, making the scene tough, angular, and unflattering.
Soft Lighting, where the lights diffuse through a filter, is a romantic kind of lighting.
Ambient Lighting/Practical Lighting, which uses the light that is there in the scene.
Tips for using Ambient Lighting/Practical Lighting.
Unmotivated Lighting shapes the scene without being an element of it.
Motivated Lighting, Motivated lighting emulates natural light sources and can represent the sun, moonlight, and streetlights.
Lanterns offer motivated lighting in this scene from “The Assassination of Jesse James.”
SPACE
Balance： Gives weight to the frame
Deep space： places elements both far and near to the camera, drawing attention to the distance between actors.
Shallow space: Emphasizing the closeness of the subject and background objects or even implying no depth at all.
Offscreen space: Expand the space and draws attention to something out of the frame.
(ex: using a mirror/a look/actress performance to imply something huge out of the frame)
Blocking: the scene made by all of the movements and actors
Arranged movements or poses is an element of the frame.
3. Editing
MONTAGE EDITING
it brings individual shots together to generate a shock, strange, juxtaposition, or a new idea.
CONTINUITY EDITING
- can be achieved between shots in four main ways:Graphic/Rhythmic/Spatial/Temporal relations
- a standard form of editing
- Creates a smooth sense of flow so that the story takes priority over the mechanics of storytelling
- Viewers do not notice most of the cuts
- Attention goes to the characters and story
UNCONTINUITY EDITING
quite uncomfortable ≧ ﹏ ≦
SHOT TRANSITIONS
- Wipe
- The cut
- Dissolve
- Fade in/out
CROSS THE AXIS
You can cross the axis if any of the actors are seen changing screen direction within a shot.
PART2 THE HISTORY OF FILM, ANIMATION AND VFX
1. The history of film
FILMS OF THE 1800s
The first single-lens camera that got movies started was patented in 1888 by a French inventor named Louis Le Prince. He had experimented with cameras that had several lenses before he finally hit upon his revolutionary idea.
The first moving picture show was a homemade movie done by Max and Emil Skladanowsky. The brothers were the first to make movies that they showed to paying audiences throughout Europe.
The next famous brother team in the movie business was Auguste and Louis Lumiere. Their movie “Workers Leaving The Lumiere Factory In Lyon” was a hit in 1895. It was 46 seconds long, and it captivated audiences all over Europe. The Lumiere brothers were also responsible for the legendary 1896 film “Arrival Of A Train At La Ciotat Station,” which literally had people running from the theater because they thought the train was going to burst through the screen. In 1896, “The Haunted Castle” was one of the first films with any kind of production. It is three minutes long and features props as well as paid actors.
EARLY MOVIES
Silent movies ruled the early years of cinema because no one had developed a way to include a sound recording that would synchronize with the movies. In 1925, “The Phantom of the Opera” horrified audiences all over the world. The 1915 American film “Birth Of A Nation” offended and fascinated people for years. The first incarnation of Dracula was brought to the big screen in 1922 with the release of “Nosferatu.”
But the most significant early movie is generally regarded to be the 1927 German masterpiece “Metropolis.” It took several years to film, but its use of state-of-the-art special effects made it a ground-breaking film.
THE FILM INDUSTRY
The very first movie studio built in the United States was Thomas Edison’s Black Maria Studios in New Jersey. Prior to Edison’s studio, movies were filmed in theaters and often documented live performances. Edison’s early electric lights were innovative, but they were not powerful enough to create quality films.
The abundance of natural sunlight is why movie studios decided to start setting up shop in California. By the mid-1920s, RKO Pictures, Warner Brothers, Paramount Pictures, 20th Century Fox, and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer had become the most dominant studios in the world. These studios went out and built movie houses to show their films to the public and cornered the movie industry. Smaller studios such as Universal Pictures, Columbia Pictures, and United Artists sprang up shortly after the “Big Five” and struggled initially to survive.
The Great Depression should have been a disaster for the movie studios, but it actually was one of the most profitable times in the industry’s history. The movie “King Kong” was released in 1933 and went on to become a huge financial success. People wanted a way to forget about their problems, and movies offered that release.
During times of war, movies played significant roles for all sides. During World War I, the British government financed such propaganda movies as “The Battle of the Somme” to drum up support for the war effort. The American government also used movies to sway the public into backing the war by releasing movies such as “Pershing’s Crusaders” and “America’s Answer.”
The Third Reich in Germany used movies after World War I to promote their agenda of imperialism and hate. The movies were extremely popular in Germany and extremely effective. American moviemakers have immortalized thousands of stories from World War II in films that were made during and after the war. It was even rumored that some Hollywood studios were spying for the enemy by filming movies during World War II in American shipyards and on American army bases.
THE SOUND ERA
The first sound movie was actually presented to a shocked audience in Paris in 1900. But the technology required to make and show sound films was too expensive for theaters to invest in. D.W. Griffith released a short called “Dream Street” in 1921 that had some street noises and conversations but no real plot.
The first commercially successful sound movie was “The Jazz Singer,” released in 1927. Some silent movie stars, such as Charlie Chaplin, fought the popularity of the “talkies” because they felt that movies should be seen and not heard.
Thomas Edison was an early pioneer in sound movies, and he developed the first sound system, known as Kinetoscope, in 1895. But since it involved a separate sound cylinder that had to play along with the movie, it didn’t always work. The ability to put sound on the actual movie film was patented by American Lee De Forest in 1919. Along with the help of inventor Theodore Case, DeForest continued to perfect his sound-on-film system until it was heard in all its glory in 1927.
POST-CLASSICAL CINEMA
The “golden age of cinema” started in the early 1950s and ran until the mid-1980s. It is often referred to as the post-classical era of cinema, and it was a time when some of the most iconic movies of all time were made. The creation of the drive-in movie theater in 1933 had found new life after the war and helped to aid in the explosion of the popularity of movies.
In the late 1970s, many observers said that the introduction of the VHS video recorder would cause the end of the American movie theater. But while movie theaters suffered financially in the late 1980s and early 1990s, they made a comeback in the late 1990s and have been growing ever since.