Live-action Films Research Articles

Transformation of Japanese Female Characters in the European Live­Action Films (1945–2015)

The aim of this paper is to define characteristic images of Japanese women in European live-action films of the second half of the 20th century — the early 21st century. Research methodology . The author applied the imalogical method which has to do with the analysis of one nation’s image in the perception of another one, at that the source of the research is the mass culture of a recipient. The basis of this method is the comprehensive approach. Results . A woman was perceived as Different in most cultures for extended periods. At the same time, a woman had a major impact on the development of the people in almost all spheres of its life. For a long time, Japanese women were perceived as a secondary member of a society. In the context of globalization, gender roles are changing even in traditional Japanese society. The identification of characteristic images and the study of the transformation of the female characters’ images will help to more accurately determine and characterize the image of Japan in European live-action films. Imagology is a young scientific field that explores the image of one nation in the minds of another. The subject of imagology is a cultural tradition in all its manifestations, including the position of women in the society. The study of female images and their evolution helps to determine the image of the country as a whole. Cinema, as one of the most popular types of popular art, is capable of simultaneously relaying the public opinion and creating new social myths. The characteristic images of Japanese characters are revealed: an object in a patriarchal society, an object of a foreigner’s love, a woman creator, a woman warrior, a keeper of cultural traditions, and a modern Japanese woman. It is specified that the artistic and dramatic principles of the images are changing, depending on the genre features of the film. It is determined that a woman acts as a metaphor for the whole country, for which the postcolonial discourse, the features of intercultural communication, the consequences of the events of the Second World War are reflected. Novelty . The novelty of the results is a cultural conceptualization of the image of a Japanese woman, formed under the influence of cultural and historical factors and reflected in cinematography. For the first time, the transformation of cinematic images of Japanese women under the influence of Japanese cultural policy and intercultural communication is traced. The practical significance. An analysis of the image of female characters in live-action films is an important step in the study of the cultural and artistic representation of Japan in Western cinema of the 2nd half of the 20th century — the early 21st century.

애니메이션의 실사영화화에 따른 이미지 연구 : 디즈니 프린세스 작품을 중심으로

Modern society is a competitive society. In this society, more and more people are looking for stability and happiness, and more "adults" want to stay as children. For them, cultural content is being produced that reminds them of their childhood memories. In the center, Disney made a live-action film of its animation. The live-action film of Disney Animation is gaining popularity from "My Old Man." Among the most successful Disney films, the study analyzed Cinderella (1950/2015), Beauty and the Beast (1992/2017), and Aladdin (1992/2019). As the primary data, the original fairy tale and animation, as the secondary data, the real-life film and related papers were referenced, and each storyline, character and makeup image were analyzed. Studies show that synchro-rate of animation and live-action films is important to arouse nostalgia in childhood, and that the higher the synchro-rate of animation and live-action films, the higher the box-office performance. Therefore, this study analyzed the contents and styling of the animation as it was made into a live-action film and studied the effects of the original synchro rate on the box office success in Disney's live-action film.

Comparison of Direction as Related to Subject Matter in Live-Action Films and Animation

Comparison of Direction as Related to Subject Matter in Live-Action Films and Animation

Zepo and the films about the Spanish Civil War

Abstract Although there are many live-action films about the Spanish Civil War and its aftermath, Zepo is the first Spanish animated film that deals with this period. This article will focus on Zepo’s contributions to Spanish cinema on Francoism (1936–75), relating it to some of the main works on this period.

A hybrid documentary genre: Animated documentary and the analysis of Waltz with Bashir (2008) Movie

The word documentary has been described as an advice” in “Oxford English Dictionary” in the late 1800s. Document is a main source of information for lawyers. And in cinema, basic film forms are defined with their own properties. The common sense is to separate documentary from fiction, experimental from main current and animation from the live action films. While these definitions were being made, it has been considered that which expression methods were used. The film genre which is called documentary has been defined in many different ways. In this study, animated documentary genre which is a form of hybrid documentary has been concerned with Baudrillard’s theory. In this context, Ari Folman’s animated documentary Waltz with Bassir (2008) has been analyzed with genre criticism method.

Form(ulat)ing Mistrust in the State in the 1990s’ Slovak Live-Action Films

Abstract The text deals with the ways in which Slovak live-action films made in the 1990s introduced the topic of mistrust in the State and in its institutions. Using specific examples, the text demonstrates that such mistrust was not primarily a critical attitude, but rather consisted of two basic forms of rejection. On the one hand, live-action films made for cinema often promoted the post-modern principle of a “relative” truth, presenting a lifestyle with minimal ties to the State, sometimes also formulating a mistrust in specific state institutions (the police, state-run artistic institutions, education system) by means of irony. On the other hand, films made for state television frequently drew attention to corruption in state organisations and the fact it was usually being generally accepted as a status that did not need to be analysed. In both cases, the message of the 1990s was carried onto the next millennium, and can eventually be interpreted as a way of solidifying the discourse of mistrust that we perceive in contemporary Slovak film for cinemas and television.

Rating and Review of a Film Inspired by African Culture: Kirikou and the Sorceress

People watch films for several reasons. Films can be animated or live action films, which can be further categorized as entertaining, informative, therapeutic, and so on. Films enable the audience ...

Video-based interactive storytelling using real-time video compositing techniques

Interactive storytelling systems usually adopt computer graphics to represent virtual story worlds, which facilitates the dynamic generation of visual content. However, the quality of the images and motion produced by these systems is still inferior compared to the high quality experience found in live-action films. Interactive rates in photorealistic rendering for the film industry will not be possible for decades to come. A promising alternative is the replacement of 3D virtual characters with video sequences with real actors. In this paper, we propose a new method for video-based interactive narratives that uses video compositing algorithms that run at truly interactive frame rates. The proposed method is consistent with plots that are generated by nondeterministic planning algorithms. Moreover, we propose a system of artificial intelligent agents that perform the same roles played by filmmaking professionals. A user evaluation of the proposed method is presented. We believe that future improvements of the techniques proposed in this paper represent an important contribution to the quest for new and more immersive forms of interactive cinema.

Chinese Netizens’ Reactions to Red Classics Cinema Animation A Case Study of Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (2011)

<p class="1Body">‘Red Classics’ can be considered as an important subgenre of Chinese cinema animation, which is often adapted from war novels, revolutionary model opera, songs and live-action films<em>. </em>Animated film <em>Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy (2011)</em>, as a Red Classics cinema animation production, has provoked heated discussion among Chinese netizens in two largest online film communities and review aggregator sites <em>Douban Movie </em>and <em>Mtime</em>. This paper reveals the Chinese netizens’ reception process of this movie before and after public screening by analysing the relevant brief comments and longer film reviews from the above two websites. Chinese audiences’ expectation on <em>Taking Tiger Mountain by Strategy</em> was relatively negative before exhibition in cinema. This can be partly attributed to the emotional discontent over the previous Chinese animation and government intervention on artistic creation. However, there has been a gradual shift in the attitudes of netizens towards this movie after the public exhibition, the reviews have become more objective, rational and positive. This article aims to identify the reasons behind such attitude change by applying reception studies approach, and how and to what extent these elements have affected Chinese netizens’ evaluation process.</p>

Wes Anderson’s ambivalent film style: the relation between mise-en-scène and emotion

Through a systematic analysis of his seven live action films (from Bottle Rocket to The Grand Budapest Hotel), this essay investigates the ambivalent features of Wes Anderson’s distinctive mise-en-scène and examines the emotions it evokes. This essay is guided by several research questions: What are the stylistic characteristics of Wes Anderson’s films? How does Wes Anderson’s mise-en-scène create a distinctive emotional appeal? And: How exactly does mise-en-scène work in particular scenes to create specific emotions?

사진적 이미지의 뮤직비디오 연구

뮤직 비디오는 오디오 음반의 발매와 함께 그에 어울리는 영상을 추가하여 비디오 클립으로 제작되는 멀티미디어유형이다. 원래는 단순한 음반의 홍보수단으로 출발하였으나 음악전문 케이블 M-TV 방영의 주요 콘텐츠로 각광받게 되면서 대량 제작되기 시작하였다. 21세기는 스마트 폰 시대로 애니메이션, 실사 영화, 다큐멘터리를 비롯한 다방면의 영화 제작 기술을 사용하고 있다. 그 중에서 사진적 이미지의 뮤직비디오를 대표하는 사진작가 겸 뮤직비디오 감독인 안톤 코빈과 스테반 세나두이를 중심으로 그들의 작품 경향을 분석하고자 한다. The music video was produced by the multimedia type of a video clip by adding the image to match it with the release of audio recordings. mass production. Although originally it started as a means of promoting music as mere receive attention as the main content of the music cable broadcast M-TV began mass production. The 21st century has used the technology in various fields, including animated films and live action films, documentaries smart phone era. Among attempts to analyze their work tends to center the photographer and music video director Anton Corbijin and Stephen Sednaoui representing a photographic image of a music video

Team Snow Queen: feminist cinematic ‘misinterpretations’ of a fairy tale

Four women directors’ live-action films available in English – Päivi Hartzell’s feature Lumikuningatar (The Snow Queen, 1986), Danishka Esterhazy’s short The Snow Queen (2005), Tamar van den Dop’s feature Blind (2007), and Catherine Breillat’s feature La belle endormie (The Sleeping Beauty, 2010) – use Hans Christian Andersen’s story ‘The Snow Queen’ as hypotext. Explorations of gendered positions in culture and in film, directly linked to a readily identifiable fairy tale, these works offer a compelling example of how geographically and temporally dispersed adaptations can share perspectives beyond their common source material, ones which I argue can be directly linked to what one director felicitously called a (feminist) ‘misinterpretation’ of the original. First, their Snow Queens are lookers in two senses: having a beautiful physical appearance, and actually looking and seeing within the films’ diegeses. Second, they show the Snow Queen’s physical movements and gestures as stylised or unusual. Third, they conflate the characters of Gerda and Kai and/or problematise their gender, making it ambiguous, doubling it, or rendering it in composite. Fourth, unlike Andersen’s story, these films’ climactic scenes focus on interactions/relations between Kai/Gerda and the Snow Queen.

La traducción de canciones en el cine de animación

This paper explores the different strategies and choices made when translating songs for the cinema. Whereas songs in live-action films are usually subtitled, the standard audiovisual translation mode used in animated films is dubbing, mainly because young cinemagoers are the main audience of these films and their reading skills are not completely developed. The creation of a « singable » lyric and the respect for dubbing conventions oblige the translator to make choices taking into account the visual, musical and linguistic dimensions of the text. The analyses of the Spanish, French and Italian versions of Let it go, global hit from Disney’s Frozen (2013), reveal some of these approaches and translators’ priorities.

How to Tackle a Nue (aka Anime)

As a research subject, Japanese animation or anime is like a nue, an imaginary Japanese bird that has the head of an ape, the torso of a raccoon, the tail of a snake, and the limbs of a tiger. Depending on the perspective from which you are looking at it, and what you want to see in it, you can academically approach anime from numerous angles. Furthermore, contemporary anime is increasingly and inextricably entangled with other media, such as manga, videogames, novels, and live-action films in terms of content, distribution, and consumption. As such, it is very difficult to single out anime as a research subject. The global popularity of anime in the past twenty years adds a further twist by introducing numerous voices from fans and scholars from different parts of the world as well as Japan.

“The Snow Queen”: Queer Coding in Male Directors' Films

By any evaluation, Hans Christian Andersen’s “Snow Queen” (1845) hardly instantiates sex normativity. The tale explores a variety of arguably homosexual and homosocial as well as arguably heterosexual and heterosocial relationships: mutual (sexual) attraction between a young boy (Kai) and an adult woman (the Snow Queen); mutual (sexual) attraction between two children (Gerda and Kai) who, though not biologically related, are raised as siblings; and mutual (sexual) attraction between Gerda and the various women and girls she meets on her travels. In “Snow Queen” live-action films and television versions, five of which I discuss here, the ways in which protagonists enact the story vary. In moving from page to screen, the female characters in particular appear difficult to keep in their conventional, heteronormative places. I argue that male directors flirt with sexual possibilities in the tale, generally making heterosexuality more explicit and manifest than same-sex attraction. Yet they also tend to include homosocial, possibly lesbian (same-sex erotic) relationships for Gerda while simultaneously offering alibis for all queer relationships except those of the Little Robber Girl.

The Poetics of Shakespearean Animation

The Poetics of Shakespearean Animation Jakub Boguszak The bias of Shakespearean films—the now dominant sources of experience with Shakespeare in performance—has been mostly towards visual realism and psychological detail. Complex personalities, definite and convincing settings, and the immediacy and consistency of the dramatic illusion characterize many adaptations produced since the revival of the genre in 1990s. There are exceptions, of course, and one of them has attracted relatively little attention so far: animated Shakespeare. How can animators possibly “perform” Shakespeare? How does their approach to the texts differ from that of film actors? Are there recurring ideas and scenes in the plays that lend themselves particularly well to animation? And is there a sense in which the appeal of animation could be similar to the appeal of early modern performance? These are the questions that my article seeks to answer in order further to consolidate animated Shakespeare as an important subject for studies of Shakespeare in performance. The very notion of animation as a mode of performance might perhaps seem controversial. The animated figures, puppets, and cartoons have no consciousness or agency of their own and the origin of “performance” in animation—the performance of the animators themselves—always remains hidden. It is here, in the agency of the animator that takes place between the shots, where Norman McLaren, one of the most distinguished independent animators, locates the essence of his art and the origin of meaning in the medium, rather than in the actual visual information on each individual shot: “How it moves is more important than what moves [. . .] what the animator does on each frame of film is not as important as what he or she does in between” (Wells, Animation 7). McLaren thus defines animation as an essentially performative art rather than a derivative form of fine art. [End Page 159] Donald Crafton goes even further in his most recent book, Shadow of a Mouse: Performance, Belief and World-Making in Animation, where he explains and demonstrates how cartoon characters themselves could be considered performers in their own right. Their “acting style” evolved over the course of the first half of the twentieth century from “figurative” performances of stock characters to the “embodied” performances suggestive of developed and unique personalities (15–57). Just as animation was becoming more and more life-like as the decades passed, so the live-action features embraced the potential of animation. With the rapid development of CGI (computer-generated imagery) technologies at the end of the century, live-action performances turned into digital material that could be enhanced by computer animation.1 Animation and live performance have become communicating vessels and therefore my first note of caution must be that although the two are often discussed separately, animation can no longer be treated as an ontological or aesthetic antithesis of live action cinema. While the language of animation keeps borrowing from that of live-action films and vice versa, however, the characteristic narrative strategies of these forms are still distinct enough to merit the investigation of fully animated adaptations of Shakespeare along the lines outlined above. When it comes to Shakespeare, animators have to confront in their studios the same gaps, indeterminacies, and unresolved silences that the actors and directors face on stages and film sets, but their interpretations and creative solutions could still be much less bound by the imperatives of realistic representation, which are here understood to include the pursuit of psychological depth, spatiotemporal coherence, and the maintenance of a convincing illusion. Making use of suggestive transformations, visual shortcuts, and actions free from consequences, the work of the animators can exploit many of the non-realist elements of the plays that the live-action films tend to downplay: ornate rhetoric, alternative methods of characterization, the elasticity of time and space, and opportunities for improvisation. As the live-action adaptations of Shakespeare become more and more reliant on computer animation—Julie Taymor’s The Tempest (2010) is an exemplary case—the question of whether the technology inspires interest in these non-realist elements or whether it actually serves the goals of realistic representation gains weight. My focus here, however, is rather more straightforward. By examining fully animated films relying...

영화적 특성을 통한 애니메이션의 운동성

서구의 근대화를 통해서 기술적 변화와 예술 사이의 새로운 관계가 형성되기 시작하였다. 그전까지 특정 개인과 소수의 사람들에 의해서 향유되던 과거의 예술이 기술에 의해 대량으로 생산됨으로써 대중적인 수용이 가능해졌다. 한 프레임씩 정지된 프레임들을 카메라로 촬영해서 재현한다는 점에서 애니메이션은 영화적 특성을 보이는데 본 연구에서는 이런 애니메이션의 영화적 운동성에 대해서 논의하면서 애니메이션에서 재현되는 운동성이 아무리 충실하게 만들어진 것일지라도 현실 세계의 운동성은 물론이고 라이브액션 영화에서 재현되는 운동성과도 동일할 수 없다는 점을 알 수 있다. 결국 애니메이션은 영화적 요소들과 애니메이션만의 디테일한 연속성으로 운동성을 창조한다. 이런 운동성으로 애니메이션만의 리얼리티가 살아나고 애니메이션이라는 예술형식의 위력을 점점 발휘시킬 수 있다. A new relation between technological changes and arts is begins to create by the modernization of the West. Because the arts in the past that were enjoyed by specific individuals and small number of people are now massively produced via technological development, public acceptance of such arts is now possible. In this study, movement between each frame, which can be the core in animation, is investigated. We can see that the animation's cinematic movement cannot be identified with motions reproduced in live action films, let alone the motions in real world, no matter how the reproduced motions in animation are faithfully made. In the end, while crating the detailed expressions of movement of animation, along with cinema factors, and the continuity of such expressions, we can gradually exert the power of animation art form with enlivened reality that only animation has.

Stop motion: From plastic to plasmatic cinema

Abstract When talking about Animation as a graphic or a plastic cinema it is underlying a certain idea of what the medium is and how it is different from live-action films. On the one hand it is about creating the movement and on the other hand it deals with an infinite kind of techniques related to fine arts and graphic arts to produce the images needed, in a word: the forms. Among these techniques, the Stop motion as a privileged medium based on frame-by-frame, shows that reality and its matter can be animated too and not only the abstract space of the representation, be it a drawing or 3D modelling. With Stop motion, even if the technique can be ‘reduced’ to animating puppets and a set or clay for example, we will argue that its specificity lies more specifically in the possibility of changing the propriety of a matter and its limit of elasticity to the point of breaking the consistency of things, transmuting the substance into another. In this state of thing, the link between creating form and creating movement cannot even be drawn anymore because the form and movement are one and the same consequence of the substance behaviour the artist is giving to matter, whereas in traditional animation you create a form more or less stable and you make it move. This art, now interrogating the global notion of arts of movement, cease to be a graphic or plastic cinema and becomes what we would call a plasmatic cinema. The form never really gets a permanent consistency and integrity to be able to be seen as a moving object or subject but as pure protoplasm constantly transforming and redefining a matter. Indeed, the natural limit of elasticity of matter can be modified with Stop motion to the point that anything can become subject to plasticity – not only a gum in cinema or the body of a drawn character in animation, for example. In these kinds of cinema the matter is pure virtuality, where in Stop motion it is real matter becoming virtual through the plasmatic process: movement is just a change of the form and form just a change of character through movement. The whole matter of the world is becoming a material to be liquefied and redefined where movement and forms are sharing the same state of the art. If a plasma is in chemical research the fourth state of matter (with solid, liquid and gas) we would say by analogy that it also helps to define another kind of animated picture dealing with a perpetual fusion (or fusing) of forms. In that sense, Stop motion is exemplifying what is plasticity of motion, in the overall arts of motion.

Beyond cheap thrills: 3D cinema today, the parallax debates and the ‘Pop-Out’

Abstract One of the most debated aspects of contemporary 3D cinema is its use of the illusion of depth that extends from the screen into the audience’s space. This is known in technical terms as negative parallax and by audiences as the ‘pop-out’. Critics often equate negative parallax with low-budget 1950s 3D films, such as Creature from the Black Lagoon (1954), wherein the amphibious claw of the title monster as it reaches for the viewer seems to exploit 3D technology for cheap thrills and quick profits. In discussions today about how 3D should be used, commentators wish for a more mature and artistic 3D cinema; this cinema would mine the depth behind the screen, using, in technical terms, positive parallax. This article investigates negative parallax in live-action films of the last two years to question the typical terms by which it is appraised within the parallax debates. I argue that negative parallax’s dismissal as gimmickry has obscured the vital functions it serves in film. The objects that appear to enter the theatre’s space help to identify essential aspects of a film’s style and genre, as well as its relationship to other media that play a role in adaptation. While, because of its hypervisuality – it breaks the fourth wall – the pop-out seems anomalous in relation to the invisible style usually associated with classical Hollywood film, it has significant ties to cinematic techniques that have previously been deployed for the purposes of visual emphasis. My goal is to suspend aesthetic arguments about negative parallax to shed light on the textual roles this key element of the 3D style and experience plays in a variety of films, including superhero blockbusters, horror and fantasy films, comedies, and art-house documentaries, while situating it in the context of past visually arresting techniques used in mainstream cinema.

The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films (review)

Reviewed by: The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films Ian Wojcik-Andrews (bio) The Enchanted Screen: The Unknown History of Fairy-Tale Films By Jack Zipes. New York: Routledge, 2010. Jack Zipes’s The Enchanted Screen is a welcome addition to the study of children’s cinema and film. In part, the book is a history of fairy tale films from around the world of which few people have ever heard, let alone seen or studied as part of the discipline of children’s cinema and film. But along with revealing this otherwise unknown history of the fairy tale film and the oral tradition from which it originally came, the book also challenges what many people still believe: the idea that Disney was and is the dominant force in the production of fairy tale films. To argue this point, Zipes highlights the “vast international production of fairy-tale films since the 1890s” (xi) that both complements and stands in opposition to Disney. Drawing on the work of Bloch, Freud, Adorno, and other left-leaning critics, The Enchanted Screen finally buries once and for all the notion that Disney rules the fairy tale film market and, in the process, unearths all the other “cinematic gems” from Japan, South Korea, Mexico, Australia, and New Zealand which have been produced since the late nineteenth century. In this context, the book also makes a terrific contribution to discussions about diversity in children’s cinema and film here in the United States. Presented in three parts, its global reach is admirable. Early chapters in part one provide a wide-ranging history of the fairy [End Page 116] tale film. Zipes discusses many of the social and historical conditions from which this genre emerged. This history is also personalized somewhat, as Zipes looks at its foremost pioneers, including Georges Méliès and the early, innovative, pre–Mickey Mouse Walt Disney (before Disney became corporate, in other words). For example, chapter three is an extended review of the life and times of Georges Méliès. Zipes notes how the French filmmaker made over 520 films between 1896 and 1913, many of which were adaptations of the tales of Charles Perrault. In particular, Zipes focuses on Méliès’s versions of Cinderella (1899, 1912), Little Red Riding Hood (1901), and Bluebeard (1901). Other critics, myself included, have written briefly about the contributions of Méliès, who, as Zipes points out, was a “fanatic magician and man of the theatre turned into an obsessed and inspired filmmaker” (32). What is really valuable in The Enchanted Screen, though, is the depth of Zipes’s knowledge about all things fairy tale, including the fairy tale films of Méliès, whose influence, according to Zipes, extended all the way to the “early fairy-tale cartoons and animated films not to mention other live-action films of the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s” (48). Part one concludes with a discussion of how the fairy tale film influenced and eventually evolved into the animated cartoons and feature-length movies of the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. Part two continues to reveal a number of fairy tale films from around the world, while critiquing Disney. Zipes looks at such topics as the many representations of Snow White, the legacy of the Cinderella films, and the motif of abuse and abandonment, particularly as it appears in the many versions of Hansel and Gretel. In the case of the latter, Zipes examines animated and fairy tale versions from the United States, Canada, and as far afield as Korea. Writing about the Korean version of Hansel and Gretel by Pil-Sung, he contends that it contains a “brilliant vision and critical exploration of the brutal treatment of innocent children in our contemporary world where barbarity often blends with civility or exists in high tension with civility” (208). In part three, Zipes situates fairy tale films in the context of the human propensity to engage in wars—“Endless wars, big and small, on every continent” (349). Overall, his concluding chapter, “Fairy-Tale Films in Dark Times: Breaking Molds, Seeing the World Anew,” argues that despite the tendency of human beings to slaughter one...