Category: Final Major Project & Thesis

This week I had a discussion with my teacher about my dissertation topic and at the end of the class I asked my teacher if the topic was okay, my dissertation topic was called different shots and how lighting guides the audience.
The teacher’s feedback was that the topic was too broad and asked for a narrower scope.
I considered whether I was looking at the shots and lighting of a film, and the teacher contacted me to find out what kind of shots and how the lighting guided the audience.
After thinking about it, I thought I would narrow it down to the idea that different shots and lighting tones reflect different story paths and characterisation.

The topic I want to study is called different lighting and lens for the guidance of the audience, in the study of 3d animation, I am most interested in the understanding of lighting and lens, and learn the most knowledge, but in the exchange with friends I found that few people pay attention to some of the plot, the audience’s understanding of the characters, the character’s personality, etc., are closely related to the lens own lighting, so I want to thesis among others, to explore this point.

I found a number of papers, books that I could use as references.

1. Kennedy, K., & Mercer, R. E. (2002, June). Planning animation cinematography and shot structure to communicate theme and mood. In Proceedings of the 2nd international symposium on Smart graphics (pp. 1-8). ( Available at: https://dl.acm.org/doi/abs/10.1145/569005.569006 )

2. Grodal, T. (2005). Film lighting and mood. Moving image theory: Ecological considerations, 152. ( Available at: https://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=zh-CN&lr=&id=qBLBSSjj1IoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA152&dq=film+lighting+mood&ots=16X3VYYeVz&sig=9Iiiy7JA-SEi6zNggVFOp9H-vzs&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=film%20lighting%20mood&f=falsehttps://books.google.co.uk/books?hl=zh-CN&lr=&id=qBLBSSjj1IoC&oi=fnd&pg=PA152&dq=film+lighting+mood&ots=16X3VYYeVz&sig=9Iiiy7JA-SEi6zNggVFOp9H-vzs&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=film%20lighting%20mood&f=false )

For the direction of the thesis and the choice of topic, at first I always considered whether to choose the direction about technology in short films or about art theory. After asking the teacher’s opinion in class, he suggested not to limit myself only to the project and not to the technology, so I started to think about recent topics about 3d animation, I needed something new and creative, such as animated films as a branch of cinema? I came up with this topic from some articles, but I have a lot of doubts and need to keep refining it later.

Jibaro is an allegorical presentation of the themes of colonisation and aboriginality, misunderstanding and redress.
“Sound” and “water” are the key elements of the film, which support the central idea of the story.
Firstly, the director uses ‘sound’ to create the sounds of nature that represent the indigenous environment.
There are two levels: the first, the nature of flowing water and birdsong, which corresponds to the original state of the indigenous people in the forest.
The second layer is a ‘variation’ of the sounds of nature – the murderous cries of the water demons, attacking the Spanish colonists.
The dress, gesture and ‘shout’ of the water demon are clear indications of the identity of the Siren, born of an ancient legendary culture, distinguishing her from the more ‘theocratic’ Christianity that followed, with its symbolic significance for the ‘ancient and primitive civilisation’. The symbolism of the “ancient and primitive civilisation”.

Water flow, on the other hand, is an extension of sound and is also divided into two levels.
For much of the text, ‘water’ appears as the first level of ‘sound’, the gurgling sound of a river flowing by, and naturally has the same meaning.
Particular attention is paid to the ‘underwater’ sounds: most of them are isolated, almost like what a deaf knight would hear if he lost his hearing. The second layer, however, is the final passage, in which a red river, mixed with bright blood, rushes angrily towards the Spanish deaf knight. This is equated with the cry of the water demon, a furious reckoning with the colonists.
The director sets up three narrative stages in the work, beginning with “the first attack of the Aborigines on the colonists”, progressing to “the misunderstanding of the colonists’ intentions” and finally coming to “the removal of the misunderstanding, the total resistance “. Voice” and “water” are the key tricks that drive the three stages.

• On graduation which area or environment of production do you wish to focus upon and why?

When I graduate, I want to continue my studies in the field of 3D computer animation, I have been learning about 3D computer animation from my undergraduate to postgraduate studies and I love it so much that I will make it my career.

• What skills will you need to attain the standards required for vocational practice?

At the animation stage, the industry would divide it into steps and I would like to focus on developing the camera as well as the lighting part of it, I think I need more expertise knowledge about these two parts and continue to learn and hopefully reach the industry standard.

• How will you showcase your FMP practice for the final shows?

Firstly, for the final project, I would definitely use video expression, and secondly I would want to use techniques in it that have not been used before, such as special effects, and for the story, have some realistic critique.

• Is it important to directly connect the thesis research to your practical work?

I think it is important that the dissertation will lead me to some good teaching references and will help me to summarise and standardise some of my professional knowledge and skills.

• Do you have an area of research you wish to conduct that is unrelated to practical element?

In fact, I would love to study the gap between foreign animation and Chinese animation, not only technically, but also in terms of story and audience orientation. I don’t know if this is considered relevant to the content of my practice, but mainly I would like to study Pixar’s animation, the creativity of the story, the depth.