Mad Max - Quality and Storytelling Part1 (Exploitation)

Mad Max: Fury Road 2015

Mad Max is a perfect example of a modern exploitation film, with it's strong violence and excessive use of explosions and car crashes. There is sexualisation of female characters, Joe's escaped wives have limited clothing and are dressed in white to suggest purity and innocence. The film represents the worst possible outcome of a dystopian future. There are themes of gang violence, natural disaster and appeals to both audiences of bike/car culture and those nostalgic for the original Mad Max. 

The Five Wives

The definition of exploitation cinema is a film based on a current theme, trend, subject matter of genre that is specifically relevant to the time. Common themes in exploitation cinema include violence, sex and romance. Mad Max: Fury Road applies to all of these. B-Movies commonly use these tropes, however, unlike a B-Movie, Mad Max had a high budget and as a result of the a-list cast and favour of practical effects over CGI the film was relatively popular in cinemas. The five wives are initially presented as weak with not much personality, however as the film progresses their characters become more developed and you beginning to see more intelligence and strength.

Black Panther - Character and Storytelling

Black Panther (2018)

For this lecture we looked into character and how a character f its into storytelling. Specifically plot vs story characters, do the events cause the characters to respond, or do the characters cause the events. A characters value changes throughout the story also. For example, in the film we watched titled 'Moon', the main character Sam Bell's (Sam Rockwell) adjective is to finish his contract so he can make it back home to his wife. However, as the story unfolds Sam finds out that there is no home, that he is a clone of someone else and his purpose is to fulfil his role and die so the process is repeated over again. By the end of the film he realises that there is no hope for himself and that he needs to sacrifice himself to stop the process from starting again. So at the beginning of the film he is hopeful, but after one scene he is now fearful/ hopeless. This creates an interesting character dynamic between Sam and his clone self. 

In 'Black Panther' both T'Challa and Killmonger start their story relatively the same and there are so many parrlells throughout from character choices down to costuming. T'Challa starts his story shadowing his father, Killmonger the same. The characters are the same but one single event causes the two to diverge down entirely different paths. 

T'Challa (Black Panther)

T'Challa grows up wealthy surrounded by family and in his native country where his people have not interacted with the outside world. His personal world view is to help people, and bring peace and equality to his nation. His inherited world is that of his alter ego the Black Panther, this role was passed down to him after the death of his father. His wants/ goals are to be successful in his role as king. His father left a big legacy which he will struggle to live up to. His needs are to put things right, to fix other people's problems. His internal traits are humility and power, his external traits both strength and weakness. His flaws are a constant need to prove his worth against others and blind faith in the people around him. As an overall story arc he starts off opposed to the idea that his country should be helping the outside world, he has never lived with the struggle that others have suffered and prioritises his thriving people over those truly in need. By the end of the film he realises that there must be a balance between the two, no longer blindsided he is able to do the right thing. A value change in a scene for T'Challa is when he enters a sleep state and is able to talk to his father. He enters that scene proud and strong from winning his right to be king. By the end of the scene he realises that he has been lied so and feel cheated out of the truth.

Killmonger

Killmonger is T'Challa's cousin and although his father was a prince he never grew up in his native country. His father was killed by his uncle and he grew up in America in a poor neighbourhood. His personal world view is that people of colour have suffered too long and he can change the norms, however his world view is radicalised as he believes that forcing people under his rule will bring justice. His inherited world is Wakanda. His wants/ goals is to see equality for people of colour. His needs, although his disguises them as a need to create freedom he actually needs answers and justice for the death of his father. Internally he has traits of fear and hatred. His external traits are that of power and strength. His biggest flaw is that he wants power but for all the wrong reasons. He begins the story smart and ahead of the game, he has a clear plan. By the end of the film he has lost control and becomes power hungry. There is a clear value change is his final scene. He enters the scene ready to kill T'Challa, he has lost sight of his end goal. By the end of this scene he realises that he has lost and wants nothing more than to see his vision of peace. 

Pulp Fiction - Time and Storytelling

 

Pulp Fiction (1994)

During this lecture we looked into time and storytelling. 'Eternal Sunshine of a Spotless Mind' is a perfect example of the theories and the method blocks of narrative. The film begins somewhere towards the end of the narrative, however as an audience it presents itself as the first interaction between the two main characters. Throughout the film it becomes more clear that the events are non-linear, and happening inside the head of Joel Barish (Jim Carrey) and in the midst of all the confusion the audience is able to piece together the events of the story. At first it Joel's character comes across as an unreliable narrator (much like what you see in 'Joker'), however it soon becomes apparent that his thoughts are being twisted. 

Another film that demonstrates non-linear storytelling and time is Quentin Tarantino's 'Pulp Fiction'. It includes a mixture of events of different characters that eventually join up towards the end. This could be considered as Syllepsis (thematic groups connecting narrative) or Achrony (randomly ordered events). However, looking at the film as a whole it also presents; Zigzag (jumping between events that occur in the same period), Chronicle (Linear Storytelling), and Prolepsis (flashforwards). The film as a whole is non-linear, however, if you were to spilt the events up by character it would be linear. The film also jumps between events as the entire narrative happens over a short amount of time, and there are also moments throughout the film that are not necessarily flashworwards but resemble the technique. Pulp fiction clearly breaks the overused linear structure of going from point a, to b, to c. There are a few examples of this in the 90's as film-maker's started to challenge storytelling norms and create new ways of presenting narrative. 

Collaboration - Playblasts and Renders

I have playblast all my shots for the eclipse scene and Torran will edit all the shots and other content together to create our final sequence. Upon reflection the animation for this scene needed more time as it is fairly unpolished and there are improvements I would make with more time. However, given the circumstances I think that this is sufficient. There are also some still renders below to show what the shots would have looked like if we were able to render through the entire sequence.  

Character Design Session

 For today's online session we looked at the principals of graphic design and how to incorporate this into our character bibles for this project. The main takeaway is to make sure I focus on the design of the character bible and make the background's fit the theme without taking attention away from the main deices of artwork on the page. As my landscape designs for this project have a simplistic style these will work well for the backgrounds. 

Notes from class. 

For the second part of today's class we were given a tv show and asked as a group to come up with a character that would fit into that world, a prop and a location that fits around that character that could be marketed as a toy. Our group was given the show 'Miraculous' a show about superhero type characters all based around animals. I decided to design a hero type character based around a hummingbird.

Quick initial ideas.

I designed a evil lair space that could be a interactive child's toy based around Jasmines chameleon villain design. I also designed a small necklace based around hummingbird wings that the character i designed would wear. As a toy this would light up, play the show's theme song and open like a locket. The hummingbird character design for the costume has wing type shapes in the skirt and the sleeves. As the other characters in the show have all in one suites and masks I stuck to this design. The iridescent patterns in hummingbirds feathers stood out to me so I replicated this in the hair colour of the character. This was a useful exercise as I had to design a character off the top of my head quickly which meant I didn't waste as much time thinking about what I should be doing. 

Collaboration - Animating

 For the scene set outside the Mayan temple there are too many Moom's to animate at once. As a solution I have decided to animate the Historian and the museum frame separately to the scene behind him. Below is a playblast check of one of the first sequences. Moom is currently moving to fast so when animating I need to make sure I time and pace his movements better. 

              

Scene modelled by Torran.

Here is the basic set up of the scene. Anything behind the museum wall will be edited in afterwards, this includes the exhibit and the Mayan people. 

Character Design - Week 6/7

 I have started to focus my character designs, there will be some developments however, I think this will be close to my final product. I have also designed some quick props alongside some ideas for my third background character. The main thing I need to focus on now is making everything coherent so that the landscape and the characters look like they exist in the sam universe. 

Kaiju - In more detail. 

Colour and prop concepts.

Second and third character height repfrence.

Second character sketches.

Kaiju and second character.

Kaiju with colour.

Third character.

Below is some classwork in which we look at perspective, and developing our characters further. I started to draw my environment in detail, although I have chosen to go for a more simplistic style, it will be easier to plan out the scene when getting to storyboarding.

 

Tokyo street.

Initial ideas for main stills.