Part 1 Film Language
The camera
Shot length
As a student of 3D animation, learning lens language is essential. There are many ways to classify lenses, such as fixed lenses and sports lenses according to shooting methods, and so on. In order to facilitate the appreciation and analysis, we divide the “lens language” into five categories according to the scene: long-range, panoramic, medium-range, close-up and close-up. This is an important way of expressing video creation and a basic element of visual language.
Two shot: to show closeness. Sometime In a frame ,we’re looking for each character’s shoulder.
Extreme wide shot: A picture containing the entire subject and the surrounding environment. It is usually used as an introduction to the environment of film and television works, so it is called the widest shot.
Wide shot: A film and television picture that captures the whole body of a character or a small scene, which is equivalent to the landscape in the “stage frame” of a drama or song and dance theater. You can clearly see the characters’ movements and the environment in the panorama.
Medium shot: Commonly known as “seven-point image”, it refers to a shot that takes the part above the calf of a person, or is used to shoot a scene equivalent to this. It is a common scene for performance scenes.
Close up: Refers to taking the film and television pictures above the chest, sometimes also used to show a certain part of the scene.
Extreme close up: Refers to photography or camera capturing objects at a very close distance. Usually, the avatar above the shoulders of the human body is used as a reference for framing, highlighting a certain part of the human body, or corresponding object details, scene details, etc.
Angle
Angle includes Eye level, High level, Low level, Dutch level. Among them, Dutch level is a method I haven’t tried. You can tilt the camera to create a different atmosphere.
Deep of field
Deep of field is divided into Deep focus, Shallow focus, Rack focus, Tilt shift, Telephone lens, Wide angle lens, Fisheye lens. As far as I know, the focal length of the human eye is generally 50mm. In 3D animation, for Extreme wide shot, or wide shot, you can usually use 24mm focal length or lower.
Movement
Movement includes Handhelt, Steadicam, Pan, Tilt, Zoom, Dolly/tracking shot, Jib/crane shot, Dolly zoom. Various lens movements require specific analysis based on the story script.
So in simple terms, lens language is a way to present these factors, and it carries an important function of emotional expression. Movies are a means of conveying the director’s subjective emotions to the audience. Each creator has his own lens language style, narrative logic and emotional expression.
Mise en scene
The meaning of Mise en scene is that the stage settings include Decor, lighting, color and space. Therefore, in scene design, we not only need to consider the required objects and composition, we also need to consider the lighting arrangement and color control.
Decor
- Setting
- Set dressing
- Props
- Costume
Setting dressing refers to objects that are not used by actors and can often be used to set off the atmosphere. For a good scene design, every object has its meaning. Props are objects used by actors on stage. Usually weapons etc. Costum refers to the costume of the character used in a specific scene.
Lighting
- Three-point lighting
- High key lighting
- Low key lighting
- Chiaroscuro
- Hard lighting
- Soft lighting
- Unmotivated lighting
- Motivated lighting
Lighting has many forms, which play a vital role in a scene. Good lighting can complement the composition of the picture and enhance the beauty. On the contrary, improper lighting can easily make complex-looking scenes simple and childish. One of the most common ways to illuminate the scene is to use three points of illumination: button lights, fill lights and backlight lights. The key light points to the actor, fills in the shadows, and the backlight illuminates the actor to separate it from the background. These can be adjusted in countless ways to make the viewer feel different about the scene. Chiaroscuro, refers to high-contrast, mysterious, melancholic lighting settings-this is lower-key lighting. Low key lighting is also a good way to create a gloomy, dark and other atmosphere. This lighting method is reflected in many of my works.
Color
- Black and white
- Tinting
- Sepia tone
- Color film
- Color graning
- Saturation
- Color palette
- Balance
The use of color can strengthen the emotional impact of the work on the audience. For example, dark blue can make the original metaphorical picture appear darker. At the same time, the style of color can enhance the tone of the movie. The use of these techniques in 3D animation is usually post-processing, of course, the early lighting is also very important.
Spcae
- Deep space
- Shallow space
- Offscreen space
- Blocking
In Deep space, the elements of the scene are placed far away from the camera and close to the camera, which can cut the picture well. This technique can be used with the depth of field to focus the audience’s attention on the actors. In Shallow space, these placements are flat and have no depth. Offscreen space mainly refers to the use of actors’ performances to hint at what is happening off-screen. All the movement and actor makes the scene are called blocking.
Editing
Editing usually includes dissolve, wipe, fade in/ fade out, continuity editing, Screen direction, Match on action, Eyeline. All of these methods can make the connection of two different clips more natural without causing ambiguity to the audience. For beginners, fade in/ fade out is the most common method.
The 180 degree rule is to help the audience avoid losing the sense of the scene and avoid being dizzy. When the lens exceeds 180, we call it Crossing the axis.
Discontinuity deiting includes freeze frame, slow motion, reverse motion, jump cut, match cut, split screen, overlay, montage. Montage takes a film into many shots according to the content of the film and the psychological sequence of the audience. Then group them together according to the original idea.
Part 2 The history of Animation, Film, CGI, VFX
History of film
Throughout history, the development of film is inseparable from the invention of the camera.
In 1895, the French Lumière brothers successfully developed an “moving movie camera” based on Edison’s “movie mirror” and their own “continuous camera”. The “moving movie machine” has three main functions: photography, projection, and printing. A famous movie is “Train Arrival”, which caused the audience to scream in horror. The parody of the play was released in 1901, and one of the compatriots was afraid of the train movie. The Lumière brothers were the first to use the screen to project a movie. Historians believe that the Lumiere brothers’ filming and screenings are out of the experimental stage. Therefore, they set December 28, 1895, the day when the world film was first released as the birth of the film. The Lumiere brothers naturally Well-deserved to become the “father of movies.”
Since 1927, the film has gone from silent to sound, and colorless to colored.
From 1872 to 1878, Edward Mubridge, a photographer from San Francisco, USA, used 24 cameras to take pictures of the disassembled action group of a galloping horse. After more than six years of numerous shooting experiments, he finally succeeded, and then he went on a slide show. The show was successful. I saw the horse running on the screen. This is a breakthrough in film and animation, because he successfully shot a clip that cannot be measured or witnessed by human eyes. Another important figure is Émile Reynaud, the inventor of praxinoscope, which improved the zoetrope to create short, looping animations.
History of animation
At the end of the 17th century, a man named Johannes Zahn made a breakthrough transformation on the basis of the “magic slide”. Many glass paintings were placed on a rotating disk, and the glass patterns that rotated under the light were projected on the wall in turn. The drawings on the “live”. This is the first time that man-made images have been recorded as light and shadow moving pictures based on the principle of rotation. It can also be said to be the earliest light and shadow animation.
By the end of the 18th century, “magic slides” were popular in Europe, performing in many concert halls and vaudeville theaters, attracting a large number of audiences in the form of storytelling.
In 1914, Winsor Mccay completed the famous film “Gertie the Dinosaur” in the history of animation, which is called a kind of movie in the history of animation. He arranges the story with animated characters and real-life performances. The time of the picture is calculated accurately, and the background of each frame is redrawn. The picture has a strong sense of perspective.
In 1906, James Stewart Blackton produced a film called “Humorous Aspect of Funny Faces”, which was also the world’s first animated film.
In 1915, American EerlHurd created an animation process for drawing cartoons on plastic film
In 1928, the birth of (Steamboat Willie) meant that animation really began to develop.
The development of Disney Company has made animation a world-renowned commercial film and television art industry, and has also rewritten the historical position of animation, which is a milestone in the development of animation business. Disney’s production spirit is very rigorous, the film’s storyline is compact, the pre-stage shot design is exquisite and detailed, and the animated characters have distinctive personalities. They continue to improve and innovate in production technology, and do their best to make every film in different periods as possible, so that the audience can be intoxicated in a dreamlike world. Whether it is film style, storyline, color and sound, character scene design or post-technical processing, Disney’s films show the superb quality of assiduous entrepreneurship, so that Disney Animation is recognized by the world as the most accomplished animation production base in the history of animation , And Disney himself is undisputedly hailed as an outstanding animation master. In the production of cartoons, almost every technological invention is printed with Disney’s name. The standard of Disney animation films has basically become the standard for measuring the quality of animation films at that time.
In 1937, “Snow White” produced by Disney was the world’s first color animated cartoon feature film. The perfect artistry and sophisticated production effects of the film amazed the audience and made a sensation in the international film scene. It uses color film synthesis recording technology to create
Created the miracle of animated feature films, making people begin to re-examine the value and artistic charm of animation, and also make Disney’s business direction from short film production to feature film production. The emergence of this kind of cinema animation with a long storyline has gradually become the “mainstream animation” in the animation industry. It also marks that animation technology and art have reached a high degree of perfect unity and entered the mature stage of the industry.
History of CGI
CGI refers to Computer Generated Imagery. Westworld started in 1973.
The 1982 film “Tron” and 1984 “The Last Star Warrior” failed commercially, leading many directors to stay away from CGI. It became a low point in the history of CGI development.
James Cameron’s Abyss in 1989 became a turning point in the history of CGI
In 1993, Michael Crichton’s Jurassic Park was a milestone in the history of CGI development. The picture effect now seems to be amazing, as we can see from the video. The animator simulates the movement of the dinosaur running as a reference to control the rhythm of the movement. Secondly, with CGI technology, it reached its peak at that time.
In 1995, Pixar’s Toy Story was the first animated film made entirely by computer. “The Lord of the Rings” has won many awards from Gollum as a feature-length movie with a fantasy theme. The award was created using motion capture and adding animation and CGI on top, for example, applied to the character Gollum. In addition, “The Matrix” is also a great work in the history of CGI. These films successfully broke through the limitations of electronic technology on the picture effects and achieved a balance between visual effects and technology.
In short, animation originated from movies, and its development process is influenced by the technology of the times, and it has been developed to this day. From silent to sound, from colorless to colored. With the rapid development of technology, we should quickly master the corresponding technology and grasp the future development direction to create more innovative and creative animation works.
History of VFX
“Star Wars” in 1977 was the first movie ever shot with a motion control camera. In this movie, Lucas invented a mechanism that can greatly reduce post-production time.
In 1982, a computer processing method called “source sequence” was applied to “Star Trek”. The scenes of the movie were digitally generated by a computer, breaking the previous shooting methods. Similarly, in 1985, the first computer-generated character, “Stained Glass Man” appeared. This made a significant contribution to the popularization of digital roles in the later stages.
In 1994, Jurassic Park created a character with real skin, muscles and movements for the first time in film history. At the same time, its work team used the best real acting skills as a reference for dinosaur movements, making it a major work in the film industry.
Since then, giant special effects movies such as Pirates of the Caribbean, Marvel movies, and Lord of the Rings have come out one after another. Think about it no longer limited by technology.