FM3 - The Creative Project

Reflective Analysis

My aim was to produce a short ‘stop motion’ animated film for film festivals and film students. The audience would have knowledge and experience of surrealist themes and the particular cinematic techniques I intend to utilise.

Jan Svankmajer was a major influence on my aims as his unique style of stop motion mixed with real people in his films such as ‘Alice’ and ‘Food’ appealed to me. His particular style is recognisable due to the ‘jerkiness’ of the images and the surreal narratives and composition of shots. I was also heavily influenced by more mainstream directors such as Nick Park; the director of Wallace and Gromit (Aardman animations). He also works with ‘stop motion animation’ although producing more mainstream films such as ‘Grand Day Out’ with the characters Wallace and Gromit. These films inspired me due to the shared recurring themes of fantasy, myth and consumption. The Radiohead video ‘There There’ directed by Chris Hopewell also inspired as his style uses the same type of ‘jerkiness’ and surrealism that was created by Jan Svankmajer. I was also influenced by a Claymation film directed by Will Vinton, called ‘The Adventures of Mark Twain, The Mysterious Stranger’. This was due to the same ongoing themes throughout, such as the location, which is set in a fantasy world, and has themes of consumption and myths too. It also has religious connotations in it due to its on going scenes with the Devil in it, which can relate to part of the Minotaur sequence in my production film, as the location is set in the underworld (Hell).

When planning out my film, I decided to make animated mythical creatures out of plasticine, I did this because I wanted to create unique characters, such as Morph. The reasons why I chose to make Mythical creatures is because it comes from a classical tradition of storytelling, like ‘Alice’, a fantasy world where something does not have to make sense and is essentially surreal. I created models of mermaids, a unicorn, a Minotaur and a Cyclops because these creatures are taken from myths and legends and are regular features of fantasy films. ‘Food’ also inspired me narratively as I wanted the Cyclops character to enter each world and consume food. I did this by splitting the screen so it looks like the Cyclops leaves the last world and enters the new one in a unique way, which leads the audience to enter a new story but still as the same themes running throughout it, so it doesn’t confuse them. In the Minotaur sequence I wanted to give the world a dark and creepy look, like a nightmare, to create a contrast to the other worlds; I did this by using Jan Svankmajer’s jerky style.

In the unicorn world I decided to integrate moral and philosophical meaning into it, because God and religion can also be seen as a myth to people, because religion is like a story passed down to generations, just like a myth; The binary oppositions of the unicorn world, which is set in heaven and the clouds, to the mermaid world, which can be seen as the centre (Earth), and then the Minotaur world which is seen as underworld (Hell), shows the desire for temptation.

In the unicorn world I decided to integrate moral and philosophical meaning into it, because God and religion can also be seen as a myth to people, because religion is like a story passed down to generations, just like a myth; The binary oppositions of the unicorn world, which is set in heaven and the clouds, to the mermaid world, which can be seen as the centre (Earth), and then the Minotaur world which is seen as underworld (Hell), shows the desire for temptation.