Film Studies and Cinematography - Exercises

27/8/2019 - 24/9/2019 (Week 1 - Week 5)
Lee Yu Hui | 0335787
Film Studies and Cinematography
Exercises

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Lectures

27/8/2019 - Week 1
For our first class, we were introduced by Mr. Mike to film studies for animation. We watched a short documentary from Pixar studios providing tips on how to generate story ideas. In the documentary, it mentioned that good stories comes from ones personal life. Hence after the documentary, we were given a task to write down a memory that we remember vividly, and we shared it with our classmates. Before the class ended, Mr. Mike asked us to research about Miyazaki's film. These are the questions proposed:

1. What are Miyazaki's 3 recurring themes?

2. Pick a Mizayaki film and analyse the story's theme and how the protagonist's journey is told in relation to the theme.

3/9/2019 - Week 2
This week we present our findings based on the questions that was provided in the previous week, and we learned about what if's in a movie. 

Below is the presentation slides for the question:


In short, the what if's allows creators to explore different possibilities that could potentially be in the plot on a film. 
10/9/2019 - Week 3 In this weeks class we were told to watch a Pixar award winning short film "Piper" , and we were told to write our analysis based on the questions given to us.
Below is the analysis of each person:

Aside from that, we also further learned about different things about creating a character in a film, including determining the internal and external features of a character. This practice could help creators in building the story and the worldview based on the character. 
Then, we also learned about identifying a character's wants and needs in a film, in short, is to understand and determine the motive of a character, and what drives them to do what they do in the film. 
17/9/2019 - Week 4 This weeks class consist of us learning more about the art of storytelling. We learned about the stakes of the characters, and what drives them to make the tough decisions. We each gave a few examples of stakes that the character has to go through to make a decision.
Later, Mr. Mike gave us an example using Finding Nemo for spine and beats, and each of us are required to complete the story. 
24/9/2019 - Week 5 For this week's class we are required to make changes to the previous spine and beats and create our own version of the story. Additionally, we were also required to make a spine and beats based on a chosen character. In my case, I've chose to do Joy from Inside Out. Below is my written spine and beats on the character Riley:
Once upon a time.... inside a teenage girl named Riley's mind, live the five basic emotions, which were joy, anger, sadness, fear and disgust. Throughout Riley's childhood, Joy has been the main controller of Riley's emotion

Everyday, Joy would do everything in her power to keep Riley happy, therefore she tries to keep sadness away from controlling Riley's emotion because she wants Riley to always be happy

Until one day.... Sadness got into a fight with Joy, and they eventually got stranded outside the mainquarters, and there's only left Disgust, Anger and Fear to control Riley's emotionBecause of this, Sadness and Joy have to find their way back to the headquarters, and the only way back was through Riley's personality island. During the process they met Riley's childhood imaginary friend, Bing Bong, who offers to bring them back to the headquarters. On the other hand, as Riley's emotions is only controlled by Fear, Anger and Disgust, Riley became a person who is only driven by those three emotions, which caused her personality island to crumble one by one.

Because of that, Joy, Sadness, and Bing Bong had to overcome multiple challenges in order to get back to the mainquarters, and during the process Joy slowly sees Sadness value when she comforts Bing Bong. However at one point, Bing Bong and Joy got separated from Sadness as they fell into memory dump, and that is when Joy realizes Sadness's importance when she look back into one of Riley's core memory. Meanwhile, as Riley's emotions is fueled by negative emotions, Riley plans to run away from home

Because of that, Joy is determined to get back with Sadness to the headquarters and with the help and sacrifice from Bing Bong, Joy made it out succesfully. Joy found Sadness and wanted to bring her home but Sadness refuses as she thinks she is a burden to Riley. With no other way to get back, Riley got creative and created a stack of Riley's imaginary boyfriend and use is as a bridge long enough to grab Sadness mid air and launch a huge jump from a trampoline to the headquarters.

Until finally, Joy and Sadness successfully got back to the headquarters to stop Riley from running away. As everyone is expecting Joy to take control of Riley's emotion, Joy instead hands it over to Sadness to control Riley's emotion. Sadness successfully stopped Riley from leaving and restored the controls that were broken. Riley eventually ran home and cried in her parents arms, expressing her sadness and telling them that she misses her old home. Riley's personality island got restored and she have also created new islands along the way.

Ever since then, Riley lives a happier life as she started to adapt to her new life, and more importantly Joy realizes the importance of Sadness's role in Riley's life, and learns that Riley doesn't need Joy all the time, and that it is ok to be sad. The controls in the headquarters also got an upgrade as Riley aged, and they continued to learn and explore Riley's world through her mind. (Vulneralbility is not a weakness, lead without ego, embrace true feelings).