Waltz with Bashir

Today in screening we watched Waltz with Bashir. I found this a very thought provoking film and I liked the visual style. I particularly liked the use of colour, where the flashbacks and visions were all in two tomes, which I really enjoyed.

The animation was quite interesting. On one level it looked very realistic and well done, however it was clear where they'd used computers to cut corners. However, for some of the characters, this worked, as they were stiff males who didn't need to show all their emotions on their face. It was very realistic animation I think, not much exaggeration in facial expression.

Russian animation

Today we watched two Russian animations "Nu Pogodi!" (Well, JustYou Wait!) and "Skazka Skazok" (Tale of Tales) by Yuri Norstein.

Nu Pogodi is kind of the Soviet equivalent of Tom and Jerry. It features Wolf chasing after Hare. There are many parallels to Tom and Jerry, but some notable differences such as the violence in Nu Pogodi is not shown and Hare is quite bland and sweetly innocent in comparision to Jerry.

Tales of Tales is a very different kind of film. I will admit , I found it a little hard to follow, but technically it's beautiful. I especially liked the references to World War Two, and some of the imagery with the Wolf was gorgeous!

Conceptual Storyboarding workshop

We watched an online tutorial on conceptual storyboarding by Derek Thompson of The Gnomon Workshop

I found it useful, even though I couldn't tell all of the techniques he was using