Filmanalysis Paranorman

Film analysis Sandra Yuen 4644474 Cindy Vermeulen Avi-D 03/10/2014 1

Content

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Introductio

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Camera and camera work

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Shot, frame and composition

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Decoupage and editing

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Sound

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Light

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Genre

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Direction

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Production aspects

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Art direction, Color use, Graphics and/or special effects

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Conclusion

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Sources

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Introduction

This is the final assignment for the course AVD, semester AVI. This assignment considers of a film analysis report. We are invited to attend the playgound festival, it is an international digital art festival. For the analysis report we can choose any (short) 3D film from one of the artist who lecture at the playground festival.

of stop motions. Furthermore there are lots of special effects going on in this film.

In this document I am going to analize the scene “fedge the ghost dog” from Paranorman.

The analysis will be focus on camera work, lighting, sound, special effects and more.

The film that amazed me the most was “Paranorman” from Laika Studio. I choose this film because it is very interesting how it’s made. The film is fully made by stop motions and it’s not a short film. I can imagen many shots they need to take to make this short film so good.

Once you see this film, you would not believe it is made out

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Camera and camerawork Aspect ratio The ParaNorman movie has a big challenge on their employees.

The biggest challenge is to go stereoscopic to shoot the movie in 3D for the first time. For this kind of shooting, they need to use a wider screen aspect ratio e.g., 2:35/1.

This aspect ration is also known as Cinemascope or Anamorphic.

Nowadays, movies in theater are usually in this kind of aspect ratio.

ParaNorman is a 3D stop-motion animated horror comedy film. This is the first stop-motion film to use a 3D color printer to create character faces and only the second to be shot in 3D. Therefore, to film most of the princpal animation, they used a 63 Canon 5D Mark II cameras fitted with left and right sliders to capture stereo pair frames.

The production also relied on 53 motion control system made up of 36 Kuper systems and 17 proprietary systems and 21 motion control track and boom rigs. This is alot of camera work which means

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that the camera department generated about 20 hours of footage (which amounts to 1770.601 frames).

Laika is working in 3D for the first time and the cinematographer had not shot a stop-motion animated movie before. They believe that motion control has transformed stop-motion, with the camera being able to move smoothly through the environment that is being created.

The movie of ParaNorman is 80% made of motion control.

Although many scenes were enhanced with digital visual effects work. This ranged from rig removal, set extensions, ghost effects, atmospherics, crowds and face replacement line removal. In the following images will be shown how the digital visual effects are made.

wide frame that amaze people.

They work very carefully with to take into account length and distance and atmosphere to create the depth and perspectiveness rather than having stuff popping out in the screen.

Camera movement For the making of this film they have an on-screen environment that justified going stereoscopic. Wider lenses were used for the characters farther away from the camera, not in close-up. The establish Norman’s world in Blithe Hollow with a nice

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Camera work In the scene of Norman playing fedge, it’s shot at different angles.

Herefore, they put like several cameras around in different angels and with different type of movements to make each stop motion. Here below is a picture when Norman sees Bub in the backyard. In this shot you could see that it’s alow level view. This view is shot on a lightweight tripods for having still images. A tripod is a three-legged stand with spreaders, or supports, that keep the legs steady while shooting. Here in the picture below you could also see that the level of the camera is the same level as the dog.

The dog is smaller so this means that the camera angle need to be low as the eye level of Bub the dog. In the ParaNorman studio they have created several stages and therfore a tripod is a must for the exact height and angle.

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The second camera movement will be in the pictures above. As you follow the pictures you could see there is a smooth view from picture one to last.

For this scene they have used a track to follow the truning of Norman’s friend Neil. A truck is actually a dolly on, but on wheels. A truck shot moves trough space to the right or left, and you can truck right or truck left. The camera roll smoothly to the left while Neil is making the truning move.

Another camera movement they have used in this scene is the eagle eye view. Well, I’m not quite sure what kind of camera movement is it. It can be a tripod or a crane. Maybe more a tripod than a crane, because the stages are not in a high level where a crane needs to be used. Therefore, they are still using a tripod to shoot this eagle eye view from above of the stage.

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Shot, frame and composition Shot When filming there are a lot of different types of shots, especially for this film, because it’s a stop-motion film. There are several shots, for example a Full Shot, Cowboy/Medium Shot or Close Shot and more. Shot sizes apply to the human figure, but they can be used to describe objects as well.

In movies these types are often used to emphasize on something or someone’s expression in the scene or it’s trying to tell you something.

The scene of playing fedge with the ghost dog has several types of shots.

In the beginning they have used a long shot, which means the shot is wide enough to show subject’s full body. In the picture below you can see Norman and Neil’s full body.

This is a wide shot taken to shows environment.

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Here is anthor type of shot, this one is called medium shot. A medium shot shows subject from just above or below the waist. From the picture above it is shown that the shot is just over Norman’s waist.

An extreme close up shot is also taken in the scene, like the picture above.

Etreme close up shot is a shot that crops the top of the head and the bottom of the subject’s chin.

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There is a composition taken in the shot above. It’s the rule of third, it describes an approach to effective composition where a rerctangular frame is devided into thirds both vertically and horizontally like the image.

The intersection od these lines defines powerful locations within the frame.

Using the grid lines defined by the rule of thirds as a guide for placing objects and objects encourages the viewer’s eyes to move through the frame. Here the tension is on Norman’s eyes, he sees something. Norman sees Bub, the ghost dog. That is taken right that to center the dog in the frame. In the image below you can see how the rule of third is guided that the ghodt dog is centered of the frame.

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Decpoupage and editing In this film the only important part to edit I guess is the ghosts. According to Van’t Hul they have created 40 full CG ghosts, but only seven end up in the final film. CG are pictures created using computers and the representation of image data by a computer specifically with help from specialized graphic hardware and software. It’s like Bub the dog ghost is created by CG. In this film there isn’t any special editing, because it’s a stop-motion film.

Every shot is taken and then combing them together to make the puppets look alive. That why there isn’t such editing like fade in or out in the scene of “fedge the ghost dog”. The only that takes alot of time is by selecting the best shot to make the stop-motion.

Sound In the behind the scenes of ParaNorman I’ve seen that they’ve used condenser microphone to record the voices of the actors. A condenser microphone is essentially a capacitor, with one plate of the capacitor moving in response to sound waves. The movement changes the capacitance of the capacitor, and these changes are amplified to create a measurable signal.

In the scene of “fedge the ghost dog”, you can hear there is background music you barely notice it. The background music kind of goes with the expression when Neil tries to kiss his ghost dog. Neil is happpy to know that his dog is there with him and he. The background music note goes up or change in that moment.

There is also some sound effect in the scene, when Norman tries to “fedge” and the stick hits the tree and bump back to Neil. Another sound effects are, “bitting” the stick with his teeth and fall on the grass. The sounds that we are hearing during that scene are actually sound effects.

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Light Visual media strats with light energy. It means our eyes see because waves of a certain form of electromagnetic energy called visual light reflect off of phisical objects and into the cornea of the eye. Light shows us the world. It rreveals the visual details of familiar and strange surroundings.

Lighting conditions indicate the time of day, time of year and part of the world. Light can cause us to feel a certain mood, for example the soft romantic glow of a candle. You can say light is the basis for visual media.

In the pictures below, I have marked where the light is shinning. They have used soft light in this shot. As you can see the soft light produces less intense highlights and lighter, softer-edge shadows. Detail and texture are less obvious, that’s why they use a flattering light for human subjects.

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In this scene as seen above they used hard light to produce intense highlights and dark, hard-edged shadows. It reveals an object’s texture well.

In the following scene you can see that they have used direct light to create daylight effect. The light is shinning through the trees.

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Genre The movie genre of ParaNorman is categorized as Animation, Adventure, Comedy, Family and Fantasy. We all know this is fantasy because of the way the film is portayed. In real life there wouldn’t be a dog ghost in your backyard and especially devide in to two pieces. Well, we all heard about seeing ghosts, but so far no one could really prove that they really see a full body ghosts and talking with them. It’s a comedy movie, because the jokes that are spoken in the movie make people laugh about it. Comedy may be divided into multiple genres based on the source of humor, the method of delivery, and the context in which it is delivered.

ParaNorman is an animation film, because it’s based on animating each character. This film is also a family film which you can tell, because a family is involved in the film. I think the family genre also means that family like all ages can watch this film. Furthermore this film is also categorized as an adventure film based on exciting stories, with new experiences or exotic locales. Some main plot elements include quests for lost continents, a jungle and/or desert settings, characters going on a treasure hunts and heroic journeys for the unknown. It’s like Norman going into the woods to speak to the witch. You can call that an adventure, because Norman is going through all those moments to save the people in the town.

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Direction

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3 Picture set 1: In the first two pictures you can see that Normam is looking down at a point then the scene cuts off and switch to Bub the dog ghost .

He is looking at Bub. The dog is also lookig upward to Norman, so that is a upward and the view also switch back to Norman when Bub look up.

Picture set 2: Bub saw Neil and ran to him, in that moment the view switch to Neil. The scene that Neil is looking downward with open arms trying to hug Bub. Picture set 3: In this set Neil is standing there, but his eyes are looking downwards. The direction of his eyes is looking at Norman who’s sitting on the bench in the second image. Norman is actually looking upward in the second image to Neil, but Neil is not fully in frame, only half of his body. But still the direction of Norman’s eyes is noted what Norman is looking at.

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Production aspects The production team make sure that everything during filming goes as smooth as possible. They would arrange film location, catering for the whole crew, equipments for the film crew, the finances, budgets, contracts and more. The production team has a big tasks because if they fail to arrange equipments and location for filming then the movie would be delayed or even worse.

The two years of production on ParaNorman took place at the LAIKA Studios located in Hillsboro, Oregon, in a 151,140-square foot building space. By August 2010, with a crew of over 320 talented designers, artists, animators and technicians, there were 52 separate shooting units working at almost any given time during the shoot. The 52 different stages are the most ever deployed for a stop-motion animated feature – a number matched only by LAIKA’s own earlier Coraline.

Another part of the south shore region of Massachusetts that ended up in the movie on its own set was the school; Lowry’s own local middle school essentially became Norman’s. The Blithe Middle School set, with a façade 8 feet high and built as a sandbag-anchored elevated structure to reinforce Norman’s apprehension about going in each day, took nearly 4 months to create on a stage at LAIKA Studios. The “fluorescent” classroom lights visible through the windows were made of pieces of foam.

Thrown in to make the topography of a forest set were bits and pieces of paper towels; banks of shredders masticated whole rolls, and the resulting fragments were painted and glued.

Also among the 52 stages, the town square occupied 4 of them. This was a reflection of not only its status at different junctures in the story, depending on the havoc wreaked in Blithe Hollow, but also the time of day or night at points in the story – as well as the production schedule, since, as with most movies, ParaNorman was not shot in sequence. Since such a detailed set could not be redressed, it had to be created in multiple incarnations, which also proved necessary for several of the nearly three dozen other unique locations.

There are some pictures where the crew is working on the stages in the studio.

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Art direction, Color use, Graphics and/or special effects Art direction For the art direction of ParaNorman there are two people who are responsible for this. Francesca Berlingieri Maxwell is the art director and Phil Brotherton as the Assistant Art director of ParaNorman film. Production designer is usually the one that creates the look, feel and style for the film and the set decorator is the one that creates the assets for the world so that the world would come to life.

Color use The colors that was used in ParaNorman was a toned down color palette.

Here below there are several color palette that might be, because the art department doesn’t revealed any specific color palette yet.

As you can see the yellow neon green color is the basis color in the film. It is used for the ghost and the title is also green.

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In the pictures above you can see that they don’t really have bright colors.

The most colors are tuned down and the green color comes more often as a basis color.

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Graphics and special effects To make the ParaNorman film they did photorealistic visual effects, just like a liveaction film, but they had be mindful of the puppet “One of the first conversations I have to have with any new CG artist coming in is, ‘Yes, we are doing photorealistic visual effects, just like a liveaction film, but we have to be mindful of the puppet scale of things. A stop-motion set is, by its nature, limited in scale. It is prohibitively expensive to build, light, and populate a large landscape. Apart from creating crowds and extending sets, CG plays a big role in augmenting some of ParaNorman’s more paranormal aspects. For example, the very dramatic sky that swirls ominously over Blithe Hollow is a CG effect, but one based on a practical design.

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Here above is the scene when the ground scracked into pieces. In the fisrt image you can see they are shooting this scene on a green screen so they can put special effecte later. The second image is what you se in the film, the floating pieces of gound. That’s special effect.

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Conclusion In conclusion the scene that I’ve chosen was not that difficult what concern the filming technique, because this was all stop-motion filmed in a studio on the created stages. Some of the scenes in the film were filmed with with greenscreen. Every assets are real object making of different fabrics, such as trees, car, house and all the object’s you can see in the film. The ghosts and several small effects are made by CG. The film is mostly done by a tripod to create the stop-motion effect. The camera need to be the exact point like the previous shot. The crew spend alot of time making this film. It took two years to be done and the result is the best. I can imagine how it is to make every single little pieces and putting them together for hours just to make one or two minute of the stop-motion alive.

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Sources http://www.focusfeatures.com/article/two__years_in_the_ making?film=paranorman http://www.firstshowing.net/2012/paranorman-stop-motionfeaturette-shows-how-they-made-norman/ http://www.wired.co.uk/magazine/archive/2012/09/features/ the-boy-with-8000-faces http://blog.instagram.com/post/19633698558/in-the-studio-themaking-of-paranorman http://www.fxguide.com/quicktakes/the-tech-behindparanorman/ http://www.laika.com/films.php http://unitedbyphotography.com/ubp/793/60-canon-dslr-5dmkii-cameras-shoot-paranorman-3d-animated-feature/

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