Introduction

Before proceeding with the research discussion, I would like to ask what part of the development of 3D animation has been the most significant in terms of enhancement? Is it the story? Probably not. Since the invention of cinema, many great films have been produced, but the stories of these great films have not made a significant leap forward over time, rather many of the classic films of the era have been difficult to surpass, so I don’t think it is the story that has improved the most over the years. So, is it the performance of characters in 3D animation that has improved the most over the years? Neither do I think so, although many 3D software controller plug-ins are getting smarter and smarter, and there are many new devices that can capture human action and import it into the computer for modification, but without exception the character performances and movements have to be manually adjusted in a more subtle way, and the new animated films nowadays are not fundamentally different from the early Pixar 3D animated films, because all the patterns of movement and performance experience is written down in the ‘The Animator’s Survival Kit’. So, rendering and VFX are the biggest changes in 3D animation in all these years? I think yes, hardware enhancements and advances in rendering software have brought huge advances and developments to 3D animation, and below I will talk about the impact of advances in rendering on the development of 3D animation.

Research into Pixar’s rendering quality changes through the years

Now that we have spoken of 3D animation, we must not bypass the originator of its development, Pixar Animation Studios. The reason for this is that Pixar’s animated shorts are not only excellent, but they are also a window for Pixar to showcase its hard work ahead of its time, occasionally releasing short previews of feature-length animated films as a warm-up, so Pixar’s animated shorts are the best reference for us to study the progress of 3D animation over the years.

Where did Pixar get its iconic little table lamp for the opening credits? The answer is the 1986 luxo JR. Many people think that this short film is the earliest Pixar animation work, so much so that it has become an important reason for the current Pixar logo, but arguably not really, as two years earlier, in 1984, Pixar had already made a film called The Adventures of André & Wally B., the first fully 3D animation, but if you look closely you will find that the company that appears at the end of the film is not Pixar, but Lucas, as the Wikipedia profile of André & Wally B. ends with the statement produced by Lucasfilm Ltd., that was because the original Pixar team was called The Graphics Group, a division of Lucasfilm at the time, which was later renamed Pixar and then spun off as a separate company in 1986. So André & Wally B. is sort of the debut film of the original Pixar team before they became independent, and in just those two years we come to In contrast to luxo JR, it is clear that Pixar has algorithmically solved the problem of rendering the projections of the characters after they have been lit, and that the projections have a level of reality and fiction.

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In 1988, Pixar released another tin toy animated short film, in which Pixar was able to differentiate between different materials on the characters, and the rendering was much improved, with smooth surfaces as well as rough hats and drum hammers on the characters. The toy theme of the film suggests that this short is probably the idea behind toy story

.In 2000, Pixar presented For the Brids, a short film that showed a huge improvement in quality and rendering, with more facets in the character models, more detail in the mapping, and a focus on hair development, from a few strands to the many faceted feathers that are now a huge upgrade.

When we add the 2003 animated film Boundi to the analysis, it is clear that the animal’s hair has become more detailed and realistic in 2003, and that in 2002 Pixar also produced a Monsters Inc. Short film with Sully’s hair looking like a stuffed toy.

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From ’05 to ’15, Pixar continued to produce independent experimental shorts, as well as making short menus or trailers for many of the films that were released, and Pixar has won many Oscars for best animation through feature animation, while short animation has often been included in the Oscars. Focusing on the short films of 2016, Pixar has produced a very impressive work in terms of both rendering and VFX, namely Piper.

The resulting sand particles were simulated in Houdini’s particle solver, creating a fine layer of sand at the top of the mesh. This result was achieved by a combination of rejection techniques including camera sharpness, diagonal and distance, resulting in a variance of density to coarse sand flakes for optimum efficiency.

The water and foam used Houdini’s FLIP solver. For timing, the team animated simple wave shapes, from which they extracted the leading edge curve and encoded direction. They then built the FX wave shapes and adjusted the thickness based on flow. From there, they sourced the points and ran a low-res FLIP simulations. Lastly, a frustum-padded area is used to run high-res FLIP simulations using velocities from low-res pass.

And because sand renders are prone to exceptionally high levels of noise and take a huge amount of time to optimise for rendering, and the team at piper were happy to use the new RenderMan Denoise in order to eliminate path tracing noise. Traditionally, refractive surfaces and heavy DOFs require a lot of extra sampling to fully clean up, but Denoiser allows the teams to really push these techniques without fear of unnecessary noise or impossibly long render times. That’s why we still look back at the short film in 2016 with such stunning images.

During 2012, a paperman was also produced by parent company Walt Disney Studios, which examined the possibility of combining 2D and 3D, resulting in a stunning picture, and in 2014, a warm and touching feast was produced again, also using the Cel Rending expression technique. The combination of the old and the new is admirable, allowing the possibilities of animation to be shown in an infinite number of ways, and both animations are much more warm and full of emotion in their scripts thanks to Disney’s strong background in screenwriting

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Is rendering the most important condition for successful animation?

Is it just a case of the more sophisticated the graphics, the more stunning the VFX effects and the more constant exploration that makes for great film and animation? I suppose not. As we said before, although rendering has been the most influential technique in animation and even film in recent decades, if we go back to the essence of animation, which is also to say story, I think that whether it is a game, a film or an advertisement, the most important thing is often not the rendering but the story itself. In imdb and Rotten Tomatoes, I saw that the emoji movie did not score as well as it should have, with a shockingly low score of 3.3 on imdb, and this is not a small company film, it was produced by Columbia Pictures and Sony Pictures Animation.

The movie has a lot of luxurious voice acting, the special effects and the characters are all very good, but why the low score? The reason is the script. So, it proves my point that it’s not as if a beautifully rendered picture can overshadow a script that doesn’t work, but it’s not unreasonable for Hollywood directors and investors to take the script very seriously when the script is so cheesy and implausible that it collapses.

Summary

Finally, the development of animation from the end of the 20th century to the present day would still not have been possible without the high speed of the Internet, the computers we use thanks to the improvement of processes and the development of hardware to be able to get high speed arithmetic, and also without the development of software that engineers have been working on. The creativity of designers and artists would not have been possible without the engineers who constantly optimised the engine and gave it more functionality. Although 3D animation does not have a long history of development, the advancement of 3D animation cannot be separated from the enhancement of rendering and VFX, comparing the first feature-length 3D animated storytelling, we do not need to compare to clearly perceive how stunning the visual effects of the current stage of 3D animation films are, many props and backgrounds can be faked, yes, because of the advancement of rendering, many live-action science fiction films and In the past, if we wanted to use creatures or props that did not exist on earth, we often had to make small props and shoot them in the wrong place to make impossible effects. It’s hard to tell what’s a special effect and what’s a real shot, but this is a sign that advances in rendering have had a profound impact on 3D animation and film, and have driven the exploration of more diverse forms of expression in film and television. I am grateful to have the opportunity to see the different forms of media that can be derived from digital animation in the future.

References

En.wikipedia.org. 2021. The Adventures of André \u0026 Wally B.. [online] Available at: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Adventures_of_Andr%C3%A9_%26_Wally_B.> [Accessed 5 February 2021].

Pixar Animation Studios. 2021. Pixar Animation Studios. [online] Available at: <https://www.pixar.com/luxo-jr> [Accessed 5 February 2021].

Pixar Animation Studios. 2021. Pixar Animation Studios. [online] Available at: <https://www.pixar.com/luxo-jr> [Accessed 5 February 2021].

Pixar Animation Studios. 2021. Pixar Animation Studios. [online] Available at: <https://www.pixar.com/luxo-jr> [Accessed 5 February 2021].

Renderman.pixar.com. 2021. Stories | Piper. [online] Available at: <https://renderman.pixar.com/stories/piper> [Accessed 5 February 2021].

Last week focused on understanding the story curve and narrative structure, so this week it’s time to take a closer look at how the story, and the characters, move forward in a film. I will discuss three main points below by analysing three films.

• How the character develops throughout the story.

• An analysis of how the main characters evolve.

•An analysis of how the characters drive the story.

No.1 Reservoir Dogs

This is a debut film by Quentin, recognised by Chinese audiences, and is called ‘Reservoir Dogs’. At the bottom of its poster is the phrase: Every dog has his day. I interpret this phrase as “destiny” also, it reminds me of what we know as ‘Rashomon’.

At the beginning of the film, Quentin brings all of the film’s protagonists on stage for a scene about “running away from the bill”, in which we see a glimpse into the lives of the six robbers and get a first glimpse of each character’s personality and way of speaking and behaving, and by mastering these details, we are able to analyse these characters in greater depth.

In this long situational conversation, Mr. Pink should arguably be the first person whose character can be confirmed: cunning, deceitful and self-serving. And in the subsequent episodes it just goes to show that I was right in my analysis.

After the story of “who wants to run away from the bill”, a road show ensues.

The most impressive thing about this road scene is not the blood-covered Mr. Orange, but the fast panning that characterises the hand-cranked camera. What is most impressive is not the blood-covered Mr. Orange, but rather the quick panning of the hand-cranked camera – using the instability of the camera to create an equally unstable atmosphere, which has the great advantage of being emotionally charged.

Similar to this kind of emotionally charged shot are the quick push and pull used in the homage to Shaw’s kung fu films in ‘Kill Bill 2‘ and the parallel montage of hallucinatory images intersecting with real images that occurs in the film ‘Natural Born Killers’.

In the subsequent episodes, the story is also not told flatly as it is told, but rather the whole story is stitched together through the characters’ perspectives and backgrounds. A total of three more complete sub-chapters appear in the story: Mr. White, Mr. Blond and Mr. Orange, and the story is fleshed out by bringing the historical background of these three people to the audience.

This is very much like the narrative structure of ‘Rashomon’ that I mentioned at the beginning of the article, where ‘Rashomon’ is organised and stitched together into a complete story through the multiple perspectives of the woodcutter, the husband, the wife and the robber. In the same way, Falling Dogs builds its story in the same way, with the slight difference that the multi-perspective narrative in Reservoir Dogs’ is based on the language of the camera, which is objective and easy to comprehensible. The multiple perspectives in ‘Rashomon’, on the other hand, are based on the subjective narratives of the characters and are relatively subjective and complex.

This structure makes the film complex and interesting, not only in terms of banter and violence, but also in terms of the complex structure that accompanies it, which naturally makes the film more tense.

In this film, Mr. Orange is arguably the most inconspicuous person in the film, and he is not given much to do. Before the six men clash, Mr. Orange is already seriously wounded and dying, so the others do not suspect him as an undercover cop in a failed jewellery heist.

As the film continues to move forward, the story develops to the point where Mr. Orange shoots and kills Mr. Blonde to save a kidnapped police officer, and we are able to learn that Mr. Orange is the undercover agent who was never found in any way.

And it is only afterwards, when the film introduces us to the story of Mr. Orange, that we really begin to understand the true identity and purpose of Mr. Orange. The background and identity of each person’s historical experience affects personal behaviour and thought, while current behaviour and thought is a subjective resolution to the dramatic conflict created in the past.

In the film, Mr. White and Mr. Blond’s story is the one we know, and here the film offers us the equivalent of a God’s-eye view where we know the historical background of the three men in a way that the other characters in the play don’t, and the film shows us just the story of what happens in the context of such conflict.

In the first half of the film, we can basically rule out three people first: one is Joe, one is Eddie, and one is Kim, and these three, as the leading jewellery robbers, would not have called the police.

So, who else is there? Mr. Pink and Mr. Orange, and Mr. White. Mr. Brown and Mr. Blue are dead and will not join the discussion.

Given Mr White’s deep friendship with Joe, Mr White is very little suspect, and likewise, Mr Pink is selfish and wouldn’t make such a stupid move as calling the police, even if he wanted to keep the money to himself.

So, if there is an undercover agent, Mr. Pink is the most suspicious. The film also gives this answer at the end, except that all the Dogs have fallen into the water.

Who is the protagonist?

Flashbacks present characters, but hardly inspire them. Indeed too many flashbacks cause a ‘problem’ with the film, the characters are so compressed that they lack a transformative arc and none of them change qualitatively as a result of the incident. The story keeps moving forward, but the characters seem to be standing still. Just when someone is having intense self-doubt about what they are doing, the story ends there. Fortunately, Quentin does a pretty good job of portraying a cast of characters, and he doesn’t need to convey his themes through a complete and total character transformation. The opening table scene might scare a lot of people, with eight people coming on at once, and probably not being able to count them. But in reality there are only six of the main characters, three of whom are major and three of whom are minor.

Quentin as Mr. Brown and the older Mr. Blue are pure walk-on, leaving just four people involved in the action. Mr. White and Mr. Orange become the hardened brothers. It seems that Mr. Orange looks like a rash man who has lost his mind from being shot and is afraid that he will die as a result. Mr. White is inspired by a strong sense of righteousness and he believes that he is responsible for Mr. Orange’s injury, so he vows to keep him alive. Mr. Pink is very scene-stealing, as he is a maverick in the restaurant scene by refusing to pay the tip, and his presence after the accident drives the plot. He’s a bit selfish, but there’s no denying that he’s incredibly perceptive, able to count the number of cops in the nick of time and reasonably analyse that there’s a mole.

Then there are the three secondary characters. Joe “Baldy” Cabot is the man behind the scenes, who initiated the whole heist. His son Eddie “The Good Guy” coordinates the operation and looks like a bad-ass black kid, but he’s actually not a bad guy at all. Mr. King is an old acquaintance of Joe and his son, having stood in for Joe in prison and acting in a very tough way. He is supposed to have killed more people than any other character in the story, he just doesn’t kill anyone in front of the camera.

Different from a crime film with a clear protagonist like ‘Kill Bill‘, ‘Reservoir Dogs’ makes it difficult to define who the real protagonist is. Even if you exclude the three secondary characters, White, Orange and Pink all have a reason to be the protagonist. One of the main reasons for this is that the film has several different points of view. The different flashbacks are told from the perspective of different characters, which reduces the audience’s sense of identification with the characters and has the advantage of focusing more on the story. As the points of view are somewhat ‘objective’, it is difficult for the audience to identify with one person in a uniform way. Some find Mr. White righteous and admire him; some find Mr. Orange sad and pitiful and sympathise with him; some find Mr. Pink reasonable and support him. Quentin does not favour one person over another, and every audience can have their own Hamlet. If we had to choose one person, it would have to be Mr. White. Firstly, in the cast and crew list, Mr. White is the first to be introduced and the ending focuses on him; secondly, in the opening restaurant scene, Mr. White summarises the fragmented dialogue on both sides and he is sitting in the middle, perhaps signifying that he is the central character; thirdly, his transformative arc (self-doubt) is a strong hint of the theme.

Development of the story

The main story of the film is that of Freddy – aka Mr. Orange – who goes undercover. The story develops linearly in five stages.

I. Freddy goes undercover.
II. Freddy is involved in a diamond robbery and is accidentally shot and kills innocent people by reflex.
III. Mr. White – also known as Larry – and Mr. Pink and others work out who the police undercover agent is.
IV. Freddy shoots Mr. Blonde – aka Vic Vega, the brother of Vincent Vega, played by John Travolta in Lowlife – to stop him from killing police officer Marvin. The final melee is triggered by the killing of policeman Marvin.
V. Melee.

The important points in these five paragraphs that affect the order of the narrative are
The shock of Freddy shooting people in the second paragraph.
The suspense of “who is the undercover” in the third paragraph.
The reversal of Freddy’s shooting of Mr. Blond in the fourth paragraph.

Obviously, the suspense in the third paragraph and the reversal in the fourth paragraph would both be ineffective if the story were arranged in a normal timeline. Quentin has arranged them as ‘three, four, one, two, five’ to maximise the dramatic effect of each section.

But aren’t there many other ways of arranging these five sections?

Yes, theoretically there are many ways of arranging them, but after studying them you will find that Quentin’s arrangement is the most scientific. Firstly, there is the suspense. The robbers escape the crime scene to an abandoned warehouse and start discussing who is undercover with the police. I was thinking this was going to be a Twelve Angry Men style film. The suspense is so brilliantly set up that the mini-climax that a good script is scientifically supposed to present around the 30th minute is not needed. The first hour is held together almost entirely by this suspense – and of course the ‘what filthy, disgusting cunt has shit all over the toilet’, and the great performances of the actors.

Of the five stories, it is the second and third paragraphs that retain this suspense. To create suspense, only the third paragraph can be used in the opening. Because the second paragraph requires the audience to know that Freddy is undercover, otherwise they would not be able to experience the shock, pain, anguish and helplessness of being shot by the people and then killed. If Freddy’s identity had been revealed after the second paragraph, the audience would not have felt the emotions as strongly – for the same reason that many of them did not even realise what a hero policeman Marvin was. Marvin knows from the beginning that the undercover officer is lying next to him, but he never reveals the truth even after being tortured. But when they see him being tortured, when they see him being terrified, they don’t know that he knows the truth, so they don’t realise his spirit of sacrifice for his life. Unfortunately, the reversal effect posed by the need for Freddy to come forward later prevents the fact that ‘Marvin knows’ from being revealed in advance. Having decided to use the third paragraph in the opening, the fourth paragraph must be used, because it is the most dramatic in revealing Freddy’s identity as a policeman. That leaves paragraphs one, two and five. Can the fifth paragraph, which is the ending, really only be placed at the end? There is no such hard and fast rule anywhere. Look at the ending of Fragments of Memory, which is not a linear ending, and isn’t it great too? So why did Quentin have to put the fifth paragraph at the end? Firstly, because the end of the fourth paragraph leaves a cliffhanger. The audience now knows that as soon as Joe Cabot enters the warehouse, the police will immediately strike. If the fifth paragraph had appeared immediately, the suspense would have lost time to build up. On the other hand, the fifth paragraph needs the build-up from the first and second paragraphs to familiarise the audience with the emotional connection between Mr. White and Freddy. So, how could the first and second paragraphs be arranged between the fourth and fifth paragraphs? Is it better to have ‘one, two’ or ‘two, one’? Obviously, ‘one, two’ would allow the first paragraph to warm up the second, while ‘two, one’ would not have a similar effect. So, the most scientific choice is already before us. Three, four, one, two, five.

Politics & medias relationship

What is the relationship between politics and the media? Do they influence each other, do they exploit each other, or are they…

As students in the media field, I think it is important to analyse the media industry in order to better understand the relationship between politics and the media and its influence. Since the birth of the media, it has been changing into different forms to spread in our lives, for example, from the old way of spreading information through newspapers and television, to the mainstream media propaganda now becoming short videos, movies and online social media, etc. Although there are many changes in the propaganda methods, people’s spiritual culture cannot be separated from the media, which also leads to the media becoming the best way of political propaganda. This has led to the media becoming the best method of political propaganda.

•Games 

Just Cause is a third-person shooter game released on 29 October 2006 by Eidos Interactive and is the first installment in the entire Just Cause series. The game itself has a political theme. In this game you take on the role of Rico Rodriguez, an American spy who has been ordered to go to a nuclear crisis in South America, where there are rumours that terrorists have deployed a large number of nuclear weapons on an island in an attempt to overthrow the local government and even target nuclear missiles at the United States in an attempt to create a crisis (like a remake of the Cuban missile crisis).

The Call of Duty series is a world-renowned IP, with each main generation set in a previous historical arena, bringing in the war between countries, and what makes this game great is not only the exquisite combat feel, but also the rich and exciting plot, from the patriotic game that promotes patriotism in the first generation, to the cruelty of war and human frailty that is also expressed in the core of the game. The game has been released in almost 16 versions. The game has been out for almost 16 editions, and from 12’s Call of Duty: Black Ops 3, which takes place in a future world where many of society’s fears have become a reality: environmental changes and energy shortages leading to war in various countries, it is clear that Call of Duty has begun to design the future stage of history and to think about profound issues such as protecting the environment and human survival, allowing gamers to be brought into these political as well as philosophical reflections.

•Film 

Politics can be hidden in the media for propaganda, and the media can also influence politics in turn. The famous Korean film ‘Silenced’ was released in September 2011 in South Korea and caused a huge response. Even President Lee Myung-bak saw the film. Based on the sexual violence that took place at a school for the deaf and deaf-blind in Gwangju between 2000 and 2004, Silenced depicts the tragedy that occurred during that time and the efforts of the school’s teachers and human rights campaigners to uncover the dark secrets behind it.

Silenced is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by Korean author Kong Je-young, based on a real-life case that took place at Gwangju Inho Special Education School, a four-hour drive from Seoul.

The film triggered a series of legal amendments. Against a backdrop of strong public opinion, on 28 October 2011, the Korean National Assembly, with 208 members present, passed the Sexual Assault Prevention and Control Amendment Act (also known as the Silenced Act) with 207 votes in support and one abstention.

•TV 

Yes, Prime Minister is a pungent and witty script based on current events, the European debt crisis, the economic downturn and Scottish independence. The story still stars Prime Minister Jim Hacker , Cabinet Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby and Bernard Woolley, the Prime Minister’s personal secretary, except that the three leads The story still stars Prime Minister Jim Hacker , Cabinet Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby and Bernard Woolley, the Prime Minister’s personal secretary, except that the three leads are replaced by three veteran actors who have appeared in the stage production of Yes, Prime Minister. It is a funny political drama with a lot of dark humour, which makes it very entertaining to watch.

There is also a very good TV series, House of Cards, which is definitely an excellent political drama that cannot be ignored, and even then President Barack Obama could not help but praise the show for its authenticity and brilliance.

House of Cards The show follows a cold-blooded and ruthless US Congressman and his equally ambitious wife as they work their way to power in the White House in Washington. The main character, Frank Underwood, is the Majority Whip of the US House of Representatives, a calculating career politician who, convinced that the newly elected US President and his staff have betrayed him, vows to oust this President from office and he unleashes a series of deployments by any means necessary.

The popularity of this Netflix home-produced series at the time set Netflix on the path to producing its own series in addition to licensing it for streaming, and this original series that Netflix tested the waters for was a successful first shot at introducing a new model of profitability for the company. The importance of House of Cards to Netflix cannot be overstated, as Netflix chose the “ta-dum” sound to accompany the animated opening credits, an idea that some sources say came from Frank’s knocking on the table in Netflix’s original hit House of Cards.

•Advertising 

There are many different forms of advertising, from pop-ups on social media, to advertisements on bus stops, and most often, television commercials. As video can be created to convey many meanings, it is very common to see advertisements with political messages, such as those promoting human rights and LGBT groups.

We are not discussing whether such a phenomenon is wasteful and whether political advertising will lead people to make wrong judgments, but we are discussing advertising as a medium which is bound to become As long as there are interests, even extreme political advertisements can exist on TV and online platforms. I think in the future, the regulation of advertisements will definitely grow up again in all kinds of misjudgments.

•Online streaming 

Online streaming comes in many forms, the earliest we used to be exposed to was live radio streaming, which in addition to being the fastest way to access news and information, also allowed us to listen to sports commentary and even major speeches by politicians, such as The King’s Speech, a film about Prince Albert, Duke of York, who suffered from a severe stammer after the death of King George V and the abdication of Edward VIII in 1936. Prince Albert, Duke of York, is appointed King of England at risk, and later, with the help of speech therapist Lenore Rogge, George VI overcomes his handicap to deliver an inspiring speech before World War II, a time when the nation was exposed to and informed about politics through radios.

Most live broadcasts nowadays are broadcast live on TV, and also live on online platforms, where presenters are able to often fight over different political views or the parties they support, but of course this is limited to individual special channels. Daily live coverage presenters usually do not report with an obvious political agenda, unless it involves core national interests and touches on the interests of certain groups, then it is inevitable that presenters are likely to be scripted by their leaders for conscious political coverage to guide people not to offend national interests or group interests.

Product placement in film

Nike shoe ad embedded in ‘Forrest Gump‘

The pinnacle of implant advertising is to embed the values and culture of a brand, and there is no doubt that Nike has done just that in Forrest Gump. “Run, Forrest, run!” As a teenager born with cerebral palsy with an IQ of 75, he is obsessed with running and faces his destiny by constantly running and keeps getting better and better at marathons, eventually running all over America in Nike shoes. As the main character in the film, the concept that Forrest Gump upholds is the same as the theme that Nike wants to express. Forrest Gump keeps running in the film, making it unforgettable for everyone, and as soon as Forrest Gump’s running shoes are mentioned, one immediately responds that they are a pair of Nike shoes, so much so that this film gives people the wrong impression – is this really not a Nike commercial? With Forrest Gump, Nike has achieved value penetration, tying its values to its cultural work and effectively communicating them to the hundreds of millions of viewers around the world who love the film, as well as integrating its products with its thematic core.

Breakfast at Tiffany’s” with a Tiffany jewellery ad

The pinnacle of implant advertising in cinema history is the divine manipulation of Tiffany jewellery in Breakfast at Tiffany’s, and it is indescribably fabulous. In the dawn light, Audrey Hepburn steps out of a yellow taxi in an elegant black dress and strolls into a Manhattan Avenue window, gazing at Tiffany’s jewellery to the soundtrack of the film’s decades-long hit “Moon River”. This classic scene is still played on a loop around the world as Tiffany’s own classic advertisement.

FFedEx in ‘Cast Away’

Cast Away is a great film with the main character working for FedEx, which appears 51 times, plus the Wilson brand ball even becomes a character in the film. The advertisements in this film are very well integrated into the plot and become part of the film.

Canned spinach in Popeye the Sailor

As a classic cartoon that has become popular all over the world, you must have imagined eating a can of spinach like Popeye, and gaining unbeatable strength to punish the evil and defeat the good. In this cartoon, spinach is Popeye’s most important prop, so why do you need to eat spinach to gain divine strength? In fact, the plot was intentional, as many children in the US at the time were severely deficient in iron, and spinach was one of the best iron-supplementing vegetables, so it was heavily promoted by the US Department of Education, and then a Texas canning company, BOBO, sponsored the publication of Popeye, which sparked a global craze for spinach, almost pushing this otherwise common vegetable off the market. The combination of a great animated setting and global popularity took the spinach from ‘commoner’ to ‘internet sensation’ status, and that’s the power of an ad.

How I see the influence of the media

•Politics

We discussed earlier how politics can influence media communication, but in fact it is an interplay, as media coverage and communication can sometimes inadvertently create and manufacture views that are likely to be amplified by those who have an agenda to promote their political views. So I think that apart from politicians trying to guide people’s ideas through the media, people also use social media to oppose politicians’ ideas and form organisations, but there is no way of knowing whether this endless debate and discussion will lead to peaceful outcomes and acceptance. This is my personal opinion.

•Consumerism

We all know that with the development of industry and the rapid rise of manufacturing, countries around the world have become ‘manufacturing car factories’. To give a simple example, Apple has a large number of production plants in China, in India, etc. The supply chain has been perfected so that the cost of Apple’s products is spread across countless devices. We know that Apple’s products are very expensive, so why are electronic devices that do not cost so much able to sell so expensive and so well? Apart from employing excellent engineering designers, the most important thing is that the company spends money on advertising, social media, the launch of the iphone, its advertising is undoubtedly a model for the industry, an example of excellence, you can imagine how much Apple invests in PR and advertising, it is this investment that makes people want to buy, people watch YouTube mobile phone Reviews, year after year, people are prone to consumerism. The same applies to other electronic products, such as computer equipment, fast-moving clothing brands like ZARA, where clothes are made all over the world, so we can say that the biggest reason for the prevalence of consumerism nowadays is that it is easier than ever to promote in the media, because of the development of the internet, and secondly, because of the feedback from users, which makes products more perfect and gives people the desire to replace them. At the same time, costs are getting lower and people are able to buy better products at lower prices. In short, consumerism is a trend that will continue for a long time, unless there is an economic crisis or a war.

•Ideology

Does the media only bring us politics? Of course not, politics is only hidden in a small part of the media and life, unless there is a big change in society and politics jumps to second or even first place in life. So it is very important to maintain a peaceful society where people naturally don’t discuss more political topics but rather three meals a day or excursions. The role of the media is to bring different ideas to different people, process them and then spread them widely in society, so what are the good media communications? For example, the protection of the environment. Today our planet is getting hotter in the summer and colder in the winter, the melting of the ice in Antarctica is becoming more and more of a problem, leading to a rise in the global water table and the flooding that has escalated and affected mankind in recent years. I think the role of the media should be to promote these positive aspects of the common destiny of mankind, not to fill the headlines with violence and absurdity in exchange for clicks, which is against our conscience.

•Evil corporations

Speaking of corporations, we know that any corporation is like a small country with its own set of systems and values, and then corporations will often do things that people find mind-boggling or even EVIL for their own benefit. I still remember clearly when I was watching the TV series ‘Prison Break’, in which the corporations were able to manipulate presidents and even assassins to assassinate people who were in the way of the corporations and block all negative media information in order to keep their grey interest deals from being exposed, I believe it is still partly in line with reality, because when people’s power and wealth When a person reaches a certain level of power and wealth, he has the means to achieve whatever he wants through his connections, and the law and even morality are at this moment reduced to pieces of paper, easily torn apart by the consortium. In many cases, we do not see the true appearance of black events because the consortia control the media through their power, and those who want to spread the word are likely to be made to disappear by the consortia in some way, for example, in the case of the ‘comfort women’ in Japan, because the right-wingers do not allow these stains to stain their For example, in the case of the ‘comfort women’ incident in Japan, because the right-wingers did not allow these stains to stain their militaristic honour, even if they were true to the historical record, many Japanese scholars who did document and disseminate this were persecuted and threatened, resulting in the Japanese media now being reluctant to report on these matters, and this is where corporations EVIL.

•Current events

Nowadays the media propaganda is most often about the US elections, after all the US is still the world’s number one power and every move the US makes has to attract the attention of the world, especially in the last four years under Trump, a businessman who has never been in politics, which cannot be said to be very successful, he has torn up more treaties, built more walls, made what was a global market economy and globalisation slowly turn into He has torn up more treaties, built more walls and slowly turned what was once a global market economy and globalisation into unilateralism, adding to the tension between the US and the people of the world, so people don’t like Trump, they may even say they hate him. In addition to the election, there is of course the new global coronavirus, which has been the most talked about virus this year, and because of the seriousness of the virus, the media has an obligation and a need to inform people immediately and quickly, so that they can take precautions as soon as possible. However, the fact is that even when the media have communicated the danger of the virus, it has been used as a political excuse to avoid the reality of the epidemic, not to believe that it is a disaster for all mankind, but that it is no different from a normal flu, a government conspiracy, etc., and that many anti-mask groups have gathered. Nowadays, in the United States and in many areas, there is a lack of belief in the scientific method of wearing masks and not moving outside, which has led to this disaster continuing for a year. All the media is sometimes conscious of spreading the word, but it is still up to the people whether they want to believe it or not.

Summary

Today we have analysed the relationship between politics and the media, what kind of influence the media has on people and given an insight into what the media is all about. To sum up people cannot live without media communication and at the same time politics is invisibly present around us, the figuration of politics often needs to be expressed through the media, the light system between them can be said to co-exist with light-hee. As an animation student, in the media production industry, suppose I were to choose a political subject to animate, I think I would choose the future science fiction genre, set in a future country, where race is blurred and the destiny of mankind is linked to a world where the common enemy is ecological degradation and thus the search for a new place to live, I know that such a subject has been filmed in movies, but I would like to focus on portraying and studying the development of human civilisation, can I know there are films that have been made on this subject, but I wanted to focus on the development of human civilisation, and whether it was possible to put aside national and racial stereotypes and focus on the evolution and development of the human race, rather than always discussing stereotypes that have existed for hundreds or thousands of years. But after today’s academic discussion this script is one of the most important animations I would like to do at the moment, and I hope to see a film or TV production on this subject in the future.

The language of the camera

HISTORY

When it comes to the relevance of animation to cinema, one has to mention that in 1826, Joseph Plateau invented the rotary moving image mirror, which was a card with a picture loop painted on the edge with a crack. The viewer holds the card close to a mirror and looks in through the slit as the card rotates. The basic principle is the same as that of film and television, which is that of visual transience.

So it’s just the birth of the moving image you could say it’s animation as well as video, and it was in the Lumière Brothers’ The arrival of a train, although nowadays it looks like a documentary, was quite a sensation at the time, as it was the first time that people were able to see a real scene projected in a projection, a great innovation in human history. At the same time the dynamics of the train moving forward and people waiting for the train unintentionally gave rise to a preliminary lens language, which will be considered in the coming years for its role and appeal.

Animation as a medium therefore has the same communicative nature as film and the language of shots is also common.

In the classroom, the video content mentions the use of lenses, including the choice of scene, how to move the camera, what a long shot is, how to shoot off-axis etc.

Although I have read books on film and television and watched a lot of youtube tutorial videos in the past, reviewing them again still allows me to recognise points that I hadn’t noticed before and where I had been rather neglectful.

Reflections on the future of animation

HISTORY

From Snow White in 1937, Disney’s first feature-length colour animation in the history of animation, to the first three-dimensional animated feature film in 1995, Toy Story by Pixar, these two productions have clearly left one of the most important and indelible marks in the history of animation.

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We find that today, whether it is the two-dimensional animation of Ghibli as the representative of Japan or the three-dimensional animation of Pixar, which we have all become so accustomed to, it is hard to imagine that the release of feature-length animation in colour was such a shock at the time that it showed us how much more exciting life can be given to animation.

TODAY

As an example, the Unreal Engine has caused quite a stir this year with Unreal 5, as the engine’s algorithms are now infinitely close to CG levels!

In the future, it is foreseeable that the production of animation may no longer be limited to hand-drawn or computer-generated animation, which can be captured dynamically in the game through VR and can also obtain realistic visual effects. Comparative green screen special effects animation has been around for years, but just because the technology offers more possibilities and convenience doesn’t mean it will necessarily become mainstream.

So back to the main point – how will creators create and apply new technologies, will they still use traditional camera language, or will they use open interactive storytelling (Netflix has made interactive movies), or will they directly experience VR’s point of view in the first persodirected person, etc. These are all challenges and opportunities presented by technology and innovation.

I cannot help but think of the future of the animation industry in a wonderful way!