I really enjoyed researching my part of our presentation. We spun an online wheel to decide who works on which element of animation such as: Lighting, Camera, Mise – En – Scene, Sound, etc.
I got Mise-En-Scene which I loved because it gave me many different aisles to venture down. I’ve been a passionate film student in secondary school and a year prior in a different university so I feel my knowledge of concepts and mise-en-scene as a whole definitely shaped the majority of my work and analysis.
Since Mise-en-Scene is such a huge band within Any type of content-making, I needed to make sure I narrowed down on one key thing. I wanted to at least analyse a couple different Mise-En-Scene elements, so it felt right to pick three and analyse how they work in an intangible fashion within our animated short “The Hunter” by Creative seed and its nods to Classical Noir and Neo-Noir Archetypes.
I’ve watched a good number of noir films the past few years, which gave me a solid grasp of its defining archetypes. Therefore, I was able to pick up on visual cues such as specific props, costuming, set design, body language and analyze how they contributed to the film’s overall tone. I also used the support of my precious work like past academic analyses, and previous essays I had written on noir. This helped reinforce my points with more structured research, which helped me to explain not only what was happening visually, but also why those choices were made.
I really enjoyed breaking the animation short into smaller components and seeing how the creators used their own teachings and inspirations from Film Noir and implemented it into their own piece, creating a great tone for their story. Each component of any film genre including Noir is carefully constructed, such as Creative Seed’s clever use of predominantly low-key lighting and the way the detective carried himself in a mysterious and looming air.
I made my slides with a lot of fun enthusiasm and creativity, enjoying every part of its creation, trying to not be too text-heavy so that I could use verbal analysis better in presentation. I thoroughly enjoyed formatting my slides in a digestible way that smoothly brings the viewer through its contents in retrospect to the text and photo balance.
All in all, I really enjoyed this group work and analysis. I love taking apart amazing articulated media and figuring out how and why they did such things. I feel our short managed to pay homage to Film Noir while also giving themselves the space to breathe new, mysterious air into the characterisation of the detective and the unfolding of his case, and fit it into two minutes in an easily digestible manner. This experience has given me a deeper appreciation for how animation can adopt and reimagine classic cinematic styles and make it their own distinct form.
