Category: The World of Animation

Research Poster – Reflection

Given I already had an interest in films, music and art history of the (former) Soviet Union, I chose to research animation of the USSR as animation was the only form of  media from here I hadn’t delved into yet. My only pre-existing knowledge of animation from the USSR was ‘Nu, Pogodi!’ as a friend of mine who grew up in Lithuania showed it to me last summer.

After making this decision, over easter and before we had been sorted into our small groups, I started by watching whatever soviet animation I could find on YouTube and compiled my favourites into a playlist that I could refer back to when I got to meet my group.

During my first meeting with Sasha and Marnie (Group 12) we talked about why each of us chose to research animation of the USSR and what we already knew about it. Sasha also shared a useful list of relevant films and shorts on discord:

After meeting on discord and deciding what we wanted to cover in our poster, we landed on something along the lines of describing a golden age of animation in the USSR of wholesome and fondly remembered shows and films that are underappreciated by modern and especially western audiences. I volunteered to cover the initial development of animation in the USSR and what little propaganda was produced in comparison to this ‘golden age’.

Unfortunately I missed what would have been our second class together but I already had a (very rough and barley punctuated) first draft of what I wanted to say during my portion of the presentation:

During our second discord call we worked on Canva to decide on the overall composition of our poster and choose what images and simple bullet points we wanted to include, as well as exploring different ways we could make the poster visually appealing as well as clear and informative.

Between this meeting and the day of our presentation, I made a final draft of the points I wanted to make which I unfortunately forgot to save. However the cue cards I made are almost identical:

Although I was nervous as usual with presentations, I think it went well as we all spoke clearly and managed to successfully condense a lot of information into the short time we had. I really enjoyed this project as it gave me an opportunity to dive into a rabbit hole of underappreciated media.

Bibliography:

Pikkov, Ü. (2016) On the Topics and Style of Soviet Animated Films [online] Available at: https://intapi.sciendo.com/pdf/10.1515/bsmr-2017-0002 [last accessed May 5th]

‘Simbasible’ (2021) The New Gulliver (1935) [online] Available at: https://www.simbasible.com/the-new-gulliver-movie-review/ [last accessed May 5th]

Joshi, T. (2024) The Humpbacked Horse (film) [online] Available at: https://alchetron.com/The-Humpbacked-Horse-(film) [last accessed May 5]

Presentation on Film Analysis – Reflection

Going into this assignment I felt I had a good foundation of understanding film analysis thanks to my own interest in film and Ryan’s classes during the first four weeks of the semester, each week introducing a couple fundamentals of film analysis: the hero’s journey, cinematography, art direction, sound and editing.

I was part of group 7 which was allocated the short film, ‘Flyworm’ to analyse for our presentation. Upon my first time watching Flyworm I was a little disappointed that I didn’t as interesting or complex a film to analyse as I was expecting after Ryan’s classes which featured a lot of well acclaimed films as examples for illustrating the fundamentals of analysis. However as I got to working on my part of the presentation I found that Flyworm was a good film to analyse in that it is very simple and straightforward; hence, I knew my presentation would be easy to follow.

My section of our group’s presentation was on editing, so I began by simply watching the film again while making a list of each time I noticed an editing technique throughout the film:

– establishing shot moving through forests, several short cuts to show vastness and introduce the worms
– title sequence ‘floats in’ as main character worm comes into focus
– short cuts of about 2-3 seconds each transitioning from the worms peaceful day of climbing trees and eating leaves, into the scary storm > fast paced, chaotic
– cuts to black suddenly and fades to after the storm > another fast paced juxtaposition
– regularly spaced cuts as he builds and flies the leaf plain > hope
– slowmotion as he falls off and flash of white before cutting to black on impact > humour
– eyes opening effect > establishes the worm is flying now before showing us how
– quick zoom out to show bird > humour and another fast contrast
– zoom into worms head to show his dream, white vignette around 2D sequence, fast paced cuts show to chaos of his backstory
– fades to black again before showing the works transition into a fish
– one king uninterrupted cut at the end to show the worm swimming away > peaceful ending

After reading a helpful article about editing analysis I made a revised list of what I saw as the most important devices used in editing throughout the film. The linked article used 6 ‘masterpiece’ films as examples of various devices in editing, many of which I found comparable with moments in Flyworm, this really helped me flesh out my analysis more and made my list feel more complete. I still kept the format of a bullet point list as I didn’t want to overcomplicate my analysis and make it confusing to recount during the presentation:

– Opening shot of forest and frequent cuts to show all the other worms and succinctly establishes setting.

– A comparison is drawn between the other worms and main character as he’s introduced along with the title sequence that floats in; reflecting theme of flight.

– …As well as the shift of focus from a ‘normal’ worm in background to Flyworm in the foreground to further set him apart.

– Editing music synchronicity helps emphasise the contrast when switching between the cheerful intro music and the suspenseful music of the storm that begins on the lightening strike.

– Cutting and fading to black is used several times to create juxtaposition between different stages in the story and reset the pacing.

– For example the pacing changes after the chaotic frequent cuts during the storm to longer ones while the worm builds his glider. This builds feeling of hope.

– Montage is used during the 2D sequence to succinctly fill the viewer in on the worms past.

– The film ends on one uninterrupted cut of the fish/worm swimming away, peaceful and happy ending.

For my section of the PowerPoint I made one simple slide featuring a shortened version of my list of devices and one large image of the forest from the opening shot of the film.

In hindsight the only things I would change if I were to do this project again would be to spread my points across multiple slides and add gifs of short clips from the film to illustrate each device as I explained it. This would have made my part of the presentation more engaging and in depth. Nonetheless I’m still pleased with the outcome and I think my group presented our analyses eloquently overall.