Reaction Shot Take2

My first attempt at the reaction shot was an emulation one of Michael Bay's "Bayhem" shots described by Tony Zhou in Every Frame a Painting. I hoped an iconic cinematic shot with an over the top sense or “epicness” would have a satirical effect, endearing the character to the audience through sympathy, similar to the affection fans of the Charles M. Schultz have for Charlie Brown.

Beyham - "use of movement composition and fast editing to create a sense of epic scale" through "layers of depth, parallax, movement, character, and environment" (Zhao)

The performative function of the reaction shot should be an alignment of the audience with the protagonist and an introduction to the goose's vulnerability through a visible awareness of his own fallibility. The intended perlocution is identification and affection through empathy (naïve demeanor under threat), but early test shots made it clear that the "Bayhem" shots were not going to be effective.

Tony Zhou describes Michal Bay's shots as having a good deal of “impact”, but more specifically there is an awe and admiration for the character who is literally and figuratively standing to face the challenging in a chaotic world. The Bayham primitive is awe generated by a metaphoric link to imagery and conceptual conjugate.

Austin categorized communicative failures, and Ronald Grimes wrote about the application of his taxonomy to ritual failure. The failure of this shot might fall under a “misinvocation” and/or a “misfire” because the act was “purported but void” due to a “misexecution” vitiating the act through flaw. But I think categorization of infelicities in narrative falls outside of Austin's scheme because the projected application of his theory is radically different from the nuances of performative narrative communication. For analysis of multiplatform narrative communication classification of primitives through their relationship to the perlocution would be the most effective tool for the deconstruction, analysis, and construction of narrative performative acts.

Getting unstuck

I don't really understand why I am detailing my meanderings with my theory, so the direction has been a bit chaotic. In an attempt to put words to paper, I am starting with a performative breakdown of the elements and trying to transform it into a detail of how the theory worked in practice.

The Form through the Formula

The technical, visual aesthetic, and formal linguistic (semantic/lexical/phonemic) decisions were informed by the performative function of each element and a counterpoint between the circular form of the goose's (heroe's) journey, interactive paradigm, suggestion of indexicality, character arc, and the indexical allusions of the aesthetic.

The interface changes from a book to an interactive animation at a moment in the story when the protagonist is out of his element. This is done in order to generate a disorientation for the audience and identification with the protagonist through a common experience. In order to be effective, the audience has to expect the interface to behave like a book. For this reason, several of the aesthetic decisions in the beginning of the story and the end are made in an attempt to evoke the presence of a book (my ideas of evoking presence are based on the “aura” described by Walter Benjamin in “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, but I do not think the actual artifact needs to be there to generate a similar sensation).

Examples of illusory imagery to imply indexicality are in the “book opening” animation, the “vine text” animation, and the sound of a page turning that accompanies the transitions between the scenes when the goose is in the human world. The performative function of the opening imagery, interaction, and animations associated with the experience of reading a book (i.e. paper texture, shading, and sound of paper) is to mislead the audience to anticipate the experience to be similar to reading a story from a book and the dramatic effect when the expectation is broken.

Locution	imagery, interaction, and animations associated with the experience of reading a book (i.e. foliage, shadow, imagery/sound of paper)
Illocution	suggest that the audience is holding a book
Perlocution	suspension of the awareness of the digital medium
Primitive	sound, interaction, and imagery with shading and dimensionality consistent with an object in the viewer’s space
Constative	this is an animation of a book
Explicit Performative Function	mislead the audience (i. e. build an expectation that the experience will be like a book in order to break the expectation for dramatic effect)

Cited:

Benjamin, Walter. “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction.” Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings, edited by Braudy, Leo and Cohen, Marshall, New York: Oxford University Press, 2009. Print.

More on Locution vs. Constative

The constative is a conceptual form; it is a statement without implication.

Locutionary concerns include

• spelling and grammar 
• tonal qualities of the music (i.e. that note doesn't belong there because the song is in the key of F)
• technical issues

A distinction between Constative and Locutionary is clear in the performative breakdown of the text in scenes 7 and 8.

Scene 7
Locution	Some of the words with strong syllables waddle across the screen with characteristics that suggest the words meaning. The poetic meter is anapestic with the substitution of a trochee (one long or stressed syllable followed by a short or unstressed) for an iamb (short or stressed followed by a long or unstressed), causing a speeding up (Corn 41). The poetic meter breaks in the words behind, people, goose, and tuba. So he did (soft, soft, hard) Or he tried (s, s, h) And he left (s, s, h) Geese behind (h, h, s) To show people (h, s, h, s) A goose (s, h) With a tuba (s, s, h, s)
Illocution	This is a whimsical story about a goose who thinks he can be a human
Perlocution	A light-hearted tone is established. The stumbling verse is reminiscent of a goose’s waddle, with a stumble for subtle dramatic emphasis (the word goose does not follow or fit into the poetic meter of the rest of the segment).
Primitive	Stumbling verse with a whimsical subject and variation in meter; shaping a lines rhythm so that it will support the conceptual content (i.e. interpreting visual imagery to evoke an emotional response through linking aesthetics with conceptual conjugates).
Constative	The goose is entering the human world.
Explicit Performative Function	Establish character and story as whimsical, and foreshadow character’s problems (The general performative functions of foreshadowing: An audience forgives plot turns when events have a certain degree of predictability (not completely unforeseeable, but somewhat challenging). It adds sense of a master plan to everything.)
Implication	The poetic imagery does not involve a confusion. There is a moment of interpretation, but it is not like a dolly zoom (it does not rely on tension)

Locution - form

Constative - statement without implication

Performative function - how the scene furthers the audience's understanding of the story

Perlocution -  psychological change in the audience

Corn, Alfred. The Poem's Heartbeat: A Manual of Prosody. Port Townsend, Wash: Copper Canyon Press, 2008. Print.

Emerging Technology as Blended Media

sources about the problem of new media
Joseph Gordon-Levitt states the problem with narrative on emerging media (specifically VR) at Sundance. This is really close to my statement of new media as a blend, and he starts to talk about the role of the spectator and narrative effect/function.

From this article by Jason Ferguson

https://uploadvr.com/virtual-reality-storytelling-problem-theater-will-save/

Active Vs. Passive Voice

Word is giving me "passive voice" errors.
To clarify:

Active
Subject, then verb, then object or person
John cleaned the room.

Passive
Object, then verb, then subject
The room was cleaned by john.

http://www.whitesmoke.com/passive-voice-in-english

Illocution, Perlocution, and Primitive for the Acceptance Chapter

Illocution: Tuba-Goose is not a goofy comedy or a fairy tale, it is a metaphor for the dissonance one feels when they realize their limitation through failure to attain a dream. It is a personal message to the adults to remember the moment when you realized that you could not be anything, if you try hard enough, and a foreshadowing to the child audience.

Primitive: I want the story to transition from a tongue and cheek story about a goofy character into an embarrassing failure in the real world. The primitive I want to incorporate is the uneasy feeling the audience feels watching someone bomb on a stage, evoking the embarrassment someone feels watching a performer try to do something that they are unwilling to accept that they do not have a skill for.

Something Big from Found Footage Festival on Vimeo.

Perlocution: The audience's embarrassment turns to sympathy and a recognition of the humanity of the goose when he that he has failed (i. e. identification with the protagonist).

I planned to shoot ComFest, and local shows for looking for footage of an uncomfortably bad public performance in which to add the Goose. I have some performances that are pretty awkward and mortifying, but what I have needs audio to work, and I can't think of a way to integrate it into the form.

The Key Points of Speech Act Theory

I found one of the best summaries of the points of Speech Act Theory in The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Language.
visible off campus here.
Devitt, Michael, and Richard Hanley. The Blackwell Guide to the Philosophy of Language. Malden, Mass: Blackwell Pub, 2006. Internet resource.


It also mentions P.F. Strawson who I was excited to learn thought "most illocutionary acts involve not an intention to conform to an institutional convention but an intention to communicate something to an audience". Unfortunately, after further investigation , it appears his research was not going into a direction that would be useful in the creation of a logical structure based on linguistics. 

"there is no requirement to map ordinary language onto artificial logical structures, nor does that capture ordinary meaning anyway. "  
-Strawson (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/strawson/#Lan)
"his slogan that ordinary language has no precise logic". 
-Strawson  (http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/strawson/#Lan)

Acceptance Chapter/Act Shots

Curtain for the Acceptance Chapter

The timing is off on this

another angle I am considering

followed by something like this

"not everyone always will question"

and a goose in here

"the dreams geese believe they can be"

I accidentally shot this one from the wrong side, so the camera would cross the line of action if the goose was coming down the street as I planned.

I have this shot, but the angle is not great. I am going to look through my footage and see if I have something better.

New Demo Reel

I put together a new reel for the Pixar intern opportunity. I tried to do a quick retexture some of my old stuff before I submitted, but I ran into some trouble linking maya and Mudbox and the files did not work in Maya 2016 (odd... I thought they were corrupt but they were fine in 2014).

Demo Reel from Jonny2Thumbs on Vimeo.

Updated Research Statement, Topic, and Questions

Research Statement

The research topic I have been working on is centered on the composition of a story that blends cinematic animation, interactive media, and literature in a complementary way. I am exploring the topic through the creation of a user driven animation that contains some of the poignant elements that have been filtered form children's stories over the last few generations.  The intended form would adapt contemporary devices from cinematography and interactive media, mixing text, animated characters, and live action through camera movement, turning pages, and a touch screen in a way that I am trying to compile seamlessly and coherently. I hope that the final product is an emotionally complex artifact that children and parents will find meaningful and my research will yield revelations into the creation of mixed platform narration.

Research Topic: Construction of a blended media children’s story with complicated emotional impact

Narrowed research topic:

·         Relationship between phrases, implication, and interpretation across cinematography, literature, and interactive media

·         Adaptation of a book to an interactive animation

·         The generation of communicative elements unique to hybrid media

More specific topic: How can I invoke the emotional impact of a somber bedtime story in a contemporary form without corrupting the intimate quality of a book?

Research Questions:

1.      How can analysis of overarching communicative structure aid the fusion of blended media forms?

2.      What are the constituent phrases of cinematography, literature, and interactive media?

3.      How do the dialects of cinematography, literature, and interactive media function (constructively and destructively) when combined?

The Big Idea (as of 2 am Tuesday 01/19/16)

The Big Idea (subject to change without notice)

This semester I am focused on creating a form that blends cinematic animation, interactive media, and literature in a complimentary way. The shot that I am working on now is the interior of the building Tuba-Goose entered last semester. I am changing the location to a butcher shop because it adds to the dramatic effect, and horror films have a lot of paradigmatic camera and lighting techniques that would be interesting to apply to another medium. I thought it would be complimentary mix of media to make the interior all narrative text (people , shelves, everything except the goose would be extruded polygonal text), use motion capture to animate the people, and use a dolly zoom for a shot where the goose sees the butcher doing what butchers do.

I am not sure how I will texture everything or how I will organize the words so they function as characters and are readable as text, but I think motion capture will add an inherently human quality to the movement that should give me more freedom to deviate from anthropomorphic shapes while relaying the intended actions. I am hoping that when I have the movement for the scene, I will be able to create a model based on the text and the key frames that becomes reveals itself to the reader in a way that alludes to the internal dialogue of the goose when he realizes what is going on in the butcher shop (I want the audience to be thinking "Is that a person chopping off the head of... YES IT IS!" in parallel to the character's realization). This shot does not do much to exploit interactive media, but I am worried compounding too many distracting elements (e.g. putting a tilt interaction, prompting an expand gesture on the touch screen, or something of that nature) would drown the humble, quiet nature of a book.

Meeting with Professor Chan (Thesis Overview)

I am putting together an outline for a presentation for my committee

Statement of Concept as of 02/23/15

Western culture has a tendency to categorize emotions into positive and negative.  In researching child psychology and emotional impact, I stumbled across dozens of papers, spreadsheets, and multicolored diagrams segregating sad, angry, scared, happy and other emotional labels into categories of good or bad. Sad can be beautiful, and creepy can be mysterious and wonderful. Over the last century a lot of these "negative" experiences are disappearing from children's stories and, in many cases of what I consider to be a corporate vandalism of classical works of art, the stories are completely changed, removing the moral and the magic.

I am interested in subverting this trend and bringing back some of the lost “negative” elements in a series that is sad and peculiar with a simple nonsensical façade that turns into a complicated  personal message. My work is masquerading as a child's cartoon, but I am writing about the abandonment of youthful aspirations. I am incorporating emotionally heavy elements like sad endings, because a sad ending leaves someone wanting to change injustice, and appreciate the struggle of the meek. It is important that children hear these because loss is a reality children can and do handle all the time, and empathy is a virtue that should be fostered.