Seminar - Auteurship and the Avant-Garde

Auteurship and the Avant-Garde

Auteur = author

- Suggests that great film directors are artists in their own right on a par with great novelists

- Films made by a true auteur display thematic consistency and artistic development through time
(Hitchcock, Tarantino, Guy Ritchie, Kubrick etc)

- Developed in response to Hollywood cinema and the criticism that American films are anonymous products of the studio system and the culture industry
- Truffaut - 'A certain tendency in French cinema' (1945) - attacks French tradition in which director is seen as simply adding images to a pre-existing literary scenario

"Coherent view of the discourses fundamental to it's understanding and 'art'" - Paul Wells

- Auteur theory (longer, complicated Q)
- Animation on one hand echoes and imitates large scale film production processes
- On the other hand, offers possibility for a film maker to operate almost entirely alone
- Arguably the most Auterist of film practices
- Even most collaborative requires cohesive intervention
- But few animators lauded as auteurs in relation to feature length animation
- Subsumed within a corporative identity (e.g Disney)
- Persistent view that animation is largely for a childrens' audience, which is not interested in issues of authorship
(Tim Burton, Glen Keane, Beelevilee(?))

Disney 
- Key figure in creation of art, commerce and industry of animation
- Seen as the epitome of American dream, but also idealogically unsound and politically incorrect
- Useddd to be involved with drawing and animating (Walt Disney)
- With the arrival of Mickey Mouse, he withdrew from the animation itself to organise
- Idea of overall ownership + [???] but it is at the expense of the recognition of actual animators

Equal notion of absenting and demoting the original author e.g
Winnie the pooh/A.A Milne - known better for Disney ---- AMERICANISED

Ray Harryhausen
- Arguably maker of 'B' movies but elevated via his use of effects which create a distinctive and signature cinematic style
- Question of how his effects were achieved and also what would be lost without them - virtually all narrative and symbolic content
- Located within the parameters of cinematic filmmaking
- Responsible for character development, formation of story + narrative which would allow characters to come into being
- Draw, sculpt, bring to life w/stop-mo
Avant-garde - 'implies that progress is always the result of a rebellion against'

Chronologies 1: Type, Production and Distribution

Type - Production and Distribution
[Chronologies]

'Microsoft if the enemy of type' - Fred Bates, lecturer


'A Lesson on Typography' Youtube -animated

Type - what language looks like

3200 BCEish for start of language? Only found through physical formats [mesopotamia]
First true alphabet - Greek
Latin - further development from that
proto-sinaitic alphabet?




Elementary Education Act 1870
Schooling, all kids from 5 - 12

The Bauhau 1919 -1933 form vs function
Helvetica - 'neutral' and 'open to interpretation'
---> Modernism [influential]


Function dictated form. 25 years is the max time that a design is protected by intellectual property before it lapses
25 years later - Arial - v. similar... [microsoft!!!]
1990 - print stuff
changed to digital than just analogue
Gotham typespace - popular

Type can be used as image now
Brand/Identity/promo etc
Daft Punk - technologic
COMIC SANS MADE IN 1994
the who made it was working for Microsoft ofc
IE used from 1995+
---> uses Arial and CS fonts

Typography - communication method

"Typography is the craft of endowing human language with a durable visual form."

"There is no single approach within typography that applies to everything" - Shelley Gruendler

CoP Brief

Using your Context of Practice Blog:






Develop an online portfolio of critical responses to lectures, seminars, set tasks and independent research activities. Use your Context of Practice Blog to document and evidence your engagement with, and understanding of contextual, theoretical content, critical concepts and ideas that you have been introduced to during the course of the academic year.






Your Context of Practice Blog should include; lecture notes, seminars notes/responses to the outcomes of the seminar, completed short writing tasks in response to set tasks and activities. You should also write up and document (visually or otherwise) records of any trips to galleries, exhibitions or events and any other research activities relevant to the development of your critical understanding of Animation.











CRITICAL & CONTEXTUAL WRITING











Write a 3000 word essay in response to one of the set essay titles (see separate breakout sheet). The essay should be written academically and make use of appropriate language and conventions. Your essay should aim to:






Identify and select appropriate materials to your own interests that will allow you to critically analyse source materials.


A logical structure that has an introduction, a developed argument that is supported by appropriate references to at least four different academic sources and a conclusion.


A bibliography of at least 10 sources presented using the Harvard referencing system & the use of Harvard conventions within the main text of the essay when paraphrasing or quoting from other sources.


Background / Considerations


Writing is an important skill to develop as an undergraduate. It helps display your knowledge and understanding of your discipline and your ability to academically research.






The contextual studies portfolio builds on critical skills that you should be developing when taking notes in lectures and participating in seminars. The tasks you will be asked to do are designed to gradually get more complex and prepare you for study at level 5. The purpose of these tasks will eventually become clear when you are asked to produce a short essay, which will be based on one of the areas of contextual study that you have been introduced to. The essay will be the final component of your contextual studies portfolio and you will be assessed on the whole portfolio.

Seminar - Genre

Genre

Genre - type of film, audience to categorise by - often becomes deficient and contradictory
on a deeper level it is useful to think how particular narrative structures work within genres of animation

Does animation allow for more/worse violence? - Audience is children even though it;s violent - should be calmed down?
Genre change? Audience change? Does animation make genre crossing easier?
Applying genres - constricting?
Subverting genre?
So much exaggeration - Tom + Jerry
Udnerlighting - shadows. Obvs hero/villain
Parody concept of Jekyll + Hyde
Repetition to emphasise what'll happen
---> Audience = children

Voiceovers for horror?
Some ideas for an older audience presented in child form, or for multiple audiences. Mr Peeler's Butterflies ---> terrifying
Does animation have more limitation with horror? Is it as effective (look at SNK - some of that is terrifying!)

Generic plots;
- Maturation (coming of age/rites of passage)
- Redemption (transition of main - bad to good)
- Punitive (Main char, behave bad + is punished)
- Testing (Willpower vs temptation)
- Education (main char - neg to positive view of world)
- Disillusionment (reverse of education)

Definition of Genre
Discrete categories or types of film defined by visual, technical, thematic or subject orientated consistencies
 - A set of codes & conventions which determine particular expectations & outcomes in the narrative

Paul Well's Seven Genres of Animation Films
formal, deconstructive, political, abstract, re-narration, paradigmatic, primal

Lecture 2 - Visual Literacy

Lecture 2 - Visual Literacy - Language of Design

Solving problems with type, image/motion
interested in words, language, message and meaning.
Effectively communicate ideas, concepts + content to different audiences in a range of contexts. Affected by audience, context, media + method of distribution
Interpreted images of the present, past + a range of cultures

Pictures can be read
All that is necessary for any language to exists is an agreement amongst a group of people that one thing will stand for another.
+ - pop culture; not correct but accepted as so. Context, and how it is read in culture - vis lang changes presentational symbols - meaning is decided by use in culture, not just by being decided.
pictograms!
Toilet symbols - conventional - issue of sexism etc?
punctuation networking event
Aware of relationship between Visual Syntax and Visual Semantics
SYNTAX - structure, elements, foundations
Semantics - way an image furs into a cultural process of communication
Relationship between form and meaning. Social ideas and concepts

Cars
Triangle - warning Circle - command Octogonal - Snow Upside Down Triangle - stop or prepare to

Contemporary Politics stuff
Semiotics - sign, symbolism, metaphor, synecdote indication, designation. Related to the field of linguistics. Structure + meaning of language.
Not an apple, it's a picture of an apple

Symbol - signifies an Apple
Siugn - Sign for Apple products
Signifier - signifies creativity, innovation, design, lifestyle

Symbol - Logo
sign - Identity
Signifier - Brand

Visual Synecdote - applied when a part is used to represent the whole or vice versa.
Main subject - substituted for something that is inherently connected to it. Only works if universally recognised.

Symbolic Image - make reference to something without a more literal meaning.
By way of association we make a connection between the image and the intended subject

Visual Metaphor - used to transfer the meaning from one image to another.

Lecture 1 - Context of Practice

Context of Practice

Lecture 1

Things we are looking at – Aesthetic, cultural, historical, technological, social, political and other contexts.

Photography - Worktown Project – Mass Observation

-à Documenting Bolton, 1937 - posh/southerners perspective on North – “Toffs’ view of working class” – misrepresentation?

--à How do we know if they’re objective or not? – Humorous or condescending?

Context;

- 1929 – Wall Street Crash

- 1930 onwards - Great Depression

- 1933 – Hitler comes to power

- 1932 – British Union of Faschists formed

Animation – Jiri Trnka, The Hand, 1965

Context

-       20 years after the end of WW2 + defeat of Nazism

-       Height of the Cold War

-       State sponsorship of arts – censorship and repression of creative practice

-       Precursor to Prague spring of 1968

-       à puppet gets strings – symbolism of oppression? – Reflection of own experiences

--à look for more “radical” non-western animation – not just plain entertainment

Advertising

Tony Kaye, Tested for the Unexpected , 1993 for Dunlop tyres. [Strange!] Pre-internet – very unique and different. Shot in B&W, edited afterwards.

Illustration

Norman Rockwell – Saturday Evening Post etc painted illustrations – very detailed – realistic style. Lots of America life kind of illustrations – much more plain and straight forwards than the animation – simpler idea + image to get across. [Era of illustration] Very good expressions! How does that still stand out when people can do everything?

Graphics

Times New Roman font – Stanley Morrison 1932 – designed for the Times newspaper

Fraktur – German – very kind of Gothic

Universal – modernists in Europe.

Very different styles.

Universal – sans serif, neutral & not associated with anywhere, no connotations – mass producibility

Trojan Column – Times New Roman – equate greatness of the British Empire with the Roman Empire – cultural superiority

-       Germanic Goth style (Fraktur)

-       - Historic influences, Germanic Superiority

-       Unification – National superiority

Contextual – look at stuff outside of culture + usual things viewed/influenced by

“The unexamined life is not worth living”