From last week, I decided I needed to narrow my research, and I focused my research on the Academy Award for Best Animated short film. After watching these award-winning animated shorts, I found two areas of interest for me:
1.Animation is the ultimate presentation of imagination. It breaks all conventional ideas, sets novel Settings and violates traditional presentation methods. Sensory stimulation of the brain can stimulate the audience’s association and attention to a large extent. Insert interruption points in the flow of the story line so that the pace of the story grabs the audience’s attention. Such as, a row of walking ducklings, the last one will always be alone, breaking the rhythm. Or, before the audience thinks the result is reached and the narrative is a cliche, give a reverse action that breaks the expected result. The cat climbed on the flying basket, the audience thought everything went well, but, the next second a violent sinking, the audience will immediately in the spirit of worry. Comparing to fly directly, this kind of way will attract the audience’s attention, mobilize the audience’s mood. The result of the story is the same, but the core is to always attract the audience’s attention, in the process of stimulating the audience’s thinking, association, emotion. When the audience is familiar with a certain presentation, immediately break it, such as a plane flying in the sky, the protagonist jumps out of the plane, the audience’s emotions are immediately aroused, they will worry about whether the protagonist is dead.
The performance of Tom and Jerry exaggerate to the point that they defy the laws of physics. Contrary to the audience’s expectation in every detail. For example, the cat tried to stop the mouse, but unexpectedly, the mouse went so fast that the cat’s chest fur rubbed off. These seemingly counterintuitive exaggerations are actually constantly stimulating the audience’s eyeballs. For example, when a mouse is eaten by a cat, the audience’s brains and eyes are immediately attracted, but the mouse comes out of the butt, which is reasonable and unexpected. The story need to tell the audience about the characters’ plight and let the audience see what they are most worried about happened. Then, it need successfully interrupt their imagine so that the audience’s emotions can be constantly aroused.
2.Animation is great for conveying implied meaning. Anything in the animation, even the wind can be life-giving. The beginning lays the groundwork for the setting and atmosphere of the story, introduces the story (no matter how absurd, just make it clear), and some of the close-ups either push the plot forward or hint at metaphors and themes. When there is a political metaphor, the opening scene close-up has a unique meaning, such as the prey caught in a spider’s web, symbolizing the fate of the character. Animation can illustrate profound life philosophies in very abstract ways, such as in Rudolf Sremec, where the characters are inflated balloons. This expresses the theme: when we are making arbitrary decisions about the fate of others, we fail to realize that we, too, are manufactured and vulnerable.
In the end, I decided to study the first field, because stories should present freshness to the audience, and only freshness can make the theme more interesting and make the audience feel that their attention, their time and their money are worth it.