Category: Design For Animation

This week the tutor first reconfirmed the structure and formatting of the essay such as font size and line spacing, and secondly, we focused on how to properly cite literature in the essay. We looked at some examples, including ‘Harvard Referencing; Quick Guide’ and ‘UAL Harvard Citation and Visual Referencing Information’, which were very helpful to me.

In class, the group discussed the topics of their essays. During my discussion, my tutor suggested that I needed to focus more on and look for examples of specific technologies and academic articles. As The Matrix Resurrections is a film from last year, there were very few papers on the specific technology used, which led me to look for articles on the technology to support my essay after learning about it from the film footage. Some of them even come from the official website of the effects engine.

Practise paraphrasing
Read and summarise a designated passage：

The authenticity of a documentary is ‘deeply linked to notions of realism and the idea that documentary images are linked to notions of realism and the idea that documentary images bear evidence of events that actually happened, by virtue of the indexical relationship between image and reality’

Horness Roe. A. (2013) Animated Documentary. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Summarise by myself：

Honess Roe (2013, Animated Documentary) argues that the authenticity of a documentary is demonstrated by the fact that documentary images provide indexical evidence of what is happening in reality and that documentary images are linked to the notion of realism.

This documentary feature combines archival footage and animation as it explores the Vietnam War protests at the August 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago and the participants’ subsequent criminal trials.

According to Honess Roe’s Taxonomy of animated documentary, this animated work is a documentary. It was created frame by frame based on interview recordings and was received by a large audience at the same time. I personally agree with Honess Roe’s point of view in terms of work value and value, which is “animation is a fruitful means of documentary representation in part.” However, from a visual point of view, I still think it is controversial.

Categorisation: I think of it as Formative abstraction, a short film showing a ballet dancer performing a pas de deux with a male dancer. Colour and dance are used to express the feminine and masculine beauty of the human body.

Form and Function: McLaren photographed on high-contrast stock to create an experimental sensual experience.

Process: He used high-contrast stock, then used an optical printer to expose individual frames up to 11 times. The premise of backlighting the sequence preserves a large amount of visual residue and shadow overlay, which achieves an effect that is hypnotic.

Formal Elements: Only black and white colors are used in the frame at the same time. The background is also exactly the same shade of black as the figures, and grey is avoided as much as possible. The use of ethereal instruments such as the piano gives a dreamy hypnotic effect.

8 Story arc

Stasis: Neo’s life in the Matrix
Trigger: Morpheus gives Neo the choice of red or blue pills
Quest: Training after learning the truth about the world
Surprise: Cypher’s Betrayal and Tank’s Rescue
Critical choice: choose to save Morpheus or not
Climax: Rush into the police station to fight with cops and agents
Reversal: Neo resurrected and become “The one” to take down the agents
Resolution: Resolving the crisis with reality in the Matrix

Characters

Hero Neo (Thomas Anderson)
Mentor: Morpheus
Threshold Guardian: Ai world, squiddy, agent
Herald: Neo discovers Deja Vu, agents are coming, real-world Squiddy is coming
Shapeshifter: Oracle
Shadow: Agent, squiddy and Cypher
Trickster: Mouse
Allies (sidekicks): Trinity, Tank-operator, Dozer, Mouse

Timeline

Stage 1: Virtual World: Trinity engages the agents and escapes. Neo (Thomas Anderson) wakes up listening to a song to find someone talking to him on a computer. He went to the disco and met Trinity, reminding him that he was being watched. Neo received a call from Morpheus the next day to run away, but Neo was caught by the agents. Neo suddenly wakes up and is taken by Trinity to Morpheus, who gives Neo a choice between continuing to learn the truth or ending here. Neo chooses to continue.

Stage 2: The Real World: Neo in the real world wakes up in a petri dish and sees the real world (Morpheus teaches neo about human history and trains Neo.

The third stage: Return to the virtual world: Morpheus brings Neo into the Matrix to meet Oracle, Cypher betrays everyone to help the agent kill his companions, Tank kills Cypher and saves Neo and Trinity. Morpheus was captured by the agents, Neo and Trinity went to rescue Morpheus, during which Neo grew to become “The One” and defeated the agents, and the real world also solved squiddy with electronic pulses. Neo later becomes Superman in the Matrix world. The story ends for now.

22 years of VFX technology development has brought changes and progress to The Matrix series of films.

The Matrix was the film that won Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1999, it was one of the films that used VFX technology to the extreme at the time. Its series of films also make extensive use of VFX technology and special effects photography technology. The research is going to describe, from The Matrix in 1999 to The Matrix Resurrections in 2021, how the Matrix series has progressed in the use and production of visual effects after 22 years of development, and what new technologies and VFX have been used in Design thinking. And what breakthroughs, both visually and narratively, this film has made compared to previous series.

Keywords:
Visual Effects
Bullet Time
Practical Elements
Virtual Cameras
Computer-generated

Bibliography:
Byrne, B., & Braha, Y. (2012). Creative motion graphic titling : Titling with motion graphics for film, video, and the web. CRC Press LLC.

Mendiburu, B., & Mendiburu, B. (2009). 3d movie making : Stereoscopic digital cinema from script to screen. Taylor & Francis Group.

Okun, J. A., & Zwerman, S. (Eds.). (2020). The ves handbook of visual effects : Industry standard vfx practices and procedures. Taylor & Francis Group.


Whissel, K. (2014). Spectacular digital effects : Cgi and contemporary cinema. Duke University Press.
Mendiburu, B., & Mendiburu, B. (2009). 3d movie making : Stereoscopic digital cinema from script to screen. Taylor & Francis Group.