Jasmine Masters, BA (Hons) Computer Animation Arts, UCA Rochester.

Characters are a mix of complex qualities that can be hidden or personified to viewers by other means such as through personal nature or through a representation of a concept or quality. Actors are usually the ones to ‘find’ characters and build that characters internal/external dynamics to audiences so they can understand their personality/nature. So within stories characters are either designed to respond to events within the cinematic (e.g. Speed 1994) or are designed so that the characters cause the events that play out in the film (e.g. 12 Angry Men 1957). Meaning in some cases the audience really get to know the character, but in others they are just there to get the story across so don’t learn much about the character. Too much Plot? Some times in film you find stories to have ‘too much plot’ which can lead to having no character. For example, in Rambo: First Blood (1982) there are internal and external factors that drive the character John Rambo, creating a character with...

Recap:   Linear storytelling is where there is no time displacement and keeps with a consistent reality of always moving forward with the plot and keeping with the linear time of the film. There are also no Flashbacks/forwards within the linear narrative of the film. Non-linear storytelling is where the plot jumps backwards and forwards in time. So an event that has already happened could be retold in the present, for example The Titanic starts with meeting the lead character Rose as an old women with the dive team and then she retells the story of when she was young in the past on the Titanic, only to then finish back with the older Rose with the reaction of the dive team. With Non-Linear storytelling comes reality framing, this can be where the story starts in one place and then you ‘go’ back in time where the event is retold; to then go forward in time to where the story started. An example of this can be seen in Forrest Gump where he goes through his life story to strang...

Adding in Anticipation and Follow Through to the animation from last week. Quarter-Side view. Side view.

After further discussion with the group last week, we have agreed to adding a secondary character to counteract our original character actions within the skits. With this came with reworking the original skit ideas and also dropping the video store skit to allow for better story within the other 3 skits (Rolling Diner Waiter, The Hotel Bellhop and The Launderette Attendant). For our second character we decided to go for an older character in his 50's who comes across as very serious and grumpy and tends to have an air of self-proclaimed importance. Adapted slightly from Kim's original profile. Moom Sr designs by Kim Davis . Through adding this secondary character it should in theory allow us to have better dynamic within the scenes, since now there is a cause and effect (action/reaction) happening within the scenes. To gain better understanding we each attempted to create 'beat sheets' that follow this action and reaction structure; to then combine our outcomes to get m...

For todays lecture we looked at structural theories within films. This came looking at the 3 act structure - linear narrative structure - proposed by Syd Field who modernized and wrote about Aristotle's initial theory of narrative structure who stated that  “A whole is what has a beginning and middle and end” Poetics 335BC. Field  also stated that the 3 act structure   doesn't   necessarily  need to follow Aristotle's  proposed time  schedule and that the middle act (act 2) is usually twice as long as act 1 and 3. In Field's Paradigm, he lays out the Acts and their structure of what happens and when. Exposition - introduced to the film’s main character(s) and situation. Inciting Incident -   Complication/ incident that sets events into motion. End of Act 1 : Plot Point 1 -The event in which the character takes on the central problem. Mid-Point (Act 2) - The main character faces increasingly intense and complex problems / obstacles. End of Act 2 ...