Week 13: Project Description

The title of my animatic is The Fly and is based on the William Blake poem of the same name. The narrative of the poem is themed around the significance of the existence in life, namely between humans and the common fly. In the poem, the protagonist encounters a fly, and upon first glance, dismisses it as insignificant. However, he eventually comes to the realization that the life of the fly is of the same worth as his.

My animatic follows a similar theme, but the narrative differs, and instead focuses on the relationship between two office workers – the protagonist, who is well dressed and the antagonist, who is poorly dressed. In the film, the protagonist mistakenly judges the antagonist to be of a lower social class than him, solely due to his attire. However, in a turn of events, it is revealed that the antagonist is the boss of the company, and offers the protagonist a job.

My inspiration for the narrative derives from the capitalist society and consumer culture of the 21^st century – where success is judged on image above other attributes, and the notion of that no matter how successful you are there will always be someone above you. I wanted to show that human beings are all the same regardless of this.

In regards to the visual style of my animatic, my main inspiration is the work of Don Hertzfeldt – who uses minimalism and rotoscoping to create an ‘eerie’ and bleak effect. I wanted to recreate this as it reflects the honest nature of the narrative. 

Week 11: Changes made to the final product

As my animation is nearing its final stages, I thought I'd post about some of the changes I made during the production period.

Sound
Originally I wrote: "I am going to use just naturalistic sounds". At the time, this seemed like a great idea. However, after the majority of the production process was finished, it felt as if something was missing. The silence throughout the scenes didn't really add anything to the 'eerie' feel that I was attempting to create. In an attempt to resolve this, I decided to try out some background music, to see if it would change anything - and it did! I spent hours searching the Internet for some copyright free music and found various horror tracks that I were able to use. However, a lot of these were dramatic and over the top - and this didn't fit with the minimal theme of my animatic. Fortunately, I managed to find various tracks that were minimal, and when I decided on which to use, I turned the volume of it down so the audience can hear it, without it being too much of a distraction from the narrative.

Rotoscoping
There is a previous post about this, please refer to that.

Relativity
I initially discussed about using the themes from Relativity by Maurits Cornelius Escher in my animatic, and although I admire the piece, the use of metamorphosis art didn't fit well in regards to the overall style of my project. In the end, I decided to focus my inspirational values more on Don Hertzfeldt work - rather than complicating the imagery by using the work of Escher. This, again, helped me keep to the minimal stylistic production values I was hoping to achieve.

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These were the only dramatic changes made, and I feel that my project has kept the same values from what I envisioned in the planning stage.

Week 4: Assessed Project Introduction

For my assessed task I have to pick one of the following options: 1 Select a poem written by William Blake and devise an animation with sound in response to it. 2      Personal Experience Mapping – construct an animated ʻmapʼ of experiences you have in a day. Although both of these seem interesting, I have chosen option 1 to complete for my assessed task. The reason for this, is because I believe that poetry is a brilliant form of art, and can be open to so many interpretations. Although a poet constructs a poem with his or her own meanings, the reader is able to construct their own thoughts and ideas from it - what seems so little can mean so much. William Blake wrote a vast range of poetry. From A Cradle Song, to A Little Girl Lost and even Ah Sunflower. However out of all of his work, the poem I am choosing to animate is The Fly. The reason I chose The Fly as the focus of my animation, is because I believe that it an example of Blake at his finest. Here is the poem: 'Little fly, Thy summer’s play My thoughtless hand Has brushed away. Am not I A fly like thee? Or art not thou A man like me? For I dance And drink and sing, Till some blind hand Shall brush my wing. If thought is life And strength and breath, And the want Of thought is death, Then am I A happy fly, If I live, Or if I die.

William Blake (1757-1827) P. 1793'

In the first stanza, Blake has an encounter with a fly and brushes it away with his 'thoughtless hand' - he views the fly as less significant to human life. 

However, in the second stanza he contemplates the life of the fly with that of his own - 'Or art not thou, A man like me?'. They are both living creatures and living in the same world - they share more in common than he once thought. 

The third stanza elaborates on this - we're all mortal and we're all going to die someday, so like the fly he lives his life until 'some blind hand, Shall brush [his] wing (sic)', just as he did to the fly in the first stanza. This also hints at a theme of a capitalist world - that no matter how one lives their life, there will always be someone better, or someone above - relating to the relationship between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.

Despite this, the fourth stanza offers a possible reason of why human life may be of more importance than that of the fly's. The protagonist realises that, as humans we are able to contemplate life and death, which separates us from unthinking creatures such as the fly. 

In the fifth stanza, he acknowledges the fact that he will succumb to death one day. Despite this, he is still living a happy life, and shares the same ignorance to death as the fly. 

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I believe that I will be able to incorporate these ideas into my animatic - especially the references to capitalism. This would make an interesting animation, as upon first reading, the poem seems to just be about a fly. However, upon analysis it conveys an ignorant and blissful attitude towards life as a whole, and just like the fly, we should live our lives without too much thought of death or a capitalist world.