Thursday, 26 November 2015

Lecture: Fears of The Dark

 
Fear[s] of The Dark - 2007

In this lecture, we looked at Fear[s] of the Dark, a french abstract horror movie created in 2007. Based on 'fear' itself, it was written and created by comic book creators and graphic designers. The film is split into 5 parts; our focus was the fifth part, which relied heavily on the use of shapes and two contrasting colours. This section of the film was mostly flat, using shapes and negative space to create characters and use the black background as the dark. Each section of the film is told in a slightly different way and the graphics change throughout each section, with textures being used for some sections, whilst the 5th block we look at relies mostly on the use of flat shapes.

The focus of the 20 minute section we looked at showed the vunerabilty of a man being locked inside a cabin after escaping a blizzard, and the paranoia that plays on him. Although this was only a flat-animation and was virtually black+white, it showed clearly the fear of the man of the dark and used the negative space well to play on his fears.

My favourite part of the film was how it was able to portray such emotion with limited shapes - the other sections of the film use texture and more detailed graphics, but this was very simplistic but was still able to capture the mans fear due to his facial expressions. Overall the style of the film reminded me of Persepolis, a 2007 animation based on the Iranian revolution.  The style of Persepolis, particulary with the shapes it uses and minimalist shapes, reminds me of what I see in this film too. Overall the film was interesting to watch and allowed me to show how expression in animation is a good way of showing the audience emotion, and that simplistic ones can be just as effective.