New media

What is new media these days? its always changing, the front of what is new is differnt one year then it is anouther. Animation is now one of the fastest moving medias around in the speed it has developed, and is still developing, we are constantly making games better, graphics better, vfx better. Pushing the artist more with technology, and pushing technology more from the artist. Graphics is one way to show how much the industry is progressing but there is also anouther way. Over the past year there has been a large leap that has lead to well used job role. "sterographer" this person takes care of all that new 3D that u see in every single animated film at the cinema these days. Its become a real hit and has baught 3d back to the cinema in a real big way. James camerons avatar was the first to me to use 3d in such a compelling way with the vfx just jumping out at u but not in a unnessisary or gimmik kind of way. 3D should only be used when it is able to given the audeince somthing more then just 2 hours of looking like a geek and a couple of cheap thrills as somthing pops out towards you. It should be used for when the created world is so rich and well populated adding this new dimension only helps to show that and immerses you within the film.

Anouther recent development is motion capture, although it has really been a while for a long time (in animation standards is about 10 years) it has only just become useable in films. Motion capture can come in many differnt shapes and sizes, from mechincal suits, too rooms with funny looking lights and a guy standing in the middle with green dots on his face, too no green dots at all, just a man talking into a camera. Motion capture replicates the animtion of a person trying to get it as real as possible, so trying to capture every tiny little movement then if given to an animator would take weeks and weeks of work. This how ever is certainly not the be all and end all for animators, they will not start loosing there job because of this. Motion capture is still not acurate enough to get to the other side of uncanny valley, although close and a great tool for speeding production up, character animators everywhere do not have to worry about loosing their jobs to a computer.

But hasnt that feeling of animators loosing there jobs to a computer been felt before anyway? after all 2d animation had a boom and then disapeared after computer animation took hold. Animators everywhere feared they would loose there job but it was infact their skills that were needed to produce a nice looking beivable and appealing animation. Because of there artistic skill and well grounding in the rules of animation they were increadbily vauble to the progress of the computer animated industry. After all a computer can never replace a human being. so yes looking at the past we can see that eventually there will be a large change in which jobs may look as if they are at threat. But until the computer can calculate creativity it can never replace the human artistic hand.

Structuralism

Structuralism and binary oposits are defintaly rules that should be understood when trying to develop any story. These are some of the basics of story telling that can lay the foundation to a good directors style and film. Binteray oposits are easy to stop, characters that are completely on a good side and the evil bad guy whos on the dark side. But nothing is quite as simple as it seems, there is always a bit inbtween, no matter how much of easy way it is to catagorise one character on one side and the other on the oposite side. The rule of complete opostits is meant to be broken, a character who is good, but has a short temper or has had a bad background or up bringing is much more apealing to an auidence then a goody two shoes with who does nothing but right all the time. Batman for example is a great anti hero, a hero that does not always do things by the book and has more human (bit in the middle) characteristics. This makes characters much more interesting and the story line can then deepen into the characters differnt attributes and merits. As for a villian with heroic and good characteristics think of "Darth Vader" a baddy that lasted so long being only known as a villian when all of a sudden a secret past is revield and the character starts to show some caring and heroic quilities. These can make for amazing plot twists and really add to the story of an animation.

Intertextuality

Soooo, long word, again frightened me at first but this will actually be what my essay is about by the looks of things. Its actually quite simple, intertextuallity is basically one piece of media referencing another, or even an unconscious and un intended reference in the audeinces' mind. These reffernces happen all the time and before know i never had a second thought about them, just that sometimes they could be a cool little quirk in films, but never that this form of thinking often happens on a day to day basis. In fact you could say its how the mind works.

But anyway, back to pixar :) now they DO use this methord of adding a little bit of spice into there films. Just for the fans like me to pick up on and look out for. These are often refferd to as easter eggs, but this term is actually just a name for a well used method by directors in there films to put little secrets that most of the audeince will not pick up on but those keen eyed or those in the know may see it and get a smug feeling (which is basicaly its main purpose, to feel smug) as its a good feeling and any good feeling from a movie helps that movie to apeall to you. So how do pixar use intertexual reffernces to their films? well by puting nearly every character in every other film (ok bit of an exaduration, but they do, do it ALOT!). Mostly from previus films so those fans who have watched the prevois film may see the old piza delivery truck drive by the streets of paris (toystory - rattotuil) or a little girl play with lots of toys in her room including a famous orange fish (monsters inc - finding nemo). Infact they use this so much that i believe they have found a way of using intertexualty as a commercail purpose not just to enhance the apeal of a film, but to advertise more of their own features.