The research is to collect a group of animated documentaries, through analyzing the methods, structures and tools used in those works. The impact of animation and how animation functions to socio-political topics is to be discussed.
The research is to foundate to my thesis animation that aims at bringing out social topics to raise awareness and concern by describing reality in an influential way.
Methods:
a) Extreme expression on reality :
Taking notes from elements, incidents in reality, express them in an exaggerated and/or understated way(s). Including representation, a violence tone, intimate moments of characters, drastic emotional changes, distortion of reality, for example, using a different setting but describing the same situation, metaphorical character of a person. Extreme expression on reality serves the purpose of critical thinking. It raises up the audience’ questions or awarenesses towards certain concepts.
b) Blend reality and animation together:
Most directors use the method of rotoscoping, or direct footages to achieve the goal. Sometimes is to achieve extreme expression on reality. While in other times, it is to add information to the original footage, like comments, elements of the issue discussed. In David Aronowitsch and Hanna Heilborn’s animation, Slaves, the interviewed children were rotoscoped, the purpose is to weaken the reality by animating the children, while the content is about them being slaves for years, animated characters that speaks about brutality and suffering brings the message of the painful truth that is considered to be hard to believe in civilized society.
Structure:
The structure of animate documentaries vary a lot. There are story-based film, interviews, experimental films, even montages. For different issues or incidents, directors of animated documentaries tend to have different approach on the structure of the work. The scale of the approach is also crucial to make the animation works. The decisions made worth to be studied.
Tools:
The role of sound in animated documentary is the key to brings out the themes in many cases. Sound effects, voice over, music, etc are all powerful tools used in animated documentaries to create tension to the images. It is not necessary to sync the sound to the relevant images, sometimes, it works in reverse. Sound effects can be the script of the documentary, for example in That Yorkshire Sound, the animation is led by the sound recorded in Yorkshire. Voice over is not the best way to tell a story in many story-based narratives, but in documentaries, it is a tool that directs the audience to a deeper level of thinking and experience from the visual world.
In conclusion, the reality described in animated documentaries has a lot of potentials. It would be meaningful to study and organize the methods, structures and tools used in the construction of a group of animated documentaries from different cultural or geographical background.
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