Term Paper on "Movement and Performance in Animation"

Term Paper 5 pages (1722 words) Sources: 0

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Movement & Performance

Movement and Performance:

in Bee Movie

Movement and performance are elements in an animated film that require awareness and attention to all the details of human actions on the part of the creator. Movement in animation is a language the animator must first analyze and then learn to express in order to produce smooth, lifelike action. The idea is to make it look as natural as possible, but ironically to produce that effect, the animator must exaggerate. This is as true in Bee Movie as in any other animated film. Movements must be bigger and bolder to make it work and create a sense of reality for viewers. The animated version of movement, then, imitates and enhances the real thing, which when compared to the animated, appears weak and less definite. Caricature is often part of the creation of characters as well as stylization. In this paper we will examine movement that creates body language and expressions that convey the emotional, non-verbal component of communication to see how a believable performance is accomplished in animation.

Bee Story is about Barry (voice of Jerry Seinfeld), a bee that decides to leave the community before taking on full time employment in the hive. He wants to find out what the world is like. His adventure includes becoming close friends with a human woman that owns a flower shop. Barry discovers that human beings are stealing the honey from bee hives and selling it for profit. He is outraged by this and becomes a lawyer so that he can sue the "fat cats" that own honey processing and distribution plants. He wins and orders that hive factories be closed so that bees can rest from their constant labors. An unexpected complication from this action, aside from the fact that the bees are bored and unhappy with no work to do, is that earth becomes a barren place without bees to pollinate plants, trees, and crops. In the end Barry finds a way to save the world. The scene we will analyze in this paper is a scene that takes place immediately following Barry's legal success in Court. Barry and his human friend are celebrating their victory together when the woman's boyfriend comes home from work. In this sequence the boyfriend reveals how jealous he is of Barry and how much he dislikes Barry for stealing the time, attention, and affections of his girlfriend.

Construction of the Puppets

Casting" is important to any dramatic performance. What the characters look like contributes to their believable performances. In Bee Movie, for example, Barry looks like a sweet, innocent and non-cynical version of Jerry Seinfeld. He has enormous blue eyes with black eyebrows and short brown hair. He does not appear to have any ears, but he does have long and slender black antennae coming from the top of his head, which he sometimes uses expressively. His body is yellow with black stripes going round it. To accomplish the yellow and black stripes, he wears a turtle neck sweater. Small clear nylon gauze, see-through wings, rather angelic looking, are on his back and usually in motion. Each wing appears to be constructed in two oval segments. Barry's long, thin arms are yellow, and he wears black gloves on his very human-looking hands with opposing thumbs and long delicate fingers. He has skinny, delicate legs and wears black, high-top tennis shoes similar to Convers. In a flourish of whimsy, Barry's black stripes, which are horizontal, continue all the way to his rear end, which looks like a bull's eye on a target board for darts.

His female friend is very beautiful, as a love interest should be. Her face is reminiscent of a heart shape with very large "soulful" round eyes and eyebrows gracefully shaped.

Her nose is gently curved up, and her pink mouth is like a heart at times. Her brown hair falls in a simple curve that frames her face. She wears a sweater with a blouse underneath and the shirt collar of the blouse stands up in a perky manner. Everything about her is feminine and desirable but not overtly sexy.

Her boyfriend is a man with a long athletic-looking body. He has long torso, long legs, long arms and broad shoulders. His face is rather long and squared-off angularly with a very long chin that flares out slightly at the bottom. His arms are thick and muscular looking. He reminds one of Robert Mitchum, that type of man physically. When he comes in the door, he seems to have taken his suit jacket off and loosened his tie, which lets the viewer know he is coming home from work. He has on a white shirt with cuffs turned back halfway between wrist and elbow and grey trousers.

Movements of Characters

When the boyfriend first enters the scene, his mouth is shut and he appears to be looking down as he comes in the door. His eyebrows are level. He appears not to notice at first his girlfriend has company because he is looking elsewhere. He takes six steps, each step contrived to produce a curve that arcs toward the table where the other two are sitting. During this walk we see his profile coming in but as he walks toward the table, the angle of his body changes so that we see him full-front, and we see that what he carries over his shoulder is his suit jacket.

Barry is in the air on the left side of the screen, angled toward the intruder, arm held up in a gesture as he speaks to the girl. We can see only the side of Barry's face from behind. His body is posed to lean forward toward the girl as though he is eager for communication with her. In this sequence, the girl is on the right hand side of the screen, down front. Her eyes are wide and looking downward. Her eyebrows are lifted and actually curve up slightly at the inner corners of her eyes. This creates an attitude of listening with interest. Her mouth is also slightly open and curving upward at the corners in a smile. She appears to be listening carefully to Barry and pleased with what he is saying. The boyfriend's gaze is then on the girl, as though he doesn't realize Barry is there yet. He is almost smiling with his cheeks slightly widened and mouth slightly turned up.

In the next sequence of movements, the boyfriend walks a few more steps forward. As he does, his body lifts and straightens, his head comes up and back, and the expression on his face changes. His eyebrows lift, his eyes widen until the whites show on TOP of his pupils, and his mouth becomes almost perfectly square. This creates the sense of an unpleasant surprise. Then his mouth gradually shuts and is a straight line across, his eyebrows lower into a winged shape, and his head, which was up and thrown back, comes down and assumes a more "normal" position, which imparts a sense of dismay and anger. Meanwhile, the girl, still in the corner down front, has turned her head to profile. Her eyes close during this turn, and we can see her body rotate and jerk in a way that indicates surprise. Her mouth is open and no longer turned up. Her one profiled eye is wide and from the side we can see only the white. Barry, still in the air, lowers his head so it can't be seen. His body goes straight up. This indicates alertness to possible danger.

In the next sequence we see a full face of the girl. Her eyes are so wide we can see white all the way around the pupils. She is shocked. Her eyebrows and the "flesh" above his eyes are lifted. Her open mouth is closer to almost perfectly round. Her shoulders go back. Barry's body language indicates surprise too. His antennae are straight up in a narrow V. His arms are slightly extended outward. His legs dangle and his ankles cross. Being a bee, his facial expression is too small to see in this frame. The pause in the movement of Barry and the girl conveys their surprise (and dismay) at the unexpected intrusion of the man. There is a hold here for several frames that indicates the depth of their shock. There is tension in the shoulders and arms, and Barry's wings flutter nervously.

In Bee Movie, the characters are not constantly in motion. Sometimes we see the character posed. For example, we see a whole montage of posed frames in the sequence where the boyfriend follows Barry into the bathroom and tries to kill him. As he tries to strike Barry with a rolled-up magazine, movement is created by flashing various conflict poses, one frame at a time, very quickly. This creates a sense of violence and chaos. Barry as he just escapes the magazine, the boyfriend with arm raised and… READ MORE

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