1.2 Design for Animation, Narrative Structures & Film Language

Hello everyone, today I would like to share with you some thoughts about the creation of experimental animation. With the change of time, the internet allows us to quickly appreciate artworks from different cultures, and the surreal part of these works caught my attention. I believe that animation is not only about recording reality, but the unrealistic part of it is even more fascinating.

From time to time I think about the wonderful relationship between experimental animation, psychology and the creative process. Experimental animation, as a diverse and enigmatic art form, presents unique perspectives from different cultural backgrounds.So I began to think about what is the connection between the work and the author, which guides the author to keep moving forward in uncharted territories. This sparked my interest in Freud and his theory.

Aa we all know that the subconscious mind is a concept that plays a role in our daily lives, but we have a hard time perceiving it. In experimental animation, the author may not be fully aware of the message conveyed, and it is this underlying unconsciousness that gives the work its marvellous magic, like a daydream.

Next, I will give three examples.

Firstly, In “Mindscape”, we find that surreal themed animation has similarities with dreams. Dreams have three characteristics – visual, illogical and universally compatible – and this type of experimental animation is like a projection of a dream. While watching this type of animation, it is as if we are in a conscious illusion.

Secondly,In animation”my Father’s room” I found that young experimental animation creators often choose subjects related to their own experiences and use surreal symbols to express their emotions, which echoes the phenomenon of “compulsive repetition” in psychology, an unconscious expression of inner emotions.

Thirdly, The surreal symbols in the animation ”The Hand” express confrontation. When society is in a period of repression and contradiction, some ideas that cannot be communicated are often expressed through surrealist images. Surrealist animation fights against the political darkness of the time through confusing or contradictory symbols and metaphors, which is often an expression of the collective unconscious.

In conclusion, by analysing the connection between the experimental animation and unconscious creation, we gain a deeper understanding of the creation. This invisible creative force, which is a combination of conscious and unconscious, gives experimental animation a sense of mystery. Thank you all.

I watched the 3 examples several times and provided my insights

However, there are those who believe that creation is a conscious act. In 2019, at a lecture given by director Koji Yamamura at CAFA in China, Koji Yamamura spoke about “the role of the unconscious in creation”, mentioning that “when one is aware of the unconscious while creating, one is going against the unconscious”. The paradox of the topic is that creation itself is a means of bringing the unconscious to the conscious level, so if something is already in the conscious mind and can be expressed in words before it is created, then there is no point in creating. It is true that visual thinking is closer to the unconscious process than verbal thinking, and that in the process of expressing intentions through words, and in the process of bringing ideas into consciousness, we can find that internal thought processes become perceptions, and that this gives internal thought processes a sense of “reality”. Koji Yamamura concludes by explaining two related key words: “empirical knowledge” and “tacit knowledge”, which are simply summarised as “knowledge that can be done but cannot be explained” and “knowledge that is known but cannot be expressed”. Art works always carry the artist’s personal point of view, plus the animation itself has strong plasticity, the creator’s growth experience is different, their interpretation of things is also different, what the creator has to do is to dig out this part of the unknown field according to his own feelings and judgement and express it, on the basis of which to explore the boundaries of their own emotional expression, to circumvents the past inherent thinking of the painting to create a art work with a surrealistic colors.

Goudal defines three basic characteristics of dream: the visual, the illogical, and the pervasive (profound, rich penetrating). Animation as a projection of dreams is due to this resemblance to dreams. the combination of the real world and the unconscious while watching this type of animation puts people in a conscious hallucination. Every mind has an endless imagination, unexplainable yet fascinating, and one of the principles of surrealism is that “objects are taken out of their usual context”, a concept that has since been applied to many animated films. Mindscape (1976) is one famous movie that offers abstract and surrealist imagery to its viewers. In this animated movie, mountains and rivers turn into land in a flash. There are neighbors, trees, towns, and fires, and time is like a labyrinth that blurs everything. This animation is full of art, with an unclear narrative structure and the right contrast of black and white images, successfully exploring the possibilities of dreaming and the workings of consciousness, as if the viewer were having a “daydream”. Consciousness changes with the images, allowing the viewer to experience the eternity of the moment.

Another interesting phenomenon is that young experimental animation creators tend to choose subjects that are closely related to their own experiences, which may be significant events or traumas of some kind that have happened to them. In psychology, this is known as “compulsive repetition,” which means that “an individual repeats a traumatic event or situation over and over again, including continually reenacting a similar event or repeatedly placing themselves in situations where there is a high likelihood that a similar trauma will reoccur”(KnowYourself, 2016) Animation is the process by which a director creates his own fantasy world. Most of the works created by young creators in a repressed mood are related to the theme of childhood, and describe the theme of “lack” far more than the theme of “fulfillment”. In this mood, the creators’ choice of forms and narrative techniques will put aside many raw techniques, and instead maximize the use of their existing perceptions, using abstract symbols and even surreal images to express their emotions. Taking Nari’s “My Father’s Room”(2016) as an example, each cardboard box in the animation represents “my father’s room”; the change in the position of the house’s shadow with the constant movement of the sun represents the flow of time; the shattering of the father’s image at the wedding represents the loosening of the patriarchal power; and the fact that there is still a cardboard box in the house after the heroine grows up conveys the author’s heartfelt message: the influence of the family of origin is always present in a person’s life.

I found some references and wrote my discourses.

Discourses

The term “subconscious” originally comes from psychology, it refers to the part of people that they cannot be aware of or are not yet aware of . Objectively speaking, we cannot really discover the subconscious mind, but it always plays a role in our daily lives. Bate (as cited in Smirnova, 2015, p. 13) mentions that the “unconscious” comes into play when “the author of the enigmatic message is not fully aware of the signification involved in the message they have sent”. Freud (1919) who is a great psychologist coined the term “daydream”, and one of the characteristics of surrealist animation is that dreams and life begin to merge, boundaries are broken down, leading to the emergence of the “marvellous”. At the same time, Freud(1919) believes that Imaginative creation, like daydreaming, is a continuation and a substitute for childhood play. The author’s creative process is actually the same as children who play games, creating a fantasy world of their own. When people grow up, they stop playing and begin to fantasise, which is full of “wishes” for the real world, which is an expression of the repressed unconscious. When fantasies are not fulfilled, wishes arise. With the help of this repressed, shyly expressed fantasy from the world of the self, the author can filter and create aesthetically, turning it into a work that can be appreciated. In short, animation creation is closely related to the author’s own “unconscious”.

However, there are those who believe that creation is a conscious act. In 2019, at a lecture given by director Koji Yamamura at CAFA in China, Koji Yamamura spoke about “the role of the unconscious in creation”, mentioning that “when one is aware of the unconscious while creating, one is going against the unconscious”. The paradox of the topic is that creation itself is a means of bringing the unconscious to the conscious level, so if something is already in the conscious mind and can be expressed in words before it is created, then there is no point in creating. It is true that visual thinking is closer to the unconscious process than verbal thinking, and that in the process of expressing intentions through words, and in the process of bringing ideas into consciousness, we can find that internal thought processes become perceptions, and that this gives internal thought processes a sense of “reality”. Koji Yamamura concludes by explaining two related key words: “empirical knowledge” and “tacit knowledge”, which are simply summarised as “knowledge that can be done but cannot be explained” and “knowledge that is known but cannot be expressed”. Art works always carry the artist’s personal point of view, plus the animation itself has strong plasticity, the creator’s growth experience is different, their interpretation of things is also different, what the creator has to do is to dig out this part of the unknown field according to his own feelings and judgement and express it, on the basis of which to explore the boundaries of their own emotional expression, to circumvents the past inherent thinking of the painting to create a art work with a surrealistic colors.

Reference:

1. Photography and Surrealism: Sexuality, Colonialism and Social Dissent
2. The interpretation of dreams.
3. French film theory and criticism: a history/anthology

Topic:

Surrealism and Creator’s Unconscious in Animation: Indications of Modern Psychology

Example:

1. Mindscape by (1976)
2. My Father’s Room (2016)
3. The Hand (1965)

22/11/23

Song of the Sea

This is a warm and healing tragic fairy tale, and the film has two narrative threads, one for the elves and the other for the humans. The link between the two threads is the heroine of the story, Cher, who is half elf, half human and half elf.

The story begins with a family of three and a dog living by the ocean, a seal-elf mum, a human dad, and a human boy, Ben. Then Mum gets pregnant and gives birth to her sister Cheryl at the cost of her life. While the dad is drowning in grief over the loss of the love of his life and drinks every day to drown his sorrows, the grandmother, worried that her grandchildren will be left unattended, brings them to live in the city.

The story develops when the two siblings get lost on their way home because they are not used to the environment of the new city. On their way home, they encounter a variety of amazing and fantastic adventures from gnome elves, long-haired elves, and owl witches.

From the elves, brother Ben learns about the importance of the seal elf, Whitey, and the voice of the conch. Cher has also become weak due to the depletion of her magic power, and the only way to save her is for Cher to put on the seal elf white coat left behind by her mother and blow the conch’s [Song of the Ocean] to awaken the sleeping giants in the sea.

The climax of the story is when Ben, the older brother, after going through all kinds of adventures and overcoming all kinds of difficulties, finally finds the two treasures and awakens the giant, and also brings his mother back to life.

The story ends with a family reunion when the younger sister, Cher, returns to live on land and the older brother, Ben, understands his sister, Cher.

Waltz with Bashir

The end of the film is about the Holocaust. When the massacre happened, no one stopped it. The officers were eating and drinking in a building not far away, watching the massacre. The main character, on the other hand, is firing flares to light up the sky at night. The flares are like fireworks, illuminating the sky in a suffocating yellow, just like the sky at the beginning of the film. As the film says, the more brutal and horrific the scene, the more people want to stay out of it, as if they are bystanders, playing a holographic game, and none of this has anything to do with them. However, this is impossible. There is also a real shot at the end of the film that pushes the brutality even further.
The film depicts the brutality of war in a surreal way. War happens and no one can get rid of it. Individuals are forced to see-saw their destinies under war and are powerless to do anything about it, and the end is always a lose-lose situation. We should stay away from war and cherish peace.

Satoshi Kon

Satoshi Kon never chooses a simple film theme, but rather explores dreams, perceptions and emotions through the relationship between characters and their environment, between characters and their identities, as an author and director.
All the animated films he produces maintain an astonishing standard, depicting the multiple lives of modern man, giving a sense of the interplay between reality and fantasy, above and below the stage, on and off the screen, between dreams and waking dreams.
Over the past decade, he has pushed the boundaries of animated cinema in a way that live-action cinema could not, with not only graphic flexibility, but also editing flexibility, with unique transitions from frame to frame and scene to scene. His work is always unexpected, and maybe you blink and miss a transition.

I chose Dimensions of Dialogue (1983) as my research object.

This animation is shot in stop-motion and uses many abstract elements to show the communication and interaction between people. In the animation, food, knives and forks, books, etc. constitute the relationship between people, who tear and mingle with each other, giving people a sense of bizarre and absurd experience.

Jan Švankmajer pays homage to the famous paintings of Giuseppe Archimbauto. The faces of the portraits in this artist’s paintings are assembled using fruits and vegetables, while the satirical paintings are made up of variations of real-life fruits and vegetables, flowers, birds, fish, insects, and other objects. This image in Švankmaje’s work has the feel of a satirical painting, which also uses the modelling language of combination and displacement. The plane of existence is flat, but visually all objects are three-dimensional.