Category: 25/26 1.2 Design for Animation, Narrative Structures & Film Language

General Writing & Formatting

• Sources: Use peer-reviewed texts (books, scholarly articles) and recognized academic sites. Avoid personal blogs, film reviews, or YouTube unless referencing a specific animation unavailable elsewhere.
• Formatting: Use 12-point Times New Roman or Arial font with 1.5 or 2.0 line spacing.
• Style: Write concisely without “waffle” or colloquialisms/slang. Avoid personal language (e.g., “I,” “my,” “in my opinion”) and emotive language. Use passive verbs and impersonal subjects to maintain objectivity.
• Titles: Italicize film, animation, and book titles. Use quotation marks for journal articles, songs, and book chapters.

In-Text Citations

• Attribution: Brief references require the author’s surname, publication date, and page number (e.g., (Pallant, 2011, p. 35)).
• Short Quotations: Incorporate quotes up to three lines into the sentence using double quotation marks.
• Long Quotations: Indent quotes of approximately 40 words or more by 1cm on each side. Separate them from the body text and do not use quotation marks.

Bibliography (Harvard Style)

Arrange references alphabetically by author surname.

• Books: Surname, Initial. (Year) Title. Edition. Place: Publisher.
• Journal Articles: Surname, Initial. (Year) ‘Title of article’, Title of Journal, Issue info, Page reference.
• Films: Title of film (Year) Directed by… [Film]. Place: Distribution company.
• Websites: Surname, Initial. (Year) Title of web page. Available at: URL (Accessed: date).

Purpose and Function

A literature review serves as the “spine” of a study, providing academic support for the topics discussed. Its primary goals are to:

• Demonstrate Subject Knowledge: Establish the writer’s depth of knowledge to build reader confidence in the findings.
• Contextualize Research: Explain how the current study connects to existing research, fills gaps, or contributes to debates.
• Communicate Perspectives: Explain authors’ positions and why specific research was chosen to aid the investigation.

Process: Finding and Organizing Sources

• Search Strategy: Use keywords in databases like Google Scholar or JSTOR and read abstracts to determine relevance.
• Analysis: Identify themes, patterns, and gaps. Note where authors agree or disagree and examine their research methods.
• Outlining: Organize the review based on the subject area. Common structures include:
  • Chronological: Tracing the evolution of research over time.
  • Thematic: Grouping sources by shared themes.
  • Methodological: Grouping sources by the research methods used.

Writing Guidelines

• Structure: Organize around key concepts rather than just listing sources. Use topic sentences to clarify the argument’s movement.
• Tone and Voice: Use an objective tone, typically writing in the third person (e.g., “this paper argues”), though the first person may be used when referencing one’s own prior research.
• Synthesis: Do not simply list sources; synthesize and evaluate them. Discuss methods and results rather than just pointing out that literature exists.
• Conclusion: A brief summary (approx. 10% of the section) should recap key findings, identify inconsistencies, and propose future research approaches.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

• Using non-academic, unreliable, or unverifiable sources.
• Creating a review that is too narrowly focused.
• Turning the review into an annotated bibliography instead of a comparative analysis

Individual blog entry 

Given the theoretical discourse surrounding the legitimacy of animated documentary Is there animated work you consider falls into  one or more of these categories.

Consider:

Environmental/ecological issues

Gender representation

Ethnic representation

Cultural heritage/Exchange

Diversity

Colonialism

Ethical issues

Education

Industry/Vocation

Equality/Human Rights

Community/Social Issues/Social justice

Politics/Government

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Waltz with Bashir (2008) by Ari Folman is a prime example of an animated documentary that addresses Politics/Government, Ethical Issues, and Equality/Human Rights.

Here is how it fits the categories and theoretical framework:

1. Legitimacy and Definition

Waltz with Bashir validates the “taxonomy of Animated Documentary” outlined in the lecture because:

• Production: It is created “frame by frame”.
• Subject: It is “about the world rather than a world wholly imagined”, specifically the 1982 Lebanon War.
• Reception: It was “received as a documentary by audiences, festivals or critics” despite being animated.

2. Theoretical Justification

The film demonstrates why animation is a “viable means of documentary expression” in the following ways:

• Addressing Absence: The film reconstructs a massacre and lost memories where no archival footage exists. This exemplifies the theory that animation is fruitful because it resolves a “conflation of absence and excess”. It replaces the “expected indexical imagery” (which is absent) with animation that goes beyond merely transcribing reality.
• Subjectivity: Instead of observable events, the film depicts “subjective, conscious experience”—specifically the trauma and repressed memory of a soldier. This allows the documentary to cover subject matters “traditionally outside of the documentary purview”.

3. Addressing Criticism

While critics sometimes argue that animation might “detract from the seriousness of the situation” , Waltz with Bashir counters the historical attitude that “animation is for children”. By using a non-photorealistic medium, it potentially creates a “more universal level of identification” with the horrors of war, rather than preventing direct engagement.

Analyze Crac from Frederic Back

1. Categorisation: Genre & Sub-genre

• Genre & Setting: Crac operates as a “Symptomatic” cultural artifact. A symptomatic interpretation views a film as part of a broad societal context, illustrating themes prevalent in the culture. The film chronicles the industrialization of Quebec through the life of a rocking chair.
• Theme & Commentary: The film comments on the displacement of tradition by technology. This mirrors the historical context mentioned in your lecture, where “Mass communication was at the top of the agenda and therefore mass production was a priority”. Crac visualizes the tension between the “primitive” (hand-crafted chair, rural life) and the “technologically advanced” (urbanization, modern art museums), a conflict often found in films dealing with industrial development.
• Experimental Fit: It fits the “Modernist” perspective by questioning divisions in culture. The film is unique because it functions as both a “document of [its] time and place” (Quebec’s Quiet Revolution) and a piece of high art.

2. Form and Function

• Artist Objectives: Back’s objective appears to be the preservation of cultural memory through movement. The film functions as an “allegory”, where the chair is a metaphor for Quebecois identity—resilient, discarded, and eventually rediscovered.
• Presentational Mode: The lecture notes stating that animation “developed in the midst of these polemic arguments” about high vs. mass culture apply here. Back rejects the static “assembly line” aesthetic in favor of a fluid, painterly style.
• Implicit Meaning: An “implicit” analysis reveals the chair’s personality not through dialogue, but by inferring meaning from how it survives changes. The function of the film is to force the viewer to experience the passage of time physically, adhering to the theory that films can “replicate a certain type of reality the filmmaker wants the audience to experience… memory”.

3. Process: Technique & Materials

• Technique as Message: The lecture highlights that the “Avant Garde interest in part focused upon the formal aesthetic potentials of… line and form, movement and rhythm”. Crac is a definitive example of this. Back used colored pencils on frosted cels, creating a textured, vibrating look that defies the clean, industrial “cel” look pioneered by Raoul Barre and Earl Hurd.
• The “Laborious” Approach: Unlike the “rapid production” models of John Randolph Bray , Back’s process aligns with pioneers like Windsor McCay, for whom the process was “more laborious” and individual. The visible strokes of the colored pencil emphasize the human hand in the work, reinforcing the film’s theme of hand-crafted tradition versus sterile modernity.

4. Formal Elements

• Movement & Metamorphosis: A “Formalist approach” looks at the film’s structure and form. Crac relies entirely on continuous metamorphosis. The “line and form” are never static; the background transforms into the foreground, and characters emerge from the chair’s wood grain.
• Rhythm & Timing: The film utilizes “movement and rhythm” to compress decades of history into minutes. The rhythm accelerates as the setting shifts from the slow, pastoral countryside to the frantic, neon-lit city, using pacing to elicit an emotional response to modernization.
• Audio Relationships: The sound of the “crack” (the tree falling, the chair breaking) serves as a “referential” anchor, marking the transitions between eras.

Film Review vs. Analysis

While movies are a form of entertainment and artistic self-expression, serious film criticism moves beyond simple description.

• Film Review: Typically shorter (400–1200 words), a review offers personal impressions and evaluations of a movie’s content.
• Film Analysis: A longer format (1200–12,000 words) that requires reflective thought and outside research. It attempts to explain how cinematic techniques and narrative elements force a viewer to react in a specific way.

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Four Levels of Meaning

To understand what a film is “really about,” critics can analyze content on four distinct levels:

1. Referential Content (The Plot)

• This is a synopsis of the plot, simply recounting what happens in the story.
• It refers directly to events and implies aspects of the story without deep interpretation.

2. Explicit Content (The Moral)

• This includes the “moral of the story” or socio-political attitudes that the filmmaker expresses directly.
• Meaning is communicated explicitly through dialogue, character actions, and obvious plot developments.

3. Implicit Content (Inferred Meaning)

• This level relies on “internal evidence” within the film to infer meaning from how characters grow, change, or develop.
• It looks at general human relations or conflicting values that are not explicitly stated, allowing for different interpretations based on the viewer’s experience.

4. Symptomatic Interpretation (External Context)

• This approach treats the film as a symptom of a broader influence, such as the culture, time, or place in which it was created.
• It relies on “external evidence” and often identifies symbolic or allegorical content.
• Example: District 9 is a sci-fi thriller, but symptomatically, it reflects 21st-century attitudes toward immigration and minorities.

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Approaches to Analysis

Critics use various theoretical frameworks to uncover a film’s ideological meaning or intent.

The Formalist Approach

• Focuses primarily on “internal evidence,” looking at the film’s structure and form.
• Analyzes narrative elements and specific cinematic techniques (e.g., lighting, editing, sound, camera movement) to see how they convey meaning.

The Realist Approach

• Examines how a film represents reality.
• Some films try to make techniques “invisible” to focus on the story, while others use techniques to replicate specific experiences like insanity or memory.

The Contextualist Approach This broad category analyzes a film as part of a larger context. Specific subsets include:

• Culturalist: Examines the specific time, place, and culture that created the movie.
• Auteurist: Views the director as the “author,” analyzing the film in the context of their previous body of work and personal life.
• Psychological: Applies theories from Freud or Jung to find symbolism regarding the subconscious, id, ego, or sexual repression.
• Dualist: Looks for pairs of opposites (e.g., good vs. evil, urban vs. rural) to identify contrasting societal tendencies.
• Feminist: Concentrates on the portrayal of women, determining if they are stereotypes, protagonists, or empowered figures.
• Marxist: Associates characters and events with class struggle, labor issues, and oppressive government structures.
• Generic: Analyzes the film as a representative of a specific genre, looking for shared motifs or subversions of expected formulas.
• Genetic: Traces the film’s evolution through all stages of production, from script drafts to the final director’s cut.

The Cultural Context: High vs. Mass Culture

• Historical Setting: During a period of cultural anarchy, Modernists and Dadaists began questioning the traditional divisions between high culture and popular culture.
• The Role of Animation:
  • Animation developed right in the middle of these arguments, softening the edges between high art and mass media forms.
  • It was viewed as a medium capable of crossing social and cultural divides.
• Universal Appeal: Both elitists and mass producers praised animation for its intellectual, conceptual, and technological virtues.
• Nature of the Medium: From the start, animation was destined to be multi-cultural and multi-functional, driven by technological changes.

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Technological Innovations (1913–1915)

Two major inventions transformed animation from a solitary art form into an assembly-line production:

• The Peg System (1913): Invented by Raoul Barre, this provided a universal registration system to keep drawings aligned.
• Cel Animation (1915): The introduction of clear acetate (cels) allowed artists to draw moving characters on top of a static background, eliminating the need to redraw the background for every single frame.

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The American Industry: Mass Production

The American animation industry was shaped by immigration, displacement, and a rejection of European culture in favor of American technology and mass communication.

Key Industry Pioneers:

• John Randolph Bray:
  • Viewed animation as a profit-driven enterprise.
  • Pioneered organized labor and rapid production techniques (including printed backgrounds).
  • Released the first animated color film, The Debut of Thomas Cat (1920).
• Max Fleischer:
  • A dominant figure in the American industry.
  • Introduced the character Koko the Clown in Out of the Inkwell (1915).
• Windsor McCay:
  • Worked with a more laborious, individual process compared to the industrial models.
  • Established himself as a pioneer with Little Nemo (1910) and Sinking of the Lusitania (1918).

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The Avant-Garde Movement

The avant-garde pushed against traditional artistic ideologies, influencing movements like Fauvism and Cubism.

• Ideology: Futurism established an ideological and political stance, paving the way for Dada and Surrealism to embrace cinema as an art form.
• Aesthetic Focus: These artists focused on the formal potential of film: line, form, movement, rhythm, color, and light.
• Arnaldo Ginna:
  • Noted for producing possibly the first abstract painting in the West.
  • Frustrated by the lack of cameras capable of single-frame control, he drew images directly onto film stock for his work Neurasthenia (1908).