Artefact Two from
Alyssa Brookes on
Vimeo.
Through
relating back to my research document
and studying further reading into subtext I noticed an interesting clip
in the ‘Incredibles, 2004’ animated feature film. At the beginning when Mr
Incredible is being interviewed he says ‘who enjoys the pressures of being
super’. Through subtext, Mr Incredibles body language says something completely
different than to his dialogue. He shows that he actually does enjoy the
pressures of being super. This is something that has inspired me, by noticing
subtext within acting films and clips than I didn’t before I researched
further.
I
chose a clip from the Requiem for a Dream, 2000. I felt as though the
subtleties in what the character is saying could be used well to express
subtext.
I
decided to show the clip without the dialogue being played to see whether the
audience still connected to the character the same. As quoted ‘If it’s a good movie, the
sound could go off and the audience would still have a perfectly clear idea of
what was going on.’ (Alfred Hitchcock, 2012) I feel this was something vital to
test whist studying the use of subtext.
The feedback from the clip without dialogue was quite
positive. They could sense that she was upset and quite annoyed from her
facials expression and mainly her body language looking down, not really
looking up that were good acting choices to portray what she was feeling. From
this I showed the same audience the scene with the dialogue to see whether they
felt the same.
The
feedback from my focus group was positive, meaning the animation seems to be
animated a lot better than my first Artefact. In my original pass at this
animation the focus group mentioned that there wasn’t enough movement in her
hips, especially when she moved her hands to left and right. There should still
be some twist within the lower body when she makes these gestures. The group
also pointed out that the movement of her hand gestures should be on particular
words of the dialogue, such as ‘bed’ and ‘dishes’. As shown in the Artefact
above, I improved what was discussed and also added other extra subtleties.
I
n
terms of feedback for the overall subtext within the performance, the audience
seem well connected with the character’s inner feelings and thought process,
showing that she is upset, annoyed and lonely. They felt the same yet more
emotion when the dialogue was heard. This feedback also included people with no
studied animation background. However, I felt that there wasn’t enough contrast
between the dialogue and the thought process, like in the ‘Incredibles, 2004’
clip I mentioned above. I feel I could
have used operative words to capture a stronger subtext performance, though the
audience still believed it portrayed a good experiment of subtext.
Following on from this Artefact, I thought this would
be a great opportunity to continue the feedback and research to start my next
Artefact about blinking. As Shawn Kelly says “If the body is 90% of the acting
performance, the eyes are 90% of the facial performance. After considering what
the body will be doing, the next most important thing is definitely your eye
performance.”(Shawn Kelly, 2009). I feel
this is a strong piece of research to discover, as the main use of blinking is
through a character’s thought process.
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