Realism: What's Real and What's Not?

Reflection after a lecture on realism...

Something I again became interested in after thinking about it is that of realism. I began thinking about realism in film and how the technology we have now and how it will advance in the future gives us the opportunity and potential to create more and more realistic characters, environments and objects in computer graphics. We can already create photo realistic art, how long before we start to question what's real and what's not, when CG develops to a level so realistic that we wouldn't be able to tell the difference from a model and the real thing itself?

Photorealism is a close step artists have already made to re-creating reality, in some cases you can't tell whether its real or not. But will CG head this way too? Will it be possible? As novelist, Nikolai Chernishevsky said "the first purpose of art is to reproduce reality". It seems like reality is something we strive for and whether its possible or not, I expect people will continue to try and recreate reality in CG. 

On the topic of photorealism my mind came across a book I read back during college, 'MA'CLAIM: finest photo realistic graffiti'. 'MA'CLAIM' is a group of talented graffiti artists who produce photo realistic graffiti all around the world. I remember when I saw their work in this book, I couldn't beleive that some of this had been done with spray paint. I've included some of their images below:

Whether or not CG with eventually get to the same stage as some of the traditional art out there at the moment is unsure. One question I think of is would realistic CG be better than what we have at the moment. I'm not entirely convinced it will. Take Pixar for example, the most successful animation studio in the world. Their films take a less realistic approach and more artistic,  Pixar focus on narrative and story and they manage to capture this well with the characters they create and the level of realism their characters are made at. Monsters Inc. just wouldn't be as entertaining if Sully and Mike were were fully realistic monsters and thats how we like animation and its one of the things which makes animation visually pleasing, its artistic quality rather than realistic. 

It's kind of scary to think that in the future we might not be able to tell whether what we are looking at is the real thing or not. Actors are already getting the bodies scanned into computers so that 40 years later they can be recreated in films where they need to be alot younger. Of course you wouldn't be able to capture the soul of the actor and it would be up to how good the animators were to produce a good acting role. 

I'm sure that in 10-15 years we will have reach this level of realism in CG but I also don't think that realism is the best option in animation. Games like final fantasy already have scenes where they are getting close to looking very realistic. But like I was discussing in a seminar, a character from final fantasy as realistic as it may be might not be as appealing to look at as maybe a black and white image of some apples. Take a look at this new advert for Twinnings tea, if realistic would it be better, personally no, the artistic strokes and beautiful texture of the animation is all in its character which is something I really doubt could be achieved with realistic CG:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdkcsDueSMM

In a concluding manner I really like this quote by Lev Manovich stating "as 3D synthetic imagery is used more and more widely in contemporary visual culture, the problem of realism has to be studied afresh". It kind of sums up the idea that the more and more realistic 3D gets, the more and more we would question whether something is real or not, which seems like quite an unnerving thought, to not know what is real.

Narrative

Looking at narrative this week, I became aware of how Aristotle defines a beginning, a middle and an end and how these categories are defined in film.

One name that struck me more than any other was that of Vladimir Propp, and it became interesting when looking at his character archetype in which he set out that there are '31 narrative functions' and '8 character types' was whether this was true amongst most animation.

Propp defined '8 character types' to be:

• villan
• donor
• helper
• princess/father
• dispatcher
• hero/victor
• false hero

This made me think to look at a  character sets to see how they match up.

I first thought about crash bandicoot, and while crash has alot of characters in the story I am still interested to see if it matches up on the whole. My breakdown would go like this:

• Villan - Dr.Cortex
• Donor - Polar/Pura
• Helper - Aku aku
• Princess -Coco
• Dispatcher - ?
• Hero - Crash
• False hero - ?

I managed to think of most of the characters which could fit these categories although not quite for 'dispatcher' and 'false hero'. While in a way it seems that obviously most narratives don;t include all of these they do seem to be apparent. Off the top of my head I can't think of any more categories to place a character. The many other characters in crash bandicoot seem to fall under 'villan' numerous times.

Intertextuality

Recently we learnt about intertextuality (transposition of one or several sign systems into another). This got me thinking about how intertextuality can purposefully or un-purposefully create connotations and links inside the viewers mind to other things they are reminded of...
The Family Guy Star Wars episodes are an obvious use of intertextuality, you only have to watch the opening scene with the paragraphs floating through space and the definable Star Wars theme tune playing in the background to recognise its origin. 

Of course, contextually, the Family Guy episodes of Star Wars are created as a spoof, so although intertextual, the whole of the episode in a way can be classed as intertextual and it is very, very intended. 

One thing mentioned during the lecture which kind of made me think about real creativity or if real originality still exists, was about how intertextuality questions our beliefs about authorship, originality and creativity. When we create something, are we actually creating something unique? Likely there is sure to be something similar out there which ahas already been made, even if of a different purpose, something truly unique must be actually quite hard to create. 

When we draw something, we make it out of lines and shapes. Before we have already started we are already creating something that has been done before. But what if we created something that wasn't made from lines and shapes? It is indeed very hard to think about and something I am really interested in. As an artist or an artist in the making it is strange to think that what we do might not be as creative as we like. It is in this sense, probably intertextual to at least one of the 6 or so billion people in the world.

While there is the previous issues about intertextuality, it can also be used purposefully to intend to affect the audience in some way. In the lecture we were shown the example of in Madagascar, where Alex the lion intertextually performs a similar role as Charlton Heston did in the original Planet of the Apes film (1968). Below is a link to the Madagascar version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32lwKxakec8

and the Planet of the Apes version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muEnLlycOn4

Those are my thoughts on intertextuality, really interested at looking into this further and I'm sure will be something I consider when watching film from now on. And on that note, I'll leave you all to look at this which was used as an advert for television...

Understanding Semiotics

A recent lecture on semiotics gave me an insight into how we understand things and how this could be useful for film...


Semiotics, the study of signs, is how we perceive perceive a form. We all understand that this is a circle: 

Semiotics breaks down to be the:

• study of meaning
• what we make of something
• how we read it

Semiotics is relevant in film, in that we need to consider how others will perceive things to ensure they are being perceived in the right way. Ferdinand de Saussure came up with signification in semiotics, where he identified the equation 'SIGNS = SIGNIFIER + SIGNIFIED', the signifier being the physical form and the signified being the mental concept. 

The picture of a cat is a more universal signifier than the word 'CAT'.

In semiotics I was thinking how so many things are perceived differently around the world, even a simple gesture such as a wave could be interpreted differently in particular countries due to difference in culture. Either where the film could be shown would have to be considered or even in the making of the film, certain contextual factors would effect the design. If I made a film based in India, would I have to consider how semiotics would be interpreted by indian people and adapt my film to their culture?

One way I thought of this was thinking back to an old HSBC advert where they discuss how meanings vary from one country to another, particularly that the number '8' was lucky in china. Maybe if I made a film based in China, contextual knowledge like this could be used to an advantage, possibly making the film more believable and genuine to its aim.

When I make films or any kind of media, whether it be concept art, models or designs, I would like to think that I would really improve my work by looking further into the semiotics of what I'm creating in comparison to its purpose.

An Introduction to the Unexpected

A reflection on my 'Media Histories and Culture' lecture on the topic of entropy and redundancy...

'ENTROPY' is the unexpected chaos of the unpredictable, surprising and new, similarly to how you probably wouldn't have expected this post to have begun with the word 'entropy' emphasised in comparison to the rest of the text with a larger font size, capitalisation and red text.

Now back to to my introduction, looking at how entropy and redundancy affect the viewers perception of a film. As already mentioned, entropy is a factor of unpredictability while on the other hand redundancy is the presence of the predictable. Until now I hadn't really thought about the effect of these two techniques in film, let alone how the balance of the two is crucial in producing a film to try and manipulate the viewers emotions.

I think a good balance of redundancy helps keep the viewer familiar with expected story patterns and helps to entertain in the fact that most story's that are good, are good story's because they can connect with the audience. If it was 100% entropic, everything would be unexpected and it could be hard to make sense of a film where there would be nothing to familiarise with. 

A good balance of entropy does however, provide an exciting story because the audience can't tell what's going to happen, encouraging them to continue watching.

Toy story 3 is one example I thought of that has some really good examples of of entropy where storyline completlely excites the audience by offering the right amount of the unexpected. The Pixar films in general seem to do this all so well, maybe its a bigger factor than I think when it comes to composing a film. When I look to create a final year film, the levels of redundancy and entropy will be something I consider greatly. The link below is a kind of entropic part of the film, and a comedic moment (play from 1:45 - 2:02):


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s2wbe9zSbs&feature=results_main&playnext=1&list=PL2886EC71F1D7F4B6

This scene is entropic in that we don;t know what going to appear from the tunnel and when we do find out its a surprise and actually quite amusing due to its adult humour.

Toy story has reached its third and most likely final film, each taking large sums of money at the box office. The story has progressed and kept an audience entertained, willing to see more. A factor of entropy is not only included within particular parts of the film but in the sequence as a whole. Its one of the reasons people continue to watch these films and is a key factor in keeping people entertained and attatched to products. 

                 

This use of entropy can also be seen in the use of game franchises. The uncharted series on PlayStation 3 has got to be one of my favourites for its sheer storyline and campaign. One of the things that makes it so good is the unknown of what we can expect. They have so many twists and turns in the storyline its exciting to follow. Entropy seems like it can play a really big part in the success of a film or game, its sure to be something I would want to execute well in one of my own films...