Transcription: Final Art Direction

The audience of my transcription project is directed towards a documentary audience.

Because of this audience, my aim for the art direction is to push towards realism rather then a stylisation. The focus will be on the environment's intricacies, especially its arabic ornamentation.
I've taken out a lot of books detailing Islamic architecture and pattern so I'll be dedicating a post to that soon before fully committing to production.


Inspirational videos for the final animation:

Supporting Research - Batman: Arkham Asylum

Growing up watching Warner Bros Cartoons was one of my childhood's greatest memories, any Warner Bros Cartoon in particular? Had to be Batman: The Animated Series.
What made the show so memorable was two things, the amazing art of Bruce Timm, and the voice acting of Kevin Conroy (Batman) and Mark Hamill (The Joker).

Batman: Arkham Asylum is along those same veins. It's special because it takes the childhood experience of Batman: The Animated Series, and brings it into Adulthood.

How does this relate to my project? Well, like Max Payne, Arkham Asylum manages to take something the audience has already experienced... and twists it.

I love it, it's a great trick.

WARNING: Haven't played Arkham Asylum yet? Don't watch the next two videos. Play it.
Don't intend to play it anytime soon? Go nuts.. I suppose. But I warn you, it's well worth experiencing first hand rather than watching it on low-quality youtube videos

Watch the first video (Most important parts are at 0:00-1:40 & 4:00-6:00), then watch the second (0:00 to 2:45).







What I love about this experience is it breaks the fourth wall. The fourth wall is essentially an imaginary boundary between the audience and the entertainer. It's what separates fiction and reality. The term 'Breaking the fourth wall' is when the entertainer directly interacts with the audience, or fiction interacting with reality.

Only one other game series I've experienced has done this, Metal Gear Solid (put your controller on the floor!). The great thing about the fourth wall is it's another plane of experience to the viewer.

In the first video, You're watching this cutscene, You are controlling batman at the start, you take batman through this area, interact with these characters, and you know that experience from then onwards. It's like a memorable shot or scene within a film that you can replay in your head.

If you've seen the first video, the second video is pretty much self-explanatory in terms of how the audience's experience is led. But the great uncannyness to it is that Batman is essentially under the Scarecrow's effect, and that's what the audience is experiencing as they interact with almost the same stuff again but with the intended scarecrow effect.

This shall be one of my more larger supporting research aspects of my project. I aim to try and take that experience of breaking the fourth wall into my work.

Supporting Research - Max Payne

Max Payne is a BAFTA Award winning third person shooter video game developed by Remedy Entertainment, who is also well known for producing Alan Wake for the Xbox 360.

The game’s protagonist is the titular Max Payne, a NYPD Officer, turned DEA undercover agent, who is framed for murder and throughout the game, is hunted by the police, the mafia, and a cold-blooded corporation known as Aesir.

The game’s story is told through the protagonist’s view in an artistic narrative, utilising panels in the style of a graphic novel to take place of cutscenes, with the narrator being Max.


The reason why I chose to use this game as supporting research for my creative assignment is due to its presentation of environment. (skip to 2:25)



Moreover, its uncanny twist to the same environment the player goes through later down in the game's story.



My aim will be to create an atmosphere similar to the games. As a result of this, I may look further into Film Noir and Graphic Novels, two aspects which inspired the game's development.
I will be utilising elements from this game much further when I start developing my creative project.

Timetable

Uncanny Environment and Initial Influence Map

Coupled with tableau vivant. An "Uncanny" environment is a difficult concept to get my head planted on.

It's become apparent that the 'uncanny' constantly has me straying away from looking at environment and going into looking at people. It's probably because the distortion of ourselves is much easier to show then the distortion of the environment we're placed in.

The Freudian concept of uncanny is an instance where something can be familiar, yet unsettling at the same time. 'the fundamental propensity of the familiar
to turn on its owners'

However, the uncanny environment can be generally defined by the changing of familiar places. It distorts rules that originally creates a sense of security (like a home) into something uncomfortable (a home built over a Native Indian burial ground).

The way in which this unit is perceived to me is that the concept must be familiar and yet unsettling. The frustrating part is the atmosphere in which to create this idea is limited to our visual perception. (films use sound and sight; video games use sound, sight and can use touch; real life uses sound, sight, touch, smell and taste)

Environment - START

------- Just for me as a reference-From the Brief-------

‘It’s possible, in a poem or a short story, to write about commonplace things and objects using commonplace but precise language, and to endow those things – a chair, a window curtain, a fork, a stone, a woman’s earring – with immense, even startling power’.

Raymond Carver, Fires

Historically, tableaux vivants refer to elaborate theatrical pageants wherein static performers emulate existing paintings, or embody historical or allegorical scenes.
Participants are posed, wear costumes and utilise props, with lighting used to create a suitably heightened effect. In this way, tableaux vivants combine the conventions of theatre with those of painting and photography.

Tableaux vivant photography denotes a constructed image, the mise-en-scène of which draws knowingly upon the conventions of theatre, painting, or film. Mise-en-scène translates as ‘the settings of a play’, but used critically, the term refers to the art direction of a given scene and encompasses props, lighting, costume, set design, and staging.
Put simply, everything that makes an image is considered meaningful and its narrative or symbolic value carefully considered. Fine art photographers such as Gregory
Crewdson, Sandy Skoglund, Jeff Wall, Anna Gaskell and Deborah Mesa-Pelly manipulate the mise-en-scène of their tableau vivant-style photographs to direct and mis-direct the spectator’s expectations.

Through the development, design and execution of an original tableau vivant-style image, this unit requires you to continue your ongoing investigation of space by considering the various ways in which an environment may derive and communicate its identity through its spatial representation.

You are asked to produce a tableau vivant-style scene that combines a digitally modelled set with a matte painting. Your scene should demonstrate clearly your understanding of the various ways in which environments may derive and communicate their identity through their mise-en-scène.

---------------------End---------------------

Using what I've learnt from the previous unit in terms of perspective/space/etc, I will aim to transfer those skills/ideas/techniques onto this unit and progress further into ways in which one can create a atmosphere within an environment.

Tableu Vivant, a key part of this unit, is "a representation of a scene, painting, sculpture, etc., by a person or group posed silent and motionless." As I've been told adding person(s) within the scene are somewhat discouraged. I am aiming to create a scene that appeals to a human emotion in terms of what the viewer feels looking at the painting.

Considering the film side of the unit seems to be focused on the Dramatic/Horror/Thriller/Mystery genre, it would seem evident that the unit encourages the painting to be... well Dramatic/Horror/Thriller/Mystery-like. Despite not stating in the brief what our final scene's atmosphere should be in the range of.

I would really like to stretch it to appeal to a further range of emotion, such as a graphic dramatic scene like..after someone gets whacked (example the shot up car at the toll-booth the night on the demise of 'Sonny') giving the viewer an emotion of disgust or sadness. Instead of something like an haunted house that gives the viewer an emotion of fear or unease.

This will be primarily due to the use of Mise-en-scène within the piece, another key term in this unit and an expression I am already familiar with, as well as the use of formal visual elements that I may pursue if I will aim to create a specific art style to compliment the scene.

I've spent this entire week researching through Tableu Vivant, as the idea is new and somewhat intriguing to me. In support of this unit, and finding inspiration, I've been looking through or re-watching films in the past which are known for its strong use of exploiting the viewers psyche as well as, to an extent exploited my psyche. Such as the Blair Witch Project, The Prestige, Ju-on, The Grudge, The Ring, The Sixth Sense and Paranormal Activity, (I still need to watch Inception, I heard it's great, but I'm sooooo behind in modern cinema).

To a lesser extent, I may push bounds and look at games which exploit or influence the human psyche, or ways in which it creates immersion. Through elements such as it's spacial presence, or the ways in which it can channel the players senses. Games such as Silent Hill have done this well, in the spacial presence in creating an environment with a sense of unease. or Max Payne- exploiting the human psyche during the player controlling Max in his dream