The Boy & The Robin (Dir. Hannah O’Brien and Tamika Bramwell)

Released August 15, 2020.

For this class we were split into groups and asked to analyse an assigned short animated film. My group consisted of John, Rebecca, Ciaran, Dylan and myself. At the beginning we hadn’t planned much into how we would analyse the presentation. I initially had started to look into the lighting used, then later in discord we decided to split the presentation down and assign a topic to each individual. I chose lighting as I had already started to research into this.

Our group was given the animated short of “The Boy & The Robin”. It follows the protagonist, a young boy, and how he idolises a character from a western cartoon we see him watching in the opening scenes of the short. It constantly transitions between the real world and his imagination, and after finding a real gun that replaces that of his toy gun he initially uses, he fires it and takes the life of a little bird.

Research and Initial Analysis:

When I began analysing the animated short I watched it quite a few times and then began screenshotting each scene change and looking at how the lighting changes in each shot. This was only a quick analysis of immediate lighting changes and how it made me feel in each scene, I then used this as a reference when working on my presentation pitch to pick the key changes with the most impact.

I then began looking at more in-depth analysis and wording. I read a few articles on websites, watched a couple of YouTube videos about film analysis and read both Lighting for Animation: The art of visual storytelling and Aesthetic 3d Lighting which I found extremely helpful in my analysis and also gave me the knowledge to apply to future animations I will be creating.

My Lighting Analysis for “The Boy & The Robin”

The start of the animation starts with natural lighting with our light source coming from the sun outside and creating that slightly dim interior lighting, this creates a sense of realism and sets us into the world. When we get transitioned into the boy’s imagination, there is symbolic lighting used which is a very bright unnatural light that shifts us into a different world. In the imaginary world the lighting tone shifts from that soft natural lighting of the real world to a sepia tone which is traditionally used in western style films. This would not be a tone of lighting typically associated with the real world, and therefore when used, it gives the viewer a clear indication of the transition between worlds. We continue to see the transition of the soft natural lighting and the sepia tone lighting right until the point in which the young boy retrieves the real gun, then we are fully immersed into the sepia tone western world using the bright symbolic lighting once again.  

There is a match cut scene when the gun is fired, and this also shifts the lighting suddenly from a sepia tone to a very dark contrasted scene. Scenes lit with dark shadows rarely appear happy [Landau 2014]. This sharp scene change has a massive impact on the viewer and consumes us into the reality of what has just happened. Artists and cinematographers use high-key lighting (with light shadows) to create a hopeful mood or low-key lighting (with dark shadows) to add a sense of gloom [Pramaggiore and Wallis 2005]. The contrast and shadows used in these scenes show that the protagonist’s innocence is gone, and the scene is now filled with a very cold and empty feeling which impacts the mood onto the viewer – the young boy has just taken a life. 

We get a sudden transition back from this dark contrast scene to a very softly lit grave, this creates a sense of sorrow. 

When the boy finds the chick in the nest and holds it in his hands, the lighting warms in saturation. We see this scene as a mixture of a soft haze natural light and a red hue, like the western scenes in the imagination. This shows a mixture between worlds, the boy no longer fantasising a western world but now consumed into a world of love and responsibility for this chick that is left hopeless due to his actions killing its mother.  

Conclusion:

I love lighting and its impact on animation and film. However, I found it quite hard analysing this animated short. It has three major lighting shifts between the imaginary world – the sorrowful death – the hopeful future, but bar that I struggled to find impactful changes.

I enjoyed researching into different articles and reading a few new books!  Rebecca in my group helped me source PDF files of two books which I have gained so much knowledge from.

I feel like our presentation went really well, we focused on not adding too much text to our slides and verbally scripted ourselves with the information. I do feel like I let my group down slightly as I suffer with social anxiety and on the day the nerves got the better of me and I didn’t get to say everything I wanted to. I’m very glad I got put into the group I did, they were very supportive and helpful with everything and we spent a few nights prior to the presentation on discord calls working out our pitches, which was super helpful, and we timed them so that we were not rambling and everyone got enough time to say what they needed to within the 10 minute cap!

References:

Lanier, L. (2018) Aesthetic 3d Lighting. England: Routledge.

Tanzillo, M. (2016) Lighting for Animation: The Art of Visual Storytelling. England: Routledge.

Ultimate Guide to Cinematic Lighting – Types of Lighting & Gear Explained [Shot List Ep. 12]. Available from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r2nD_knsNrc&t=194s