Okay - yes, thumbnail 4 is doing it for me at the moment because it seems overly controlled and antiseptic and the hovering view lends further dislocation to it. There's a famous scene in Hitchcock's Vertigo (which we'll probably be watching next semester) involving the very expressionistic use of a green neon light:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN6xyG82c90
It seems to me if you set your scene at night, with your composition taking in the window, you could play really nicely with the surgical blue/white light of the florescent lighting inside, with different colour temperatures leaking in from outside - as if there are neon signs above and beyond. You could make this really very striking - in a Suspiria sense - there would just be something 'toxic' about it in this way, and it could pop nicely. The restaurant/diner idea is worth pursuing, but I think you need to capture what is uncanny about what is artificial and inhuman about the environment, with a strong emphasis on the materiality of everything.
Re. the written assignment; yes, I think the point of my feedback for your Unit 2 essay was simply 'let the evidence lead the discussion' - or 'make sure there is a body of good, reputably, enlightening evidence in existence before you select the essay question'. I think your provisional enquiry about 'the dangers of realism' in terms of character design is potentially fascinating, but here you need to be very clear about your points of comparison. For example, there is no point in comparing 'I, Robot' with The Incredibles, because I,Robot uses the uncanny valley proactively to create distrust in audiences for the 'too human robots' - it's not like Polar Express, which suffered because it slipped into the uncanny valley unwittingly. You might need to boundary your debate so that you're only talking about cg animations exclusively - as opposed to VFX assets in live action films. There's lots and lots written about this subject, so I suggest you gather in a reading list and let the research process lead, change and clarify your thinking - this, after all, is the point of research - you're looking for an answer to a question you didn't know you were going to ask yet...
OGR 13/12/2011
ReplyDeleteHey Steve,
Okay - yes, thumbnail 4 is doing it for me at the moment because it seems overly controlled and antiseptic and the hovering view lends further dislocation to it. There's a famous scene in Hitchcock's Vertigo (which we'll probably be watching next semester) involving the very expressionistic use of a green neon light:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EN6xyG82c90
It seems to me if you set your scene at night, with your composition taking in the window, you could play really nicely with the surgical blue/white light of the florescent lighting inside, with different colour temperatures leaking in from outside - as if there are neon signs above and beyond. You could make this really very striking - in a Suspiria sense - there would just be something 'toxic' about it in this way, and it could pop nicely. The restaurant/diner idea is worth pursuing, but I think you need to capture what is uncanny about what is artificial and inhuman about the environment, with a strong emphasis on the materiality of everything.
Re. the written assignment; yes, I think the point of my feedback for your Unit 2 essay was simply 'let the evidence lead the discussion' - or 'make sure there is a body of good, reputably, enlightening evidence in existence before you select the essay question'. I think your provisional enquiry about 'the dangers of realism' in terms of character design is potentially fascinating, but here you need to be very clear about your points of comparison. For example, there is no point in comparing 'I, Robot' with The Incredibles, because I,Robot uses the uncanny valley proactively to create distrust in audiences for the 'too human robots' - it's not like Polar Express, which suffered because it slipped into the uncanny valley unwittingly. You might need to boundary your debate so that you're only talking about cg animations exclusively - as opposed to VFX assets in live action films. There's lots and lots written about this subject, so I suggest you gather in a reading list and let the research process lead, change and clarify your thinking - this, after all, is the point of research - you're looking for an answer to a question you didn't know you were going to ask yet...