Changes to the project agenda
While studying narrative for animation and cinematography as a newcomer in the School of Screen, I realized that it would make perfect sense to reflect on theory and incorporate the techniques I’ve learned in practice. Visual storytelling in film involves the concept of cinema as a frame, which one can manipulate to alter the audience’s perception and, consequently, deform or deconstruct the familiar world depicted. I was particularly interested in camera movements and shots that provide viewers with unsettling, uneasy impressions. Hence, the following techniques became a priority: Dutch Angle/Tilted Angle, Dolly Zoom (Hitchcock’s Vertigo), and the Rolling Camera which shifts the perspective upside down.
There was one particular camera movement that I kept seeing across various scenes in recent productions: the 180-degree roll, which essentially flips the world upside down. When it comes to shots and views, there’s one called the eye-level view, which is an approximation of human perspective from the height of our own bodies. While we may be becoming more familiar with the bird’s-eye view due to booming drone technology, it’s still not inherently part of our nature. I decided that this could easily be classified as unfamiliar. For example, portraying the car driving through the forest from angles different from the eye-level view, using a camera movement that unsettles the audience with an altered perspective
Storyboard for project reflecting changes
Project objectives
Animation:
- Animate the vehicle using a control rig.
- Implement camera animation for establishing shots of the landscape, focusing on capturing the accelerating vehicle.
Research:
- Study car animation techniques and camera animation, particularly top-angle shots and rotations, with reference to examples from cinematography.
Assets:
- Landscape model.
- Rigged car model.
Aesthetics:
- The landscape will be designed to create a negative space that symbolizes the human brain, with the car’s journey representing a surreal exploration of the unconscious mind.
- Camera movements will be employed to symbolize the transition to an upside-down world, serving as a metaphor for the deconstruction of a familiar environment
Examples of Works Featuring Notable Camera Movements:
This section in short covers the camera movement and hidden meaning/ symbolism that I found within the production/ contemporary cinema, which accounts for some of the inspirations that informed me about shaping my visual storytelling.
A pivotal moment in Smile (2022) occurs when Rose Cotter (Sosie Bacon), the protagonist, is driving her car after experiencing a distressing sequence of events. She begins to realize that she is being influenced by the curse of the “smile.” This moment becomes particularly striking when the camera shifts to an upside-down perspective. Beyond being a visual trick, this inversion serves as a metaphorical device that reflects Rose’s emotional and psychological turmoil, as well as the confusing nature of her new reality.
Stranger Things uses a variety of visual and cinematic techniques to portray the characters’ psychological and emotional experiences, particularly their perceptions of reality. The show is known for its use of camera angles, reflections, and environmental distortions to represent themes of trauma, fear, and the collapse of reality. These visual cues mirror the protagonists’ emotional and mental states, much like the upside-down camera angles in Smile, which symbolize disorientation and the breakdown of reality.
Similar camera movement can be spotted at the Infinity Pool (2023) by Brandon Cronenber, introducing a range of camera movements, rotations, and zoom techniques to enhance the film’s bizarre and dizzying atmosphere.
In Enter the Void (2009), directed by Gaspar Noé, rotating camera angles, first-person perspectives, and distorted zooms are used to convey the sensation of out-of-body experiences.
180 camera roll: What do I want to convey?
The camera movement depicts the transition to the upside-down world, delivered with a rotation of around 180 degrees. The camera spline trail is used to define the path for the car movement, which is the same path used for the camera capturing the car from the above, ‘the bird eye view’ that rotates upside down. Bringing unsettling sensation to the audience-screen relation, similar to the Dutch angle, but more of a feeling of spinning.
Symbolism: Indirect messaging.
While researching camera movements and the Paramount production for the movie Smile, I discovered a hidden meaning. In the opening of the film, the Paramount animation logo is altered, flipping 180 degrees in a snap. This flip seems to symbolize or reference the theme of the film, as the stars form the shape of a smile. I was astonished that I figured this out on my own! Initially, I had been focused on the camera movement itself and hadn’t considered this deeper connection until it came to me.
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I really love this idea. I’m all about the Gestalt Principles, which focus on finding patterns and meaning in chaos. This concept inspired me to incorporate negative space into my shot. Initially, I wanted to create the outline of a brain in the middle of the field. However, during the early research phases, the idea of exploring the unconscious mind led to something that turned out a bit strange—almost like UFO traces or too vague for someone to understand unless they were really looking into it. In the end, I decided to deliver a question mark shape, which I outlined with a spline. This spline created the pathway and procedurally altered the generated content by removing overlapping points from the clouds along the trajectory of the question mark.
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