Disney

How Disney has influenced animation for many years after they started.

Disney was one of the first major animation companies founded by Walt and Roy Disney. By starting out with a simple black and white animation with no sound to 3D animation with synchronized voices and music, Disney has changed the whole course of animation in the film industry. Starting out as Laugh-O-Gram productions, Disney has evolved and come a large way in the business view as they started off as a company only creating to now be a company that owns other multiple companies like Miramax, Marvel, Touchstone and many more. This is just one example of how large Disney has become and how it has impacted on the world of media.

The first noted animation with sound, which was also the debut of loveable children’s character Mickey Mouse, was the short film in 1928 “Steamboat Willie”. This had a massive impact on the animation industry as it was something new that nobody had seen before and gave more of a story to the animated films made after. This however made Sullivan and Messmer’s “Felix the Cat” look out dated causing them to move, unwillingly, into sound production.

The first animation with colour was a series, “Silly Symphony”, made up of shorts that debuted with the short called “Flowers and Trees”. This opened up a new revolution in animated films by using Technicolor as it was around this time where more and more people would go to the cinema to specifically watch the short animation at the start of the feature film being played.  After the invention of colour in animation, black and white films like Laurel and Hardy, Michael Powell’s “Peeping Tom” were re-released with added colour into the films using the same technique.

Disney is also responsible or creating the first ever animated full-length feature film that was the 1937 film “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. This was the start of a completely new type of film that had then opened up a new world of film and cinema.

Disney has influenced many different companies in the animation industry, from Pixar Studio’s to Studio Ghibli. As Disney was one of the first animation companies they had created techniques, which had been used in many animations years after. An example of this is the same cel technique of the characters for hand drawn animation against a background that they had used in “Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs”. 31 years later the film “The Beatles Yellow Submarine” used the same style and technique to capture the imagination and fantasy of the music and story of the Yellow Submarine and Sgt. Peppers lonely Hearts Club.

Another company that was running at the same time as Disney was the well known company Warner Brothers. The creator of the hit animated show Looney Tunes, Warner Brothers had been influenced and followed the same pattern as Disney for example creating characters that are iconic and well known like Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny and many more. 

However the famous characters of the Looney Tunes group have stayed in the 2D animation whereas Disney have now moved on to their first 3D animated film, after the great success from Disney’s company Pixar, in 2005 with the film “Chicken Little”. With high hopes for “Chicken Little” from knowing the success that animation studio DreamWorks had gained with 3D animated films like “Shrek” and “Shark Tale” their dreams were fallen when the film did not make such an impact as thought. It was only in 2010 when Disney tried again with the film “Tangled” which had a larger hit on the film box office.

By being partner companies with a smaller company, films have started to merge together. An example of this is Studio Ghibli’s character Totoro from the 1988 film “My Neighbor Totoro” was featured in the Disney Pixar film “Toy Story 3”. This shows how animation companies are starting to work together and using each other’s animation technique. 

Aardman

Aardman Studios. 

Aardman studio’s is a company that creates animation films using 

the well-known technique of stop-motion. Using this technique 

Aardman has produced the fun memorable animated characters, 

Wallace and Gromit, and the hilarious public voiced Creature 

Comforts. The man responsible for these movie and TV hits is 

animator/director Nick Parker. In 1985 Nick Parker joined Aardman 

studios where he worked on the animation of the show Pee-Wee’s 

Playhouse. 

Aardman studios use claymation, which is stop motion animation that is made out of 

clay. To which there are many different job roles that are involved. A few of the jobs 

that are involved are Director and Producer, Art Directors, Animators, Editors, Model 

Makers, Sculptors, Painters and many more. 

Job Roles 

Director: The director is in charge and looks over every 

department within the process of making the film. 

However, with some films like ‘Wallace and Gromit in 

the Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ there are two directors 

who are Nick Park and Steve Box. Both directors would 

have put their minds together to come up with ideas and 

work as partners to produce the finished product. For 

example, they would talk about shot’s that they want 

within the film and then they would work on that shot 

together and expand their ideas to achieve the shot, as they both would want. 

Producer: A Producer is the person who would put money into the film and 

sometimes help by inputting their ideas into the film. For example, the producer on 

the Aardman TV series, Julie Lockhart, would have helped put money towards what 

she felt needed the money. If she had thought that the show needed more 

advertisement she would talk to the filmmakers and come to an agreement with them 

to put money and her own ideas to get the advertising in production. 

Art Director: The art director of Aardman would be the person in charge of things 

like the set design and the model makers. Looking over, keeping a watch and 

organizing groups like the painters, model makers, sculptures, set designers and more 

the art director has a large reasonability as they need to get the production of arts 

ready on time for filming.

Animator: An animator is a person who shoots each frame of the animated film. The animator for Wallace and Gromit the curse of the were-rabbit, Will Becher will have to film and take shots of every frame of the film so when they are put together and played through it is as if it's one continuos shot.

Editor: An editor of a film is in charge of putting all the of the footage together to produce a final film. The editors, in Aardmans case David McCormick, will look at each frame and of and place them together in the correct order to make up the final cut of the movie. 

Interview Questions post

What was your favorite interview and why?

David Frost interviews Richard Nixon because it is about a well known subject that Frost goes into detail with his questions that he gets answer for the public which would not be known if he didn’t ask them questions.

In which interview was the funniest response and the question that prompted it?

Interview with the band Murdrdolls by Kerrang where drummer/guitarist Joey Jordison walks out in response to the question “as you’re fans of everything horror, are you looking forward to the new twilight movie?”

Which interview gave the most emotional response?

The interview that was the most emotional was an interview with Sid Wilson, DJ of the band Slipknot, where he talks about the intro track and what it was. He talks about how it was just after his grandfather died, at the end of recording the album and how he went into the studio and made a hard hitting 59 second intro track.

What was your least favorite interview and why?

The interview I disliked the most was one with Jeremy Paxman and Dizzee Rascal. I did not like this, as interviewee Dizzee Rascal had not done any research on the subject matter before the interview. His questions were not open answers and he was not sure on what to say so he tried to promote his music of hip-hop rather than talk about politics.

What was the best interview question and why?

The best question I listened to was during the Frost/Nixon interview where David Frost proposed the question about Richard Nixon saying something to the public about everything that he had put the people of America through. I like this, as the answer he got was a question from Richard Nixon asking what Frost would like to hear him say. This allowed David frost to say things that he personally thought and was not written down on a card.

Which was the worst question in an interview and why?

The worst question in an interview was one during the Jeremy Paxman and Dizzee Rascal interview and was “Do you believe in political parties in Britain?” I feel that this is a bad question, as it does not open up for an answer, to which Rascal simply replied, “Yes, I do believe in them”.

Who is your favorite interviewer and why?

David frost is my favorite interviewer as he asks personal questions which get detailed answers and gets to know what the viewer wants to know. 

Documentary Genres

Interactive

An interactive documentary is a documentary in which the 

majority of the time the filmmaker is involved and on screen. 

Interactive documentaries are often a personal to the 

filmmaker/director themselves, which explains the reasoning of 

why they are on screen in the majority of interactive 

documentaries. A perfect example of this is the film 

‘Religulous’ which involves the director himself Bill Maher 

traveling to find out about and take on the current state of world 

religion. 

Expository

The genre of an expository documentary is a very factual style and 

mainly used for history or nature documentaries. These 

documentaries are uses evidence and information to prove 

something or educate and inform the viewer on the subject matter 

with help from a narrator giving details to explain and teach as 

such. The documentary TV series ‘Planet Earth’ does this very well 

as, narrated by Sir David Attenborough, it gives information and 

hard evident facts about the global overview of different habitats on 

earth. 

Observational 

An observational documentary where the film 

will follow and observe a person, event, or 

even a group of people and what they do. 

With no narration the story of the 

documentary is told through the visuals that 

the audience is observing. ‘Anywhere But 

Home’ is a documentary that follows the 

band Evanescence as they show their life 

whilst on tour.

Performative 

This is a documentary that is meant to make the viewers 

feel tension. By using recreations and some archive 

footage of events the majority of performative 

documentaries are structured as a drama. Having 

interviews with people from the event and experts helps to 

give the sense of drama through out as the audience is 

hearing it from the people who have experienced it first 

hand. A great example of this is the documentary 

‘Touching The Void’. A film about mountain climbers 

conquering the west face of Siula Grande with interviews of the climbers talking 

about the events that have happened and deadly risks they had to face. 

Essayistic

With a very simple structure, the essayistic genre is a documentary that is set out like an essay as if someone is explaining rather than showing the audience. Formed from personal events and opinions on a chosen subject the documentary, however still including the facts f the matter, is there more to educate rather for the sake of filming. An example of this style of genre is the Channel4 TV series ‘The Story Of Film: An Odyssey ’. This shows director Mark Cousins going through the history of film with facts, and his own opinions on the matter and personal events that have happened to him. 

Experimental

Stopmotion Mediums

Claymation:

WWW: I liked using clay as I could mould it into anything I wanted and easily create things which I could not using other mediums. i.e. a turtle in clay is easier than making a turtle out of Lego.

EBI: The only EBI I would say is that it is time consuming, as you have to make the characters, props, and settings whereas other mediums you can have them pre-made. 

Lego:
WWW: I liked the fact that, unlike the claymation, it was not time consuming. this was due to the fact that the objects and the people were already made. I do enjoy the image in this animation and how it looks if it was as smooth as any other animation.

EBI: The faults I have found with this is that it is much harder to control and move the characters which makes the film look jumpy, and although they are made for you, if you wanted a character to look a specific way, it will be hard to.