secondary research
HOW HAs covid-19 impacted people?
I read this article about the effects of the pandemic on different people. I wanted to get some more detailed information about the question I asked in my survey about how the pandemic has affected people. This information would help me understand more about how I can convey my character being impacted by the news.
This research tells me that mental health issues are some of the biggest public health concerns amidst the pandemic. The stress and uncertainty caused by the pandemic has caused anxiety and depression amongst the population. 24.9% of university students experienced anxiety because of the COVID-19 outbreak. Even worse healthcare workers at the frontlines of the pandemic have experienced ‘psychological breakdowns’, ‘severe fatigue’ and ‘health concerns. I've learnt that this has been made worse by the closing of municipal services and industries, which have caused loss of jobs and support and thus anxiety about financial situations. Overall this tells me that most people’s mental health has been affected negatively by the pandemic, a lack of support, loss of jobs and uncertainties has caused a lot of stress, anxiety and depression and made it harder for people to seek out help with the closing of industries.
This gives me some more insight into how people have been affected by recent events. I want to explore the impacts of being exposed to so much bad news and happenings and knowing about relevant real life events helps me understand the emotional impact of this. This is something everyone can relate to, if I am able to make my character be able to express some of these ideas, my animation will be more intimate and relatable, allowing better engagement with the audience. I want to express the anxiety about a widespread bad event in my animation by showing the character being inundated with bad news about one thing that I will present through notifications and pop ups they get on their devices. I could further research into how the pandemic has affected people I know in more detail. I could ask them for their opinions through text and use this to get a better understanding of how it has affected people in my age range and thus the target audience.
KEY STATISTICS
College students (aged 19–25 years) reported that 24.9% experienced anxiety because of the COVID-19 outbreak (0.9% experiencing severe anxiety, 2.7% moderate anxiety, and 21.3% mild anxiety
HOW DOES SOCIAL MEDIA AFFECT MENTAL HEALTH?
This is an article about the impacts of social media on the mental health of people and how some of these concerns could be misplaced. I wanted to know about how social media effects people because I want my film to centre around media usage and how this can take a toll on someone. This could help me understand more about how I could portray this in my film.
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This article tells me that in recent years parents and policy makers have raised concerns about the potential negative impacts of social media usage. Some studies have linked this to serious mental health issues like suicidality and decreased empathy. However other articles have linked this to having a positive effect. A study indicated that social media use was not predictive of mental health issues. Overall this tells me about how there are negative and positive impacts related to using social media.
This aligns with the results of my survey which showed a mix of positive and negative responses about social media and my own knowledge that it can both be bad in terms of peer pressure, body expectations, false news, but good in being able to discover community and being able to share things. This will also inform my portrayal of how my character in the animation will respond to the media and internet. I want to show both negative and positive aspects, in how they can become both overwhelmed by it and use it as a source of escape. To further my understanding of this I could ask about it in my questions to friends or in another survey in more detail. This information would give me a better understanding of how individual aspects have had an effect on people.
KEY STATISTICS
"The current correlational study examined 467 young adults for their time spent using social media, importance of social media in their lives and tendency to engage in vaguebooking (posting unclear but alarming sounding posts to get attention)."
researching fandom
This article is about fandom culture and the impact this has had on the media. I read this because I want to know how being in a fan community can affect people and media. This information would help me understand the relationship between consumers and media and how I present my my character interacting with content in the digital space.
This article told me about how fan culture has been 'blurring the lines between producers and consumers' , communities of fans creating works relating to their beloved media, creating theories and analysis has changed how people interact with their media and can expect more from the producers. This tells me that being in fan communities has changed the way people experience the relationship between the media they consume and those who made it.
This will also inform how I show my character interacting with media, I could show this fandom relationship with media when the protagonist is in the 'online world' they can come across a character from a piece of media I show them enjoying earlier. I would like to get more data about how fans themselves interact with their fandom. I got some information about this from my survey, in terms of activities but I want to know about the personal feelings fans have about their fanbase. This would help me portray the emotion the character has when they are having this interaction. I could get information for this by asking people I know or asking it in another survey in an open ended question.
why is all the news bad?
I read this article about why the headlines are dominated by bad news because I wanted to know if there is a lot of negative press in the media and if so, why. This knowledge could help me comprehend how I will show this idea in my film. I want to cover the idea of bad news being prevalent so much, therefore knowing why it is like that would help me show the feelings my characters will have towards it in my animation.
This article says that the McGill University in Canada ran an experiment where students were mostly drawn to the bad news on a news site. They found this as evidence of a negativity bias, people react quickly and strongly to negative words as we evolved to adapt quickly to threats and danger. This tells me that people are drawn to negative news and want to remember it more than positive news.
I want to use this idea of being strongly drawn to negative news in my film by showing the character using the internet and finding a news article about something bad happening amongst some good news and reading it, and then showing a flood of pop up like notifications for more bad news, I will show that they’re drawn to it by making the facial expressions be concerned and intrigued to show they care about this topic. I’d like to know more about how this constant consuming of bad news affects your mental health, particularly ‘doom scrolling’. I could find this out by watching some videos about it. This knowledge would help me show how the character feels when looking at all this bad news over some time.
learning colour theory
I watched this video about colour theory because I wanted to learn how to pick a good colour scheme because being able to pick a strong colour palette for my character designs, backgrounds etc will help my animation look aesthetically pleasing and could help signify meanings.
This video taught me about some definitions around colours like:
-hue is the colour name
-saturation is the intensity of a hue
-value is how light or dark it is
It also introduced some concepts like colour temperature, cool colours are usually more blue toned and warm colours are more red toned. It also talked about how colour temperature indicates a mood. A light and happy scene will use more warm tones and a gloomy or sad piece should use cool colour, this is because colours can have associated meanings like red = love or blood.
This video also talked about picking colour palettes from a colour wheel, I learned that there a several types of these. I knew already about picking complimentary colours opposite on the colour wheel but didn't know about using it to pick a whole colour scheme.
Knowing the definitions of things like hue, saturation, value will help me pick out what colours I want to use. This, and considering colour meanings and temperatures will help me carefully pick a colour scheme that will compliment the action of what is happening in the animation and help the viewer infer meaning and tone based on the colours used, a sad or scene could use de-saturated cool colours to create a gloomy atmosphere. I can also use the types of colour palettes to help me pick out colours that look good together like using opposing colours on the colour wheel to complement each other. I will use this all in my film by considering what tone I want a part to convey and using colour palettes and wheels to pick a colour scheme that can help convey that atmosphere. Specifically, when my protagonist is in the real world the colours can be quite cool and gloomy but in the ‘online world’ they’re brighter and more intense to show a strong visual contrast and that this new place is better for the protagonist. I’d also like to know about how I can use lighting with colours to create atmosphere, I think I could watch another video about this and maybe experiment with different lighting techniques on some drawings.
how can i use colour and shading in my animation?
I watched this video about do’s and don'ts of colouring and shading because I wanted to know how I can use colour effectively after I’ve picked out a colour palette. This would help me build the atmosphere and tone I want with colour.
This video talked about creating atmospheric shading which I found very useful because I want to use some shading to help create mood in my animation. They talked about using colour temperatures to create contrast. She used warm colours for all the colours except from the eyes which were a more bluey green this with the blue overlay used for shading helps the eyes standout.
This made me learn that if I want a part of my animation to stand out, what I want the audience to focus attention on I need to create contrast to that area, you can do this by focussing light, saturation and colour on that part. This also helped me learn the importance of a light source, wherever light is coming from will dictate where the shadows and highlights go and put emphasis on different areas.
The video also talked about using colours in a wider scene, they used a page of their webcomic for example, showing that instead of just using the colours as you’d imagine them to be, using a colour scheme for your scene based on the mood/vibe you want helps pick colours that create atmosphere. She also stressed the importance of using cool and warm colours to create contrast between points of interest, I learned that colour is a key tool in directing your viewers attention to what you want them to see. A piece with little difference in contrast makes it harder to focus your attention on.
Knowing about how to create strong lighting will help me create good atmosphere in scenes I want to be dramatic and help show what tone I want. I could use dark colours to highlight parts of the character's face in a sad or serious shot where I want the focus to be on their facial expressions. Knowing how to direct audience's attention will help me pick colours to make the characters/props stand out from the background or create contrast to shift attention to the most important things in that shot, like when the character is looking at the news I want the attention to be on the device or article so will make this the brightest colour used there. I'd like to practice using different kinds of lighting before colouring my final animation, this would help me understand what looks are effective and which are not.
what is 'doom scrolling'?
I read this article about 'doom scrolling' to try and get some better understanding of what it is and how it affects people's mental health. I want to use this information to make sure I can portray the effects of this effectively and correctly in my animation.
This article tells me that 'doomscrolling' or 'doom surfing' is the act of consuming large amounts of negative news at once whilst scrolling online and on social media. Using social media responsibly has been linked to positive affects to mental health, but doom scrolling, but surfing twitter for hours over news updates will negatively effect it, studies have shown it can lead to anxiety and depression. The New York Times’ Kevin Roose says that the Coronavirus pandemic and social unrest has fuelled this as people search for information and answers. This tells me that doom scrolling can lead to negative mental health issues as people are exposed to so much negativity and so often.
This will help me make my animation because now I know how to portray the effects of consuming bad news, I know that it can have serious adverse mental health effects which I will reflect in my film. I'll do this by showing my protagonist scrolling on their phone or another device for a while and show that this is having a bad effect on them. I'll animate them with sad facial expressions to show that they're not feeling happy and use cool colours to create a dark and gloomy atmosphere when I colour it. This will help get my idea across of social media and the internet as having a bad effect on mental health. I could experiment with showing moods and feelings through drawing different expressions and seeing how far I need to exaggerate or add detail to get my intention across.
reviews about animated films
I wanted to research how popular animated films are and how they are received, this would help me know whether they are well liked or not and how people perceive animation as an art form. I decided to look on film rating/review sites to see what people thought about them.
I looked at some of the IMDB pages for a few animated films on IMDB, these are all rated fairly highly on the site. This tells me that animated films can be highly respected and well received, which is something I want for my own FMP film. However, I'll need to do some more in depth analysis to find out what exactly makes these films be highly regarded.
LOOKING AT FILM REVIEWS:
I then looked at the reviews of these films to get a better understanding of people's opinions of them.
RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON, 2021, DISNEY
These reviews tell me that people found the animation and visuals very good, with a decent story but with characters that needed more development . Other reviews I've seen like this one by fashion history youtuber, Mina Le talk about the South East Asian influences of the film and some people thought that whilst the representation was good to see, there were parts missing that could have made it feel more authentic.
SPIDERMAN: INTO THE SPIDERVERSE, 2018, SONY
These reviews tell me that people enjoy the film's unique mix of 2d and 3d animation and art style that resembles a comic book. It seems that people like the story and think it is fun and 'dorky' one reviewer said.
SPIRITED AWAY, 2001, GHIBLI
These reviews tell me that this film is very widely adored and loved, reviewers say that the visuals and animation is very good with a charming yet strange story.
WHAT DOES THIS TELL ME?
These reviews tell me that animation can be a very respected and well reviewed medium. But the animation alone does not give a film it's success, without relatable characters and an interesting story, people won't be able to engage and enjoy your film. I also found that it's important to represent the issues, themes and ideas in your film well. The art and visuals serve as a host to carry the story, neither can be great without the other.
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HOW CAN I USE THIS IN MY FILM?
This taught me that the story is just as important as the animation. Therefore, I want to make sure I have a good story for my film, I can do this by planning the story idea and developing it in storyboards. I want to make the characters relatable so will use facial expressions and the visuals to convey their feelings.
inspiration/related media
I wanted to see a range of different pieces of media and film to help consolidate my ideas and inspirations. I think that looking at media that inspires me or is related to my chosen subjects will help me in this way.
SHOT BY SHOT ANALYSIS
I want to analyse the usage of shots film so I can understand more how the choice/look of shots affects the clip. I think doing this would help me recognise what is important about shot choices and their effects, this will help me chose what shots to use in my FMP.
VERSAILLES, 2017, (CANAL+)
I chose a clip from this series because it is one of my favourites. I really enjoy the costume, setting and drama and I think the production quality is generally good. I thought this would be appropriate for a shot analysis since it is a higher budget series (It is the most expensive French TV series of all time.) so the shots would be more thought out and precise that something of a lower budget with less time to consider these things.
SCENE CONTEXT
Set at the titular palace under Louis XIV's reign. The Queen is confronting her husband, the king's favourite mistress, Madame de Montespan about her debts.
The scene starts with a continuous medium shot that follows the characters through the hallway and into the room with the queen and the council. This creates a busy atmosphere and establishes the fore coming terse tone of their conversation. The continuous shot allows the viewer to move with the characters.
Then follows a series of medium close up to closeup shots, showing the Queen and Montespan talking. These let us clearly see the facial expressions and understand that these characters really hate each other. The shots each get closer as the scene goes on, making it feel more intense. The over the shoulder shots help make the characters feel very disconnected because we never see their faces close together as they talk. This shows the difference between the women's authority and level and their closeness to Louis who comes in the next shot.
Next is a medium shot of horses running, focussed on the hooves, the camera pans up and we see King Louis is returning to the palace, accompanied by his guards. This pan shot compliments the fast pace of the horses and makes the scene feel exciting.
This next shot is an extreme long shot that pans slightly to reveal the front of the Palace of Versailles (shot on location), as the king gets closer. The long shot makes the people seem smaller and the palace bigger, this shows Louis' power as king and established the change of location for this character- he had just arrived from war in Holland.
They then use a panning long to medium shot to zoom in on Louis getting off his horse and looking up at the building. The zooming in shows that Louis is the most important person here and makes the viewer focus on him. The angle of the back of his horse and the soldiers behind him, show Louis' military strength refraining to the previous episode's focus on his military campaign, also showing he is powerful.
This analysis has helped me learn that the types of shots use help establish things like characters, settings, relationships and personalities. This combines with blocking and the composition of the shot to visually tell the viewer what is going on. I want to show strong characters and create clear scenes so will use this knowledge to carefully plan out how my shots will look like when storyboarding.
FAN EDIT, MSELEANORSHELBY
I also wanted to talk about this fan edit of some scenes in the third season of this period drama because I thought an edit would be a good way to see many scenes at once and see how the editor has strung them together. This could help me make shots that 'flow' into eachother.
This clip in the video starts with a medium long shot of Louis showing his court the newly built Hall of Mirrors. Louis is in centre front, he is leading the way. They then cut to a couple of shots that pan around members of the court like his brother, medium close ups that spin around the actors, capturing their reactions and the opulent room. This lets the audience experience their awe of the hall with them.
The next shot focusses on Louis alone in a medium longshot. The camera is close enough we can clearly see how pleased he is, but far away that we start to see a bigger view of the Hall of Mirrors. This shows that all this is his doing, Louis is leading the way and the one in charge.
Then the angle shifts so we see Louis in front of the court, and the camera zooms out from a medium shot to an extreme longshot, letting the viewer see the whole hall in all its gold and splendour.
King Louis is the only character in focus in this shot, drawing all attention to him. This further shows his power and wealth as king.
WHAT DID I LEARN?
Doing this analysis has taught me that shot choices are very important to portraying the characters and settings of your film. They also help show the relationship between characters and how people are feeling.For example if a extreme longshot will usually show the setting and a close-up will move in on the face show a character’s feelings and emotions. Analysing this TV show has also made me realise that the usage of shots and the composition of them tell things things about the themes and genre of the piece. For example this series uses a lot of wide shots to show the optimum settings to give a grand feeling. This helps complement the theme of loyalty and religion in the series. I would like to use this idea in my film, I could use lots of close-up shots on the characters face to show what they are feeling this will helps the audience engage with the characters and their emotions. Because theme is media and mental health I could use Long and medium shot to help make the characters feel detached from their reality. I’d also like to further look into how shots are used in an animated piece, I could analyse another scene from some animation perhaps.
RELATED ANIMATION
DEAD END, VEWN,2019
I wanted to look at some more films by the artist Vewn who was very inspirational to me at the start of this project. This film is about a teenager struggling with their mental health, and their school councillor who is also dealing with a gambling addiction.
I particularly like how animation deals with it's subject content, it shows the school councillor's gambling is done through an online site, there's a character on this site of a woman who says 'better luck next time. ' when he loses (which is every time). This mantra is something that is repeated throughout the film and I particularly like how the audio distorts when the councillor passes out. When he's passed out he sees the woman from the slot machine game in his dream, she brings a knife on him, probably symbolising how this is harming him. I really liked this section and the portrayal of digital space as something that can harm and the way this was symbolised with violence. I could take this idea into how I want to portray the digital world my protagonist will enter. It will initially be positive, this is where they come for release, after all. I could show this by having the character seeing their favourite celebrity or character which would be shown earlier and them having a good time. Then this character could become an evil, sort of corrupted version of itself and try to harm the antagonist.
BANANA FISH, 2018, MAPPA
I wanted to look at some of this anime because it is one of my favourites and covers a lot of darker subject content. I thought it would be good to analyse a scene in an animated series with some more serious themes and tone, like I'd want to cover in my film
SERIES CONTEXT
"A teenaged gang leader in New York City faces his abuser and rival gangs alongside a photojournalist from Japan as they investigate a deadly new drug" - Netflix Japan
SCENE CONTEXT
Mafia boss Dino Golzine is trying to sell a mind control drug to the US government, Ash is being forced to kill his best friend, Shorter who has been injected with the drug which makes people want to harm everything around them and then themeselves.
This clip starts with a medium shot of the knife fight between Shorter and Eiji, allowing the viewer to see the full extent of the violent scene while being close enough to see the facial expressions. Then is a series of close ups of Ash's horror and Arthur telling him to use the gun. This lets the audience clearly see the difference in these character's personalities. Ash is horrified in seeing such harm happening to the two he cares most about whilst Arthur is sadistically enjoying it.
Next is a close up of the gun on the floor which pans up to see Ash, still chained up, this foreshadows that he is going to use it. Then is a close up of the knife fight, focussed on the hands and knives, this presents the difference in fighting skills between Shorter and Eiji, building suspense as the viewers understand Eiji is in danger. Next the camera zooms in from a long shot to show Shorter throwing Eiji to the ground, then a close up of Eiji being pinned down and a fast zooming medium close up of Shorter about to stab Eiji. This constant changing of shots creates a fast pace and builds a dangerous atmosphere.
The next shot is a close up of Ash, showing him trashing around and crying, he's clearly realising what he's about to do. Then there's a medium shot of Arthur lowering the chains holding the other up, this plainly shows his smug facial expressions, further showing his twisted personality. Next is a series of fast paced shots that follow Ash as he reaches down to the gun and shoots it at Shorter. Then it zooms out of an extreme closeup of his eyes to the bullet coming out of the gun. This lets the viewer see how torn up he is about being forced to kill his best friend, and the fast pace also shows his marksman skills.
My favourite part of the scene is the zooming out shot of the eyes and hair, I love the way the hair moves with it, almost making this moment feel slowed down before it resumes the fast pace. This really lets the viewer understand the character's emotions. Analysing this animated scene has made me realise that alternating shots creates a fast pace and builds tension and suspense, whilst medium and closeup shots help establish details and emotions, these can create a slower pace which helps build characters. I want to use this idea in my film by using a range of camera shots to help tell my story. I could use this in the digital world part where the corrupted figure starts attacking the protagonist. I can use a medium or closeup to establish danger with their facial expressions or a weapon, and then pan into a long shot to show the full extent of the danger. I feel like this gave me a better understanding of how I can use these concepts in animation.