Animation Motion Design: May 2014

Right it's that time of year again where I blog lots of things last minute before my assessments to make sure it's up to date.
This was a draft to remind me what to have/ find for my assessment.

Checklist for assessment:

Sketchbook X3 -> Shows process, mind mapping, notes, sketches.
Animation Short Poster -> Finished print, previous drafts in sketchbook and blog
Drawings on loose paper -> Some drawings of my first animation short idea
Contextual Book -> contains interesting artist research
Life Drawing -> all drawings from every class from start of the year
Blog up to date -> Notes, thoughts, process, drawings etc.
All 6 film reviews -> on the blog
Digital drawings -> sketchbook and blog
Projects completed this year:

1) Lens based media.
2) Recce
3) Christmas Card.
4) Identity
5) IDI Graduate Show
6) Audio Brief
7) One Day Challenge 'Flavour 76'
8) Creative Writing Workshop
9) Animation Short Animatic
10) Design and Print Poster
11) Animation Short final

....We have been busy!

Brazil 1985

(I should have posted this back in January. Forgot I saved it as a draft)

Plot
Brazil is a 1985 British film directed and written by Terry Gilliam. The film centers on Sam Lowry, a man trying to find a woman who appears in his dreams while he is working in a mind-numbing job and living a life in a small apartment, set in a consumer-driven dystopian world in which there is an over-reliance on poorly maintained and whimsical machines.

Scene Analysis
Sam Lowry is in his office being screamed at by his boss for his behaviour with the police and running off with Jill Laydon. In this scene you get a real sense of Sam's frustrations with the corrupt government and the way people live. He fights the tube message sending system and blocks it off. Because he was off running around the city, his office work piled up on his desk. He works in what looks like a tiny, grey, cold prison cell in a company called Information Retrieval. He shares his desk with the occupant in the office next door through a slit in the wall. They often play tug of war with the desk to get extra desk space. Sam loses it shouting and screaming with frustration. The tube letter system is still blocked and then makes strange noises as if it's about to blow. Sam realises what he's done and it's too late to fix it. He rushes and opens his office door. One of the large pipes transporting the letter explodes and it starts raining paper documents. You get a real sense of Sam's relief at this moment. Even though he's destroyed a part of the building he can't help but seem happy. Perhaps feeling a slight sense of pride destroying part of this corrupt industry, terrorist thoughts?

Characters
Sam Lowry is the main character in this film. He lives a boring life and doesn't strive for much. His mother is a rich woman weighed down in jewellery and fancy clothes and has a obsession with looking young so she takes part in strange but miraculous face stretching plastic surgery. His mother seems to be the pushy type who uses her connections to get Sam promotions, without his permission. Sam always has these dreams/ fantasies where he's flying along in the sky, dressed in a suit of armor like some kind of Greek soldier with mechanical wings attached to his back and arms. He flies along till he finds the woman of his dreams and kisses her. However, the more hurdles Sam comes across in his life feeds into his dreams and he must fight to get to his love. His dream becomes more and more bizarre as the film goes on, being attacked by monsters and in a strange maze. In the end he gets the woman of his dreams, only to be dragged away by something similar to a SWAT team. We then find him in a electric chair or torture chamber. It was at this stage in the film where I got a little lost. The film jumps in and out of Lowry's dream/ mind so often that the two worlds begin to mesh together and you no longer know which is the dream or reality...which is exactly how Lowry feels in the film, he has completely lost his mind to the point of where he doesnt know where he is. The film ends where he is with his beloved Jill in a heavenly setting of a little cottage in the country. But that is just a dream, his final dream, as he sits dead in the torture chair.

Setting
The scene I have chosen starts at 1:45:33 and ends at 1:46:45 on the timeline. This scene is set in the office building. It looks similar to a prison. Tiny cells/ offices with large metal doors filling every wall space. The offices have the necessities. Table, chair, filing cabinet. But the table is shared between two offices through a slit in the wall. So office workers play tug of war over who gets more of the desk. I believe this scene is set in an actual building. The setting is far too vast to be built on stage. However the interior such as the vast amount of piping on the ceiling in the hallway and the interior of Lowry's office I believe has been made by props etc.

Mise en Scene (Visuals)
The most obvious or striking visual for me are the prison like offices. Its almost as if the building was once a massive prison which got converted into an office block. The clear message from this is how Lowry feels imprisoned in his pointless boring job. Doing the same thing everyday. It's clear Lowry hates his job and his 'promotion' into this horrible environment doesn't help. It must have contributed to his deteriorating mental state, wasting away in a tiny prison cell.

Camera Work
Shot list:

Low angle establishing shot of Lowry throwing papers around the office.
Camera follows Lowry as he approaches pipe message sending system.
Low angle looking up at Lowry as he attacks the message pipe.
Close up on Lowry
Low angle looking up at Lowry as he attacks the message pipe.
Close up on Lowry.
Close up on Lowry's hands
Close up on Lowry.
Close up high angle on message pipe thingy.
Low angle looking up at Lowry as he attacks the message pipe.
Close up on Lowry.
Low angle looking up at Lowry as he attacks the message pipe and blocks it.
view of his table being pulled through the wall
Close up on Lowry.
Lowry fights to keep his desk
Close up of exploding message pipe thing
View of Lowry as the explosion causes a chain reaction above him and heads towards the hallway outside his office.
View of Lowrys door opening as he rushes out.
Close up, zoom out, establishing shot of hallway as it rains documents
Close up on Lowry.
establishing shot of hallway as it rains documents