Perfect blue

Director:Satoshi Kon

Released: 1997

Actors: Junka Iwao-             -Mima Kirigoe

             Rica Matsumoto-    - Rumi

I have chosen the scene where Mima finally finds out who the real stalker is, its a good scene with a fine use of scene setting music.

Characters

The two characters that are involved in this scene are Mima, the main character,who has just been involved in an attack on herself, and Rumi, her co-manager and friend.

Setting 

The movie is set in what seems to be modern day Tokyo. The movie tells the story of a pop star from a girl band called CHAM, who at the beginning of the movie announces that she will be leaving her pop career behind to concentrate on acting. Soon afterwards she starts to get abusive faxs and strange phonecalls, and finds out about a site called Mimas room, where a fan seems to be impersonating her.

Soon after she decides to be involved in a controversial rape scene in a straight to dvd movie. This decision has dire results for several members involved in creating the scene.Mima herself is deeply effected by the event and starts to spiral into a state of madness, seeing ghosts of her former pop career self. She starts to question her own identity.
The scene itself is set in what first appears to be Mima's studio. we soon learn that the apartment is not hers but her friends, Rumi. It is here that we find out that Rumi was behind the events that had befallen Mima since she left her pop career behind to concentrate on her acting career. 
Mise-en-scene 
The scene is set in what we are suppose to think is Mima's room. The room itself is modeled precisely on Mima's room, except the fish had died in Mima's original room. The poster that she had taken down seems to be put back up. Mima slowly realizes that somethings off and then Rumi enters the room wearing one of  Mimas outfits.The music works well in building up tension to the reveal. The scene is warmly lit, the uneasiness is set by the audio, which with the music adds tension.
Camera work  
The scene begins with a smooth transition from the car to the room.Then there is an estabalishing shot of Mima's room, as she is on the bed. The camera then cuts to scenes of her possessions, then comes back to a front view of Mima as she talks to Rumi. She then remembers to ring Tadokoro, her agent, and as she does so the camera slowly zooms into the fish tank. The next scene then cuts to an outside area, looking at a car the camera pans from right to left, then from bottom left to top right as we discover that Tadokoro's eyes gauged out and the dead body of Me-Mania.
The next shot then looks from the point of view of the back of the fish tank as we see that the tank has live fish in it, the suspenseful music starts to swell here. We then cut to a shot of Mima looking at the huge poster on the wall.This shot is followed by a full shot of the room, Mima standing to the left of the shot.The camera then looks from over the shoulder as Mima looks out the window, then pans back to focus in on Mima's face, then we get a shot of Mima from the front as the door opens behind her and Rimu comes out wearing one of Mima's dresses. We then get a great shot as the camera pulls up from bottom to top of a mirror that reveals Rimu in the dress. Shot ends with the camera pointing up at a Mima's shocked face.
Sounds and music
The scene starts out quiet, everything seems nice and calm, we can here what sounds like water quietly boiling away, this sound last for the entire scene, then as we get the reveal that the stawlker we thought might still be alive is now dead, and that there is live fish in the tank the sound trak comes in, slowly building up as Mima discovers that she is not in her place and that Rumi is the imposter.

More in depth look at the day routine sequence.

Short story-story board

Nemesis analysis

Nemesis, 4 issue comic

Written by Mark Miller

              and illustrated by Steve McNiven

Published in 2010.

Nemesis follows the story of the worlds first supervillian as he has  targets the chief of police from different countries in Asia, who now targets a so called "supercop" working in Washington DC, Blake Morrow. In the first issue, Morrow is given a calling card with his name, time of death and way of death on it, which sets up the next 3 issues as he struggles to get one step ahead of Nemesis, who goes about his plan to destroy everything that Morrow stands for.

For my analysis i have choosen 2 pages from the fourth issue, pages 9 and 10, we have just found out that Morrows partner has been a plant from the start, actually working undercover for Nemesis there for the last 8 years.

Characters

 There are 3 characters involved in the 2 pages, Nemesis, the supervillian one of the main characters, chief of police Blake Morrow and what i would consider a secondary character, Stuart Lee, who is Morrows second in command.
Nemesis is clad in his usual all white costume, while Morrows is dressed in a suit, Lee is dressed in jeans and a light brown jacket.

Setting

The scene takes place moments after a SWAT team has been taken out by a trap laid by Nemesis. He had fed false information to a mole working for Morrows that he was in fact disguised as his own uncle, and hiding in plain sight the whole time.

However this was all made up as Nemesis reveals that he isn't even related to the Andersons, and that the real Mathew Anderson died in an Indian whore house after spending all his money. We have also just found out that Lee is a mole, put there by Nemesis a whole 8 years previously, showing the longevity of his plans when taking out these police chiefs.

The setting is very dark and the three characters are lit up as if on a stage.

Mise-en-scene

The scene itself does not have much going on in it in the background, as I said before, it is lit like a stage when theirs a characters soliloquy. And that is kind of whats happening. We have just got the news that Lee has been a mole the whole time, and now that Nemesis isn't even who he said he was. We find out that his only motivation for doing all this is that he is bored and rich. I feel this both adds and takes away from the entire story,on one hand he is a true psychopath, he is not doing this for revenge like we were led to believe, or for personal gain, he is already rich enough , he just wants to "see the world burn" as such, like he says at the end of the scene, "im rich and im bored, what else do you need to know".

Now on the other hand, we lose a layer of development from his past, all we really ever see of nemesis is his cool, doesn't care about anything attitude, and this back story had fleshed him out ever so slightly, without it he becomes just a 2 dimensional character again. More time was needed fleshing much of the characters in this comic in general, we don't really care when Morrows is forced to air out his dirty loungery because we have only spent a relatively short time getting to know him.

All I know that he is a good cop at all is that we were told it and then see him gunning down a few crack heads, i'm sure thats not really official police procedure.

Lee's revelation that he is a mole is quite good though, never see it coming, and the way he is "retired" just reflects the overall violence that runs through the comic.

In all the scene concentrates on the revelations of the bad guys, there are no wide shots of the background, its all very intimate.

Camera Work 

The first page starts with a close up of Nemesis head as he explains " what parents", then cuts to a behind the shoulder view of Morrows on the ground head looking down in confusion. The next panel cuts back to a close up of nemesis head again only now closer in an cutting off half of his right side, we see one eye, as he reveals that he is not Mathew Anderson.

The next panel then goes further out, we see all three characters, Morrows lowest down on the left, Nemesis standing up in the background and Lee, crouched looking down at Morrows with a sisister smile.As Lee is talking in the next image we can see part of a gun which may be aiming at Morrows or may be aiming at Lee as he explains that all of Nemesis henchmen retire after each job.

The next page then starts with a gruesome image of Lee s head getting blown off by Nemesis. The panel includes all three characters again, from the perspective of just behind Morrows shoulder.  Next panel has nemesis face kinda cut off  and tilted, we can only see one eye again as he explains"wll, thats one way of putting it".

we then get a high angle shot looking down on the two main characters, Morrows in a very theatricle position as he vents how he feels about nemesis, " is this what you bring to the world,Pain and suffering,"as nemesis stands with his arms down by his legs, gun smoking, " I think thats a pretty accurate assessment" 

Scene ends with Morrows in a close up shouting at nemesis, "who are you" as nemesis then replys in a seperate panel, that he is just rich and bored as he snaps his fingers.

Why I picked this scene

I picked this scene because, for one thing, it has a major revelation in it that totally changes the back story of the main character,nemesis.If anything it actually does reveal more about nemesis, that he doesn't need to be driven by any sense of revenge to commit these heinous acts, we see him for the true rich, spoiled psychopath that he is.I liked the comic book but i felt it lacked in depth and character development, we have seen all his plans before in other series, down to the choice he gives Blake at the end. Nothing is original except maybe for the fact that he is driven by being rich and bored.What if batman was the joker, is what the comic was dressed up to be like, and while the joker is driven by chaos, he also has his own personality and methods, he is also driven by other factors aswell.

In the scene we see how far ahead this was all planned by nemesis, he even says what he is going to do to his next victim, yet throughout the series thats all we ever see. Hes to far ahead, everything goes too well with him so we are not that suprised when he drops the bomb as such, for the whole series everything goes exactly to his plan, which I get, he seems unstoppable, he is a super villian after all, but I would have liked to see maybe an earlier issue that has his plan go horribly wrong so that we don't feel he is in total control of the situation.Maybe they were waiting for this moment to tie up the end, by then it was a bit too late for me though.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/02/20/sports/olympics/womens-figure-skating.html

A look at how Sotnikova beat kim through a collection of stills, check it out.

Another example of editing sound with hilarious results.

Interesting article on the history of dreams and art:

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2013/sep/23/brief-history-of-dreams

 A detail from Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights

Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare exhibited 1782

 

Top 10 Films About Dreaming – SundanceTV

Top 10 Films About Dreaming – SundanceTV

Short story-Treatment file

Concept

My short story will draw from a history of horror in film and other media. In essence it will be taking the visuals of horror, elements that cause us fear or anxiety( darkness, suspense, unnerving sounds and imagery) to create a sense of danger. The story will revolve around one characters ability to face his greatest fears, trapped within the confines of his mind. For some reason he has been unable to get to sleep for many weeks, he is utterly exhausted and decides to try medication to help him, however he mixes the meds with a bottle of wine which puts him into a very deep sleep, where his fears have full access to him.

The short will begin with a clock, which will be a running theme throughout the animation, the concept of time will pop up in several different forms. Also the main character is suffering from a bout of acute insomnia, which will add to his physical and mental appearance.

The beginning of the short will pan through his daily life in a quick sequence of menial activities, such as work and food, watching tv and lying awake on his bed. This pattern will repeat itself over and over to convey the sense of jadedness and exhaustion the character is going through.He will clearly be drained and tired looking throughout.

The actual horror moments don't start straight away. There will be a discernible difference in the style I use for the "real world" section and the "dream world" section. Everything becomes much darker in the dream world with the periphery of the frame dark and smokey, where objects and entities become blurred into each other. Camera work becomes a lot more varied with different angles and tilts being employed, zoom ins and outs, above head shots and below the feet shots or low angled shots.
In this dream world the main character is running from a sinister entity that is slowly following him. He will be running down a maze of dark corridors to get away. Its in this section that the pace of the short becomes more frantic,the character doesn't really emote much in the series of shots in the real world section, but here will be exerting himself and afraid.
After this section the character becomes entangled in a giant web, where he will be forced to confront his fear that he has been repressing. This section will differ from the last by getting brighter, while other memories start to interchange with that of the dream world.

Technique and approach

The short will be a mix of media, originally I thought of hand drawing the whole piece but as I've explored more ideas I'm beginning to build up to more of a mixed media piece. At its broadest view 2 distinct styles will be seen in the 'real world" and the "dream" world. Here there will be a change in the environments and the character. The real world will be much more solid, while our character will be rendered in a scratchy, scribbly style, as if he was becoming unwound. This will change in the dream world where the background will become harder to make out but our character becomes more solid. I will employ different media's and techniques in the dream world too, where stop animation will be employed and the use of chalk and a black board for a smokey, ethereal effect.
Camera work will take influences from thrillers and horrors where the camera angles change a lot, jumping from shot to shot. One should think of such movies directed by Terry Gilliam for the camera tilts used, dark horrors such as those made in the 70s in England such as The Omen and The Exorcist and more resent foreign films such as Chronos and Pans labyrinth by Del Toro.

Aesthetic 

The aesthetic of the overall piece will be agitated, dark, sinister and should create genuine feelings of fear and discomfort. The colours will be mostly muted, dark for the most part, suggestive of unknown danger. The atmosphere will be very claustrophobic in the dream world. There will be shifting shapes and scenery. Nothing will be as it seems, just like in a dream, where everything is at once familiar but unfamiliar.
The character will be scratchy and uncomfortable looking in the real world scenes. Will change once in the dream world.
The other major character in the piece will change forms through the use of different media, from sketched form to real world found object like form.

Environment

For the beginning I will use the everyday environment found in my own life. From the bed to the breakfast table, from the bus to the office and so on. All will be found just outside the window.
The dream environment however will be a place of darkness and repression. It is inside his consciousness, but outside of his control. Labyrinths, shadows, lights, creatures, moving walls and doors. It should seem stuffy and closed, but also vast in its dark depths.There will be references to the real world in the dream one but changed in ways that are unfamiliar.

Audio

Audio is as much about horror as the visuals are. For the beginning of the short there will be sparse audio. No background music will exist in the beginning, just clock alarms, eating and general ambient noises from people in the background, I will increase the levels of the noises in the background as we slowly pan into the main characters shoulders and head, to cause a sense of anxious feelings, until it becomes almost unbearable, it will then suddenly stop.
In the dream world the background noises will be muffled versions of the crowd noises from the real world. There will be use of distortions and reverbs for noises and the sound of him running, of course a breathing track will be included, may even run the length of the dream sequence.
When danger is very close a track will come on which will be made up of distorted whale calls, overdriven guitar and nails on chalkboard sounds. I am also considering using smashed plates sounds, loud floor creaking, swinging lights and the sound of clock work.

Sequence of Events

The piece begins with a slow pan through a bed room. We see that it is messy and very much lived in. We jump to certain photos and images, which build up a quick picture of our character in happier times. The camera then comes to a clock which is slowly ticking. The shot then changes to our character, lying in bed, staring with heavy eyes , up at us, we can still hear the ticking. Then the alarm go's off, which triggers the days events.
The next series of shots is our main character, centre frame, going through his daily process, he stays the exact same expression and body stance as the environment around him changes, from having breakfast to sitting on the bus, next being in an office with a phone up to his ear, then having fast food, changes to watching T.V., something with a laugh track is on, then putting a few pieces together on a jigsaw, then lying awake on his bed.
This scene is then repeated, as the camera slowly pans in on the main character, with slight changes such as a different fast food place and a new piece put onto the jigsaw, also whenever other people are about in the environment their ambient voices will either become louder or further away, the shots will speed up.
This will all get a bit frantic until it stops all of a sudden, the pace is drastically slowed down, as the camera lingers over a bottle of wine, with a nearly emptied glass next to it, camera changes angles from looking down on the bottle and glass to a lower  angle, slightly tilted looking, looking across the bed side table that the bottle and glass are on. We can see an opened bottle of sleeping pills now beside the bottle and glass, in between the bottle and glass we can see our main character lying down, looking drowsy and falling asleep.
The shot just before he falls asleep is another head shot, as we zoom into his slowly closing eyes, camera changes to low angle shot of a clock on the wall, tick, his eyes close a bit, tick another bit, tick, he goes to sleep.

The last tick after he falls asleep will be very delayed and reverbed. We will hear a strange low voice with effects on it also seeming to say "answer". Suddenly our character is located in the middle of a corridor, he is  running, but doesn't seem to be aware of it yet, or he doesn't know why he is running.
The walls around him seem to be flowing, as if they where made of smoke,everything is very dark, he is still running, lights are swinging by their wires on the roof, causing a very disorientating effect. He raises his arm over his eyes to block the lights when he suddenly falls down a hole in the floor. He falls on his back, finding himself seemingly floating in mid air, but he realises that he is trapped in a giant web as he looks around. He looks forward because of a loud noise, he is still caught in the web but the corridor has reappeared in front of him, with the swinging lights above. Camera is looking down a corridor, tilted a bit, as a robed figure slowly appears under one of the furthest lights away. The figure seems to jump from light to light getting closer. Suddenly he is in front of our character, it is hard to make out anything of this character as he is still clad in a robe, but it looks like whoever is underneath it has a hunched back, yet we can't see his face. Now the light seems to stop swinging overhead, something begins to happen with the robed character, steel points begin to slowly protrude out from under the hood, eight in total. Each one finds a place to rest.The robe folds up on itself and then folds back to reveal a spider like creature with human features.
We now see our character reflected in eight black eyes, as it gets closer we stay on the reflection as it grows.The shot then cuts back to our character, a shot from above then below, then from a lower tilted angle, character at left of frame, a steel leg comes down in the forefront.
Suddenly the creature lashes out at the main character, striking him with a single steel leg in his lower left side of his torso, out of the wound black veins start to snake their way up the body. the camera follows these veins as they twist and turn up the body to the head, as the veins reach his head, he can suddenly hear a voice.
The voice will be a revelation, as a hidden event will be revealed by this message, which will explain why he has not being getting any sleep.The short will also end on this revelation.

Look and Feel

Here are a few images that should translate what I want the piece to look like.

This is sort of what the dream world will look like, however it won't be populated by any people, maybe the walls will shift and move, revealing possible faces.

Nothing in the dream world should be crisp and solid, it ll be more ethereal then that.

Very much what im looking for in the use and technique the charcoal is used here.

 

 Examples of how to combine spider and human features to make something truly terrifying.

 Imagine this scene with more of a smoky or flowing surface on the sides, and lights swinging back and forth.

 Mood and Atmosphere

 This is a series of pieces from the artist William Kentridge, who does some wonderful charcoal animations.

 

 Some story board drawings of mine to show what kind of style i might use for the character.

The scene where we first see the sinister figure, note that the walls will be moving in the animation.

A image inspired by a scene at the beginning of the X files.

Story  Analysis

Story: The Screwfly Solution

     By: Raccona Sheldon or James Tiptree Jr.

Characters:Alan

                  Anne

                  Amy

                  Barney

                  

The novella The Screwfly Solution  tells us a story of a world where men are going mad and killing women.We find out at the end of the story that an alien race had spread a virus or biological weapon that disrupts the natural arousal state in men and instead makes them aggressive with deadly consequence's to the female gender, which also dooms the rest of the human race.

The story is told to us mostly over the use of letters givin back and fourth between a couple, Alan who starts out in South America investigating ways to create a biological pest control system. Anne his wife lives in America, where she comments on a new religious movement called the sons of Adam, that has sprung up in the South where they seem to be killing the women of the area, even the young females.

Also Barney a close friend to the couple supplies Alan with news reports and headings that build up a clear picture of what is occurring World wide. As the story unfolds we learn more about what is happening back in America, where Anne is getting more worried about the situation and wondering why nothing is being done about it.Alan gets worried and attempts to get home. While waiting in Florida to get home he realizes that in fact the madness spreading is caused by something biological rather then psychological like thought by the government, when he realizes that he is infected.This leads him home where he wants to isolate himself and find a cure, however their daughter who is going through puberty gets into argument with her mother and visits Alan at the lab, where we find out a bit latter that he kills her and himself.

The story then changes to Anne,s perspective as she is hiding out in Canada. At this stage she is dressed up like a man, and trying to life away from people.It is hinted that she could be the last female alive.As she is hiding out in a woodes near the end of the story where she has got quiet desperate and hopeless she discovers that the angels that people have reported  seeing are in fact Aliens that have polluted the air with some sort of biological weapon to cause the extinction of the human race.

The story is told to us mostly through the perspective of the couple, through the readings of the letters, and through various articles that their friend, who we never meet,sends Alan. I enjoyed the story, it reminded me of the book World War Z, in the way it was written, through a kind of journalistic, investigative way. We slowly learn that there's more to the religious cult then just belief, as we read that the events are world wide but also localized in those countries, spreading from a localized spot.

At the beginning of the story we see things unfurl from Alans point of view, even though most of the information is coming from Anne.Its through him reading the letters that we learn of events. This changes just before the finale act where it quickly changes to the kids point of view and then Annes for the finish. The fact that the main male lead is killed off  also gives the story more impact, as we read about this through Anne's letter to Barney. Also the fact that he and the daughter are killed off screen as such is striking. We are given an insight to how the couple love each other which adds to the tragedy, the fact that we are in Alan's mind when he realizes that he has been infected with whatever drives the men Psychotic.

There is a feminist sway to the story, the fact that one story has a mayor of a town kill a professional woman saying that those kinds of women where the worst types"cripto females".The fact that men seemed not to care to much about the cults killing females when it was first spreading. Men are the monsters in this story, albeit not under their own control but under the control of their biological urges.This could also be interpreted by mans slavery to his own primitiv impulses.

Although women aswell are represented oddly, maybe its like a woman in an abusive relationship, no one really understands why they stay with that figure, just like how no women in this story fight back. They are well and truly the victims, scared into moving around in groups, asexually dressed.

The stories twist ending then shows us how we are the pest, we are the screwfly who is being dealt with by a superior race.I quite enjoyed this revelation at the end, it tied the story up nicely where we get to see why and how this epidemic of deadly misogyny began.

Apparently these themes are repeated in Alice sheldons other short stories, in particular the themes of death  and biological determinism. books such as "Love is the plan the plan is death" and "The women that men don't see".

        

Lens based media-Recce

Here are a few of the images I have taken for the recce brief. They are mostly for the first few shots of the animated short but do include a section which will happen maybe half way into the short or just after that. I took many pictures of the same thing but in different views and angles. Here are a sample of the same scene but in different angles.
Here's a few shots taken inside a bus for a quick scene when the character is going through his daily grind.

These next photos are taken for a scene later in the short where the main character is running through a maze of corridors. Different tilts are employed and lighting used.

 This place reminded me of the hotel in the shinning.

 Playing with light and dark with these images, the few out of focus where not ment but maybe could work in the dream world if the lighted area was a bit out of focus.

Here a few images of clocks, time features heavily in the short.

Photos of a scene just before the character goes to sleep. Again just playing around with angles for different feeling.

A scene that may be added, running down a infinite staircase.

 Possible influence with the spider type creature. I like the spindly metal legs.

 

For a scene where hes sitting down eating, this scene is part of the opening sequence with the bus, which will have the backgrounds pass by quickly but with the constant figure in the center. Girlfriend in place of character.

Those are actually my wings.

same idea different food joint.

 

possible inclusions of walled up doorways.