Winner – Samuel Chovan
Introduction
For this assignment I was put into a group with four other people in my class as we were given random short films to provide a full analysis of and then present them to the rest of the class; for this task, my group were given the film “Winner”, directed by Samuel Chovan. This Slovakian movie shows a vast array of armies from throughout history battling each other with the last man standing picking up the crown standing on a rock in the centre of the battlefield, then riding off. In my personal opinion, the art style of this movie is breathtaking and inspires me a lot with how you can create animated stories. Not only that but the visual storytelling is fascinating and leaves a lot to be speculated on, especially with things such as the use of symbolism. Here is a link to the full animated short: https://youtu.be/vBXLojiNJ3g?si=57GG9Tgl0pvHuJ1B
For our group analysis, my team and I agreed to focus on five key elements of animation which we have been taught over the past six weeks: Lighting (Ellen), Mise-En-Scene (Me), Composition (Jamayne), Sound (Eimear) and Editing (Michael). We chose these separate topics and then quickly went to work doing our part in the analysis.
Analysis Notes
So for my analysis, I wrote down some notes which I used for my research and analysis of the short film, based on my chosen topic, in Microsoft Word.
As you can see from this document, the first thing I set out to do was to properly define Mise-En-Scene so that I had a very clear idea of what it was, how to use it, why it is used, the various areas it covers and finally, how it is applied for the animation I am analysing. This is what I will be mainly focusing on when discussing my part of the presentation, as I am using past experience and advice from presentations and writing my part from the perspective that I am explaining it to people who have never heard of this topic before and I am introducing it to them. This point of view gives me a clear direction for how I could stage my presentation and give the information effectively to the audience in a way that makes sense.
Presentation
As part of the marking rubric, there are points given towards the Visual Appeal of the presentation, I believe this would be an area in which the entire group has excelled, thanks to Jamayne creating the template for which we will be laying out our slides we each made our designs for each section feel very consistent with each other using the same stylish template while changing it enough to show differences in our styles, differences in our topics and to give some visual variety as to not bore the audience with monotonous looking slides. In order to get the information that I had gathered previously across effectively while making sure it fits within the slides I used, I made some changes to the text I had created in order to condense it and give the information in its rawest form without unnecessary filler that clutters the screen, this helps to make it readable and also more consistent with the other slides which also show *enough* information without going too in-depth, this also helps the group minimise our time as much as possible so that we don’t run too far over the time limit. In total, I have created three full slides for me to present my part of the analysis, which is similar in length to the rest of the groups’ lengths and gives me enough time to present as much information as possible, in addition, I also made sure to include images from the animated short which outlines areas I have specified in my analysis to show where I am getting the information from.
When it came time to present the final PowerPoint we went up third and with the reception we got, it went very well, as confirmed by the feedback we got from the lecturer and other classmates with whom we spoke, which included points such as:
- The PowerPoint was very visually clean and it was very consistent/coordinated-looking between each of our topics
- We had a very consistent space of time between each of our speakers, despite taking longer than 10 minutes to present our work
- Everyone had something of equal value to talk about in our sections of the presentation
- Everyone was well-spoken and performed an engaging to the audience.
The one piece of advice we were given to improve upon was to make it a bit shorter so that we could keep the presentation under 10 minutes and present the full PowerPoint with everyone able to say their piece.
The slides on which my contributions were found in the final presentation are slides 8, 9 and 10.
Slide 8
For my first slide, I focused on introducing and outlining the idea of Mise-En-Scene, which I then transitioned into focusing on how it is prevalent in the Winner animated film that we are analysing.
Slide 9
The second slide is where I started to give details on how Mise-En-Scene is used within the animation, beginning with how it is successful in one of its major aspects, which is how each frame is very integral in progressing the plot in meaningful ways with examples that also double as discussing the framing of the animation which is also an important area of Mise-En-Scene, which is important in this presentation for condensing the information as much as possible while keeping it rich. I also provide valuable explanations for the decisions in these shots too as part of my analysis.
Slide 10
I then expand on the points I made in the previous slide here, while also going over how they affect the emotions of the film, which is another important area of Mise-En-Scene.
References
Winner film: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMob7RoqSBA
Definition: Film Art: An Introduction by David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson
https://frogkun.com/2016/07/20/the-basics-of-the-animated-mise-en-scene/