Hello! I'll introduce myself, my name is Bárbara Méndez and Im studying Visual Communication at Universidad of Navarra, Im very kind of animated stuff, so Im going to talk through six posts, many emotion faces and it's vision through animation, I hope you enjoy all our work, it will be really fun!
This time Im about to talk to you about Emotion through Animation, this week topic is about: Sadness.
Many people usually don't take Animation Film too seriously, it actually haven't won any Oscar Academy Award for Best Movie (yet). But behind those colors and ''easy'' script, are more than a thousand professionals working for years and doing their best to bring this hour and half to your children.
Unlike film, animation is relatively complex, it requires the characterization of fictional characters taking real human roles and universal topics for an audience almost young.
This week will discuss ''Sadness'', but this time ... through cartoons. Weekly I'll show you the impact that these animations do to youth and how is this possible.
This emotional atmosphere is composed in many parts. For example...animated film, has to be convincing, the situation must be credible enough to both, young and adult audiences. Since the topic this week is ''Sadness'' I've made a small compilation of movies that surely if you are of the age of 90, you might still remember that scene when Mufasa gets killed or Bambi lost in the forest beckoning his dead mother. Those sad scenes totally left a footprint on 90's children.
As we are watching, we fell into the deepest memories from our childhood. Some melancholy spark makes us feel strange, moved maybe? This is how the magic of animation works.
We'll start from Bambi (Disney), this little deer is running away with his mother from an evil hunter...her mother keeps telling him to run faster. Bambi refuges himself but he's lost in the forest. There's a shot and some deep silence that wraps the complete atmosphere. Light turns quite down while the snow storm increases, the silence is broken with Bambi's beckon: 'Mom...mom'. Right from afar, the sound of the snow start singing a song...leaving Bambi completely alone. Older children could easily relate the shot with Bambi's lost mother, younger ones would continue the story with Bambi, until is revealed by his father that she would not come anymore.
The next scene belongs to The Lion King (Disney), Simba fell off a tree while a wildebeest stampede approaches. Mufasa (Simba's father) comes to rescue him but the stampede gets into, he tries to scape but his own brother let him die. After the stampede, Simba goes to the corpse hoping he might wake up. This kind of sad plot is combined with a desert way covered in dust. There's lack of color, all the skies and horizons look no more than a dusty gray and dark orange. Simba beckons for somebody to help him, to help his father but the only answer he gets back its his own echo. In animation, the own echo is used to reflect solitude. Simba's voice it's very well elaborated too. There is where Hans Zimmer (Lion King's composer) makes his entrance with 'To die for' to make the scene completely credible, even for my father. I can make some comparisons between Bambi's and Mufasa's scene, Mufasa's is even more emotional than Bambi, since the score is put just in the moment that it should start despite of Bambi's...that they decided just to leave it without any music at all. Of course this is my opinion, this subject might get very subjective, moreover if we are talking about music.
The other scene is from UP, (Disney Pixar) Mr. Carl Fredricksen ( the old man watching the pictures) is checking an old memory book, he has lost his wife, the reason of his life. They present us a cozy atmosphere, rather than the sadness I've talked before, this is a melancholy scene, he's just remembering old times as Michael Giaccino fills the scene with 'Stuff we did' (score). This time, light doesn't take all the credits but furniture! Yes! This time the main credit goes to Scene Decorators, there's a chair beside Mr. Carl, who actually belonged to his dearest wife.
Now one of the saddest movies of the 90's (According to...almost everybody). Dumbo. In this cut, Dumbo's mother is trapped in a trailer, camera goes to her head and starts going down, to make the scene more dramatic...they show her paws chained to the trailer while dumbo starts sniffing with his trunk through the window. She manages to touch him quite slowly and lulls him. Dumbo's tears are the last hope and if there was a mirror on the theatre, I assure you that more than a half would be crying. As she lulls him, Mr Frank Churchill and Ned Washington do their work with the song Baby Mine. That was actually nominated for an oscar in Best Original Song.
So as we watched all those scenes, I can conclude that sadness in Animation, encloses very similar topics, like the loss of a loved one. Why is this? Well, I think that as this movies are made principally for children, the topic would not variate that much. At that age, the loss of a loved one can be taken even more serious because the kid might not have thought in that before. For a kid, Mother and Father are their life heroes, almost immortal in his mind. So, the child reflects himself in ''Simba, Bambi or Dumbo'' as they're presented as children or animal cubs in this case.
I hope you guys have enjoyed this post, Animation is indeed more complex than you thought. It requires the special touch to get to your children's minds.
No comments:
Post a Comment