#Kind of a consistent motif in how he reacts to other peoples feelings of affection | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

1801016-4 · 4 years

Text

Personal Showase

Design Document: Film Studies

Before I started designing my piece for this project, I began looking for inspiration in the form of short films that deal with the subject of grief. This aims to learn how the experience could be represented through different visuals and narratives, rather than with an informatic, non-fiction animation.

Cocoon

D. Stevers, 2017 [https://vimeo.com/219687902]

Cocoon is a short 2D animation that beautifully visualises the experience of grief; captioned as a ‘modern day Psalm of grief and loss’. The words of Sh’maya, and score of Ryan Taubert are complimented by delicate, poignant visuals, creating a representation of how moving through the raw emotions of grief can lead to new wonders. A cave, storm, cold, and collapse suggest the shock and numbing first reaction to grief, followed by intense sadness. Surreal eyes provoke sensory overload and shadows create a continuing theme of being lost within loss. The motif of a flame is consistent as it grows and is snuffed out over and over again until it multiplies at the end, suggesting a step towards recovery.

A deeply loved animation in the community, many people have come forward with their own experience and how this melancholic piece has comforted them and stayed in their mind as they learn to deal with pain. Though grief is always a subjective experience, and the events of this animation do not apply to all, it can still be used as a gentle, poetic method of educating people on the topic. Created in After Effects by animator Tyler Morgan and designer Sarah Beth Hulver, it aims to be an abstract piece that viewers can find their own relation to.

Borrowed Time

A. Coats & L. Hamou-Lhadj, 2015 [https://vimeo.com/ondemand/100733]

Borrowed Time is a CG animation from two Pixar artists, that took 5 years to complete as part of their Co-op Program that lets animators use resources for independent films. It’s a powerful presentation of the guilt found in grief, and the path towards closure and forgiveness. With each step the protagonist takes, he has to reface a memory is accept the events of the past; though his father’s death was by his hand, it was an accident amidst a sudden and frightening event. Painful feelings resurface but they bring him to the final stage of acceptance.

Whilst Pixar is familiar with showing ‘painful emotions around death in order to underline the joy characters feel around life’, (such as in Up, Toy Story 3, and Inside Out) this animation contains a bigger and bolder shock factor. It’s aimed towards showing that animation can be used as ‘a medium to tell any sort of story’ for any age of audience. By using a familial bond, they have been able to heighten the emotion and more powerfully affect the viewer’s empathetic reaction.

To compare this to Cocoon, you could suggest that ambiguity allows for deeper thinking and relation to the film, but the same affect can be achieved with raw emotional shock power, eliciting honest, relatable reactions

Good Grief

F. Dalwood, 2014 [https://vimeo.com/feedee]

Good Grief is a Claymation documentary and a heartfelt exploration of ‘the lessons we learn from dealing with grief and loss… and what is has taught [the interviewees] about living’. The five voices have all experienced and grown from different kinds of losses: death of a family member, friend, pet, and a leg. In a recognisbale Creature Comforts style, the voices are given to playful animals and vegetables to create a soft visual tone to an emotional narrative.

This film aims to be used as a starting point in the discussion of grief as a transformative experience and used for the education of children and adults alike of a an unjustly stigmatised topic. The interviews are beautifully honest, for example saying, ‘that a really good cry… recharges you’, thus gently stating that grief is a natural experience that shouldn’t be ignored and hidden. Instead that there is a therapeutic power in sharing as ‘relationships matter more’. They do also say that a lot of people around them didn’t care for their grief, or didn’t even ask how they were, reiterating the fact that grief is a topic people are not educated enough about so just avoid (suggesting a need for more content I hope to build upon). I feel this is a great animation to showcase the different causes and reactions to a universal emotion.

Claire Obscur

Students from ESMI Bordeaux, 2017 [https://vimeo.com/257307223]

Clair Obscur is a CG animation from several students at Ecole Superieure des Metiers de l’Image, that shows grief through the eyes of a child. After the death of her brother, a girl is terrorised by a personification of grief every night. On this night she uses his sword to defeat the threat and reach acceptance. The use of a truly terrifying and shapeshifting monster brings the intense emotions in grief to life and imply what you will experience without listing emotions a child can’t relate to yet. This film also makes great used of colour and lighting to exaggerate the emotions linked to the childlike imagery; moving from night to day, and dark monster with danger warning red, and a deep yet peaceful tropical blue ocean.

After going through grief myself with minimal preparation, I think a children’s animation is a perfect way to educate people from young ages in a delicate way that can also let themselves come to their own conclusions by presenting the experience as a monster that can be defeated. This film is another example of how animation is a hugely diverse medium, perfect for telling light and hard-hitting stories with clear underlying messages.

Death of a Father

S.Pal, 2017

Death of a Father is a 2D animation that shows the grief of an individual and his family, and how the involvement and incorrect support of others can unintentionally take a great toll on recovery. The protagonist is experiencing a consistent numbness (complimented by a sombre colour palette), yet is being made to move on with ceremonial funeral arrangements and even pushing his father into the crematorium himself. Minimalist in style and dialogue, yet rich in character animation, it creates an intimate tone that makes the ending montage (of the dying father in hospital) even more heartbreaking. Pal notes the body language has ‘subtle nuances no one really cares about, but this is what I fell makes it relatable because of body language is based on our cultural upbringing’.

This film shows that you don’t always get a choice in how, and for how long you grieve. As people aren’t educated enough, they may try to force a perception of normal grief onto others, creating further long-term problems. Furthermore, cultures often have strict rules or customs on the matter, trying to make it an objective experience and leading to disenfranchised grief.

Pal shared about the unstable beginning of the film’s production, highlighting that it can be difficult to work on such a personal project as a collaboration. This could predict problems for me should I decide to continue this idea into the next project, but I think with an abstract retelling of the experience of grief, it could bring the team together as an opportunity to share their own stories.

I also tried to watch Dcera [Daughter] (D. Kashcheeva, 2019), Memorable (B. Collet, 2019), and Sister (S. Song, 2018), which were all Oscar nominated short animations which had themes of grief. However, I was unable to find anywhere to watch them online (and I can’t afford extra rental fees at the moment). From trailers and plot synopses, I could determine that Sister dealt with the ambiguous or disenfranchised type of grief from something never being there (as the protagonist wishes for the sister his parents had to abort amongst China’s one child rule). Memorable deals with the topic of Alzheimer’s, so could suggest anticipatory grief. Dcera is about a strained relationship between a father and daughter, with the daughter not feeling she has received enough love and support with her pain, therefore creating a sort of grief around the loss of an important relationship.

Looking at these animations (in different specialisms from creators with different backgrounds) reiterates the fact that grief comes in many forms, due to many causes, and effects life to different degrees; it is not always due to death and no one will react the exact same (comparison is never a good idea). This suggests that it is difficult to predict how viewers will react to a subjective film, but as long as the narrative is left ambiguous and doesn’t enforce the notion that there is only one real type of grief, it should be a thought-provoking success.

Sources:

Chatterjee, S., (2018). Somnath Pal’s Journey of Self-Discovery. [online] Red Bull. Available at: https://www.redbull.com/in-en/somnath-pal-death-of-a-father (Accessed 25 Sept 2020).

Dalwood, F., (2014). Good Grief. [online] Vimeo. Available at: https://vimeo.com/91157088 (Accessed 25 Sept 2020).

Morgan, S.B., (2017). Cocoon. [online] sarahbethmorgan.com. Available at: https://sarahbethmorgan.com/cocoon (Accessed 25 Sept 2020).

Robinson, T., (2016). This Powerful Short by Two Pixar Animators is darker than Pixar had ever gone. The Verge. [online] Available at: https://www.theverge.com/2016/10/17/13306394/pixar-borrowed-time-animated-short-interview (Accessed 25 Sept 2020).

Sh’maya, (2017) 1 June. Available at: https://www.facebook.com/shmayapoetry/posts/its-finally-here-cocoon-a-film-on-grief-and-loss-the-mighty-dan-stevers-commissi/1788377031179628/ (Accessed 25 Sept 2020).

#w1 #ps

1 note · View note

mst3kproject · 5 years

Photo

1204: The Day Time Ended

Remember Charles Band and David Allen, who respectively directed and did the stop motion for Laserblast!? Remember I mentioned they made more movies together? Here’s one. I actually had about a third of an Episode that Never Was written up for The Day Time Ended when the trailer came out, and I debated what to do with that. I could have used it on the 23rd, like I posted the review of Reptilicus just before Season 11 debuted, but I decided it was more in the spirit of Season 12 to do the episodes in order one after the other.

A family, consisting of Mom, Dad, daughter Jenny, teenage Uncle Steve, Grandma, and Grandpa, have just moved into their new solar-powered ultra-modern-for-the-70’s house in the middle of the desert. There’s nothing like living a hundred miles from anywhere, alone under the skies without road noise or partying neighbours… until, of course, you’re besieged by aliens in the middle of the night. I will bet you cash money there are people who claim this actually happened to them, except they would probably say they just got probed and dropped back into bed, instead of their whole house being transported to another planet. What are the family going to do? Is there anything they can do, or will they be killed by the monsters and aliens lurking outside, or even by the space/time warp itself?

There are quite a few honestly cool things in The Day Time Ended. The tiny aliens that run around the house are cute, although not as charming or communicative as the ones from Laserblast! The two monsters who fight outside the barn at one point are similarly well-animated and have a bit of personality of their own. They look like something you might see in the original Star Wars trilogy. Most of the UFOs are merely lights zipping around in the sky but the one that invades the house is fun, with several moving parts and an overall design that looks, as Jonah and the bots observed, something like a Betamax Roomba. The final matte painting of the alien city is nothing special but the one that represents a sort of interstellar junkyard is detailed and blends well with the action.

The acting isn’t great, but it’s not terrible – most of these people were in something approximating a real movie once, and they do their best with what they’re given. The innate hostility of the desert landscapes underscore the isolation and danger the family are in. Aesthetically, The Day Time Ended works well and a lot of very good decisions were made.

It’s still a terrible movie, though. I bet you’re wondering what MST3K cut from this film to make it fit the time slot. I bet you’re thinking there must have been a scene like the one in Lords of the Deep where Chadwick tells McDowell about the aliens, or like the one at the end of Time of the Apes where EUCOM explains everything. Something in which somebody speaks to Mom, Dad, and Jenny and tells them exactly what the fuck is going on and why they don’t need to be afraid of it. Well, in the long and by now firm tradition of stuff MST3K didn’t cut… there isn’t. Never once do we have even the slightest idea of why all this is happening.

Being as The Gauntlet is the first time I’ve watched an entire sequence of the movies in a row before I’d seen the episodes, I’m beginning to notice patterns, and one rather prominent one is how little I miss the stuff that didn’t make the cut. It never interrupts the flow of the story. It’s only afterwards that I find myself thinking “hey, wasn’t there a bit in the car where they talk about Eric’s teddy having new microchips or something?” And there was, but it didn’t matter and it certainly wouldn’t have added anything to the experience if they kept it. The only time MST3K ever seems to have cut a scene that would have been worth keeping was the bit where Vadinho tells Tony he’s the worst Pumaman ever.

Unfortunately, this leaves The Day Time Ended without anything that might remotely be considered a plot. This story has a beginning, in which strange events plague the ranch, and an end, in which they reach a place of safety, but there’s no middle to speak of. The weird stuff going on escalates from lights to monsters to finally the entire house drifting through time and space, but it never even comes close to making sense. Nobody in the family is ever able to come to any conclusions about these events or to really try to take any action, and none of the characters have an opportunity to grow. We don’t even know if the little aliens caused the warp (perhaps to rescue the family from something even worse) or if they’re merely reacting to it. I guess it’s supposed to have been triggered by the ‘trinary supernova’ they mentioned on the radio, but by halfway through the movie I’d forgotten all about that.

It’s not entirely true that none of the characters know what’s going on. None of the characters we follow do. We stay at the house with Grandma, Grandpa, and Uncle Steve while Mom, Dad, and Jenny are all consumed by the vortex, and later we meet up again with the Mom who tells everybody else that there was nothing to fear. Within the movie this is just frustrating, because she never actually explains, but it is a little interesting when we’ve watched it, as I did, immediately on the tail of Lords of the Deep. In that movie, we were following Claire McDowell as she learned the truth about the glitter goo. In The Day Time Ended, we are in the shoes of her colleagues, dealing with a nightmare and having only her gut feeling to tell them there’s no danger.

This could have been kind of a cool take on the ‘chosen messenger of the aliens’ trope, if only it had been used for that. Jenny does, a couple of times, talk about the little aliens being her friends and seems quite unworried by the goings-on, but she’s five, and the adults have no reason to actually engage her in conversation about this. The Mom could have filled this messenger role, but she communicates with the creatures too late to affect the story. She’s merely a sort of deus ex machina by proxy, swooping back in at the end to reassure us that everything’s okay.

Is this movie trying to tell us anything? Possibly… Laserblast was supposed to be about how you can only push somebody so far before they start pushing back. That was fairly obvious in the narrative, but I’m not as sure about The Day Time Ended. I think it might be about how nobody can truly be self-sufficient. The family in the movie believes they have everything they need to cut themselves off from the rest of humanity, but this only leaves them vulnerable when the universe throws them a curve.

The introduction makes a big deal out of the house’s self-sufficiency. They have their own water supply, and with solar power they have their own electricity. They are therefore able to live far away from the noise, crowding, and lights of a city with minimal inconvenience to themselves, and they rejoice in this isolation. Then the vortex, wherever it came from, moves in, and their isolation becomes their worst enemy – they are unable to call for help, and help, in the form of the Dad, is unable to get to them. It seems like all will be lost until their unseen benefactors bring them all back together and guide them to exactly what they sought to abandon: a city.

Lucky them. The rest of us are stuck here on Earth while the ants enter Phase IV.

The thing that really makes me want to see dependence on society as an intentional motif is the bit where the Dad needs gas for his car and the man at the gas station goes out of his way to make sure he obtains it, despite the considerable obstacles presented by the weather and the power outage. He gets no reward for this help, he does it simply because it’s the right thing to do, and without his assistance the Dad would probably have never seen his family again. Our fellow human beings are not enemies we need to escape from – they are allies who can save us when we are in need.

And yet I’m still not sure. The house’s self-sufficiency may just be an explanation for why they can still turn the lights on when they’re trapped in the vortex. The isolation may just be to avoid having to pay for a bigger cast or more sets. The issue of where they get their food from is never addressed, and remains as their most obvious connection to the outside world. The family doesn’t really seem to be rejecting society, they just want to live a little closer to nature – the Dad even still has a perfectly normal office job. When danger surrounds them, they don’t try hard enough to leave or to call for help, or even to think about how this situation would resolve differently in a city.

The total lack of plot and character development, with only the ghost of a possible theme, leaves us with a movie in which it feels like nothing happens even thought a lot of stuff actually does, because none of what happens is meaningful. The strange events at the ranch have nothing to tie them together into a proper story, and as a result I find I can’t really remember them or what order they happened in. The only part of the film in which it feels like something was accomplished was the father’s struggle to get home, which started with a goal and a reason for the character to pursue it, and ended in success. The rest is just a muddle. It’s a visually impressive muddle at times, but a muddle nonetheless.

In summary, I think Leonard Maltin would have to give this one only two stars.

#mst3k #reviews #the day time ended #80s

34 notes · View notes

yaidenpart-blog · 6 years

Text

Writing Dark Themes

Some stigma circulates around writers who tackle dark subjects regularly. Those writers tend to be treated a bit, well, like they're gonna pull out the fangs anytime and suck your blood. Today I'll talk about this stigma, approaching dark subjects in fiction in general, and my thoughts on Writing Dark Themes (And Why You Shouldn't Be Ashamed to Do so).

In preparation for this post, I read a dozen analyses, studies, and an absurd amount of psychology articles so I wouldn't show up empty handed and stupid. Though to be honest, the only thing that deep dive resulted in for me is dry eyes and a giant headache. Therefore, while I may build some arguments on top of the things I've researched, I'll use my own experiences to wing a big part of it.

So let's get started.

1. What Draws Us to Dark Subjects

What draws us towards dark themes? To reach a satisfying conclusion I first have to determine what exactly is included in 'dark themes' in this case. I'll mainly talk about the content matter of fiction, not equated to but also not divorced from the literary term 'theme’ describing the underlying meaning of a work. Basically, I'll fudge both together because to me they have always been inseparable in writing.

Since violence and disturbing motifs (such as abuse, gore, disturbing sexual content etc.) traditionally play a prominent role in the horror and thriller genres I'll center my attention on those. Though I'll also take care to explore dark themes in a broad sense applicable to other genres as well.

Various factors play a part in making the dark appealing to us, one being the human desire to peek behind the curtain and rob our fears of their power. By facing them in a safe, controlled environment we can stare right into their yellow eyes and desensitize ourselves. And through that, perhaps, gain the confidence to face these fears in reality as well.

Another one is catharsis. Some folks enjoy disturbing media as a healthy, secure outlet for their forestations. It lets their lizard brains bare their teeth without actually biting anyone, like a puppy play fighting.The public hanging of old, we as a western society used to love so, is now replaced with violent TV and fiction. Just. You know. With the difference of fiction not actually hurting anyone. And hanging making people dead. Yep.

Some people watch horror movies for the adrenaline rush, and write fiction which lets their readers experience the same, as a meta-analysis of the studies about mediated fight (1) confirmed,“Evidence also emerged that sensation seeking is associated with a greater enjoyment of fright and violence, which was consistent with other research [...]”

And of course, there's nothing wrong with any of that. But for me, personally, it has always been for the sake of exploration, of seeking to connect with humanity, to bridge the good things we are and the outright gruesome into a cohesive whole. While still keeping a layer of distance between reality to keep it safe.

So a fear of becoming homeless turns into monster stalking you and blocking the entry of your workplace every morning. Kind of a cheesy example, but you get the gist.

Writing provides us with a channel to explore those fears, to cut them down into pieces and hold against the light.

To understand them.

But that's just me.

Now we've cleared up why we're drawn to it, the question remains: Why should you integrate dark themes into your writing?

2. Benefits to Your Writing

Not to tap into a cliche, but, light doesn't exist without dark. You can't define the one without the glaring contrast of the other as a counterpart.

When you try to write a story that is completely pure, you'll end up with a flat mimicry of reality. Not to say you can't write a positive feel-good story, but it's like with GCI buildings in movies. Without a bit of scratch, they're not convincing. They don't feel real.

Imagine you add a hint of darkness to your story. May that be in the characterization, a breath held too long as your MC has to calm themselves down, a glance too harsh to be gentle from an old person across the street, moments of awkwardness when someone accidentally breaks a topic all present silently agreed to never talk about. Or in basic world building, monotone news voices droning on about crimes, tagged houses, and playgrounds where no child sets a foot on anymore.

Details like these may seem inconsequential, but they can roughen a story up just enough to make it into something raw.

To bring it to life.

Human experience doesn't only consist of roses and love triangles. A writer who keeps that in mind and works it in their stories in a respectful, emphatic way, possess a certain edge. In my opinion.

The key to writing dark themes, especially when you want them to be the focus of your story, is to approach them like peeling onions. Shhh, hear me out, I'll explain.

Let's tell a story about hmm … a vampire. This is just an example, okay?

So we got a superficial plot of a teenager waking up with bloodlust gnawing at his gumps. Fairly simple. This is the surface layer.

To go deeper we have to peel off another one, we need to look at how he deals with the conflict we created (the vampirism).This is the reaction layer. At first, he freaks out and then resigns himself to starving because he'd rather scratch up his own arms than hurt someone else. His quick acceptance tells us he's both a nice kid and used to being screwed over by life.

When we go to the next layer, we realize why he's used to it. This one I like to call the core, it's what ties the dark theme together with characterization.

The relationship with his parents is strained, they demand nothing but outstanding performances outside inside and out of school while simultaneously neglecting him emotionally and physically. He has to deal with them sucking the life out of him on top of his newly acquired vampirism doing the same. Of course, depending on how you're inclined, you could spin this thread into a dramatic end scene of him cracking under the pressure and sucking their blood out in return, or he spares them after he learned he has a right to companionship and food and munches on squirrels or something. Whichever scenario you prefer.

So you see, the emotional core we've unveiled is is him feeling undeserving of basic human needs. And it affects how he deals with both the vampirism and abuse, one being a simple metaphor for the other.

Every theme has several layers, and once at the core, it's time to rebuild your story and make every element match accordingly. If you want. What matters is you can dig to a real, raw humanity through your dark subject and that's to me, the truly impactful aspect of dark fiction.

But unfortunately, not everyone gets it. You probably made the experience of relatives and friends judging your writing at some point, maybe even when you were just writing 'normal’ stuff. Golly, you think, when they're like this now, how badly would they react once you put all that saucy vampirism in? The thought doesn't bear contemplating.

Why exactly though, are dark themes such a taboo for some people that they get 'concerned' about your mental wellbeing when you preoccupy yourself with them?

3. Why Others Judge but You (still) Shouldn't be Ashamed

People, in general, love simple concepts. Like father, like son. You are what you wear.

The media you consume defines you.

Pushing people into tiny neat boxes is tempting because it's so damned easy. It doesn't require much thought, and as we all know, thinking hurts. So it's no surprise most writers of dark content, especially horror writers, face a certain... judgment. When you consume dark content you're branded as a bit weird, when you create it you might as well be the devil.

That's a bit of an exaggeration, but you get my drift.

Though what to do when someone cocks an eyebrow at your work, besides walking away or telling them to screw off? Well- that's what you got me for. I dived deep into research so you can refute anything people will throw at you with solid facts (should for whatever reason basic common sense not be enough) and maybe quieten some of your own worries.

Most studies and articles I found were more about violent video games (since that seems to be a Hotly Debated Topic™), but I figure it serves a similar service as violent books and movies.

Already 2011 studies which supported the outcome of aggression being a causation of violent media have been rejected by the US Supreme Court in the Brown v EMA (2), stating, “These studies have been rejected by every court to consider them, and with good reason: They do not prove that violent video games cause minors to act aggressively (which would at least be a beginning). Instead, “[n]early all of the research is based on correlation, not evidence of causation, and most of the studies suffer from significant, admitted flaws in methodology.”

And studies 2016 and more recently have only further affirmed that decision, finding no relation between violent video games and increasing aggression (3) and not supporting any prior studies.

These prior studies had been, well, manipulated is such an ugly word. Let’s go with: primed to fit the desired outcome.

Some actually legit studies analyzed media history from 2005 to 2012 and showed an obvious decline of general social violence in connection to the introduction of more violent media︀ (4), implying violent media serves as a sort of catharsis for the modern western world, stating,”We find no evidence of an increase in crime associated with video games and perhaps a decrease.”

Puh, now we got these dry as desert facts out of the way -

Honesty, writing about dark or disturbing things is not a thing to be ashamed of, watching violent media doesn't turn you violent (assuming you're a person capable of differentiating between fiction and reality) and writing about it certainly doesn't mean you're sick.

We as humans aren’t perfect and pure, so common sense dictates the things we create are neither. Writing about the whole scope of human experiences can only benefit you.

So go on and fly my little bird, further your horizons and write some dark fiction.

That's all I have for you today, I'd love to hear your thoughts and maybe get a discussion going!

See ya in two weeks,

Yaiden Part.

Sources:

2.McCarthy R, Coley S, Wagner M, et al. Does playing video games with violent content temporarily increase aggressive inclinations? A pre-registered experimental study. J Exp Soc Psychol.

3.Brown v EMA, 564 US 08-1448 (2011).

4.Cunningham S, Engelstatter B, Ward M. Violent video games and violent crime. Southern Economic Journal

#writing #writing advice #writing tip #writing tips #dark fiction #theme #horror #thriller #writers on tumblr

1 note · View note

itsfinancethings · 4 years

Link

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Bojack Horseman.

What do you see when you look into the eyes of Bojack Horseman?

Do you see anxiety? Do you see dysfunction and excess and addiction? Do you see yourself?

The creators of Bojack Horseman hope to conjure all these thoughts and more—but before the show even really begins. The 40-second title sequence, shown at the top of each episode, is instrumental in building the show’s tone and mythology. It changes subtly over the seasons and even from one episode to the next, exposing emotional subtexts and foreshadowing plot points. “It’s tremendously important—I definitely think it’s affected the show,” Bojack creator Raphael Bob-Waksberg tells TIME.

But the title sequence’s biggest impact isn’t uncovered until the show’s penultimate episode, which was released on Netflix on Jan. 31. In that episode, it’s revealed that the show’s climactic moment has been hiding in plain sight from the very beginning. This long payoff, six years in the making, is just another small but key example of how Bojack has been one of the smartest and most transgressive shows on television in recent memory.

Lost-in-life feeling

While Bojack is now widely revered, its fate was much less certain when the filmmaker Mike Roberts was brought on to direct the title sequence in 2014. For the most part, adult animation was confined to a specific lane—largely consisting of crude jokes aimed at teenage boys—and the first few episodes of Bojack hewed dangerously close to that standard.

“The first three episodes didn’t give everyone the full picture of how serious and dark and thematically deep the show goes,” Roberts tells TIME. “The main thing was to let the audience know that it wasn’t just this typical show—that there was some depth coming.”

In creating the title sequence, Roberts hoped to take viewers on a tour of Bojack’s everyday life—just like the introduction to The Simpsons and Scooby Doo—but from a peculiar vantage point: as if a GoPro was locked facing Bojack’s head. Roberts says he was primarily inspired by YouTube travel videos and how unintentionally strange they are: “It has this weird sensation of being there but also not being there, because the person is such a large part of the frame,” Roberts says. “We wanted this lost-in-life feeling, as if you were on a vacation somewhere exotic but stuck in your life that you kind of hate.”

The sequence shows Bojack walking through his house, going to the supermarket, partying with friends, and falling into a pool. But while his day is action-packed, he doesn’t seem to be in control—his body drifts automatically through space, wobbling slightly. “We wanted to feel like the day was running away from him,” Roberts says.

The sequence also communicates a disconnect between Bojack and those around him. Because Bojack faces the viewers, he can’t actually see the people that populate his house, and thus mostly doesn’t react to them at all. While he moves fluidly, the other characters flicker in stop-motion, as if they they’re not quite real to him. The amount of space Bojack’s own face takes up in the frame also reflects his narcissism and his inability to see the world outside of himself.

And the sequence not only gives the viewer clues about Bojack’s disorienting headspace, but forces us into it. Bojack’s blank stare has a startling mirroring effect, as if you were staring at your own reflection through the window of a moving train. “The feeling of the camera being locked to you while the background is moving is so surreal and weird,” Roberts says. “In some ways, it feels a bit like being drunk or being high.”

While the visual sequence was arresting on its own, the accompanying music would also be crucial in signaling the show’s tone. After culling through options, the creative team ultimately came down to two pieces: an instrumental by Patrick and Ralph Carney propelled by braying saxophones, and a melancholic ditty by Grouplove. “The Carney song was intense—almost a film noir kind of thing, while the Grouplove song was scary-funny in a Lynchian way,” Roberts said. “As we overlaid them, it was obvious which one fit.” They chose the Carney song, with its sinister haziness, for the top of each episode, and then moved the Grouplove song to the end credits as a pitch black resolution.

“You’d feel the momentum”

Bob-Waksberg loved Roberts’ concept: “It illustrated what the show was going to be even when the show itself was not illustrating that,” he says.

But he wasn’t completely satisfied—and he asked that the sequence reflect another key aspect of the show. “One of the things that set us apart early on, as opposed to other animated shows, was the fact that Bojack was continuous and serialized,” Bob-Waksberg says. While other animated sitcom protagonists, like Homer Simpson, Peter Griffin and Sterling Archer, perform reckless actions that are mostly wiped clean at the end of each episode, Bojack’s life doesn’t reset; his decisions have devastating consequences to himself and those around him.

Bob-Waksberg wanted to use the title sequence to underscore those continuing repercussions—”so you’d feel the momentum of the series.” So Roberts and his team worked to implement small changes to the background of each episode’s title sequence. Some of the changes are little more than fun easter eggs: when Todd jumps on Bojack’s bed and breaks it, for example, his bed is propped up by books the next episode.

But other changes are far heavier: they document the end of relationships (with Wanda and Gina quietly disappearing) or show how Bojack’s actions have affected the outside world (after he gets the director Kelsey Jannings fired from Secretariat, she’s summarily replaced in the sequence by Abe D’Catfish). Before it’s revealed that his mother Beatrice has been drugging his sister Hollyhock through coffee, Beatrice is shown pouring a cup for her at the beginning of each episode.

And as the series goes on and Bojack devolves deeper into addiction and narcissism, the title sequence changes even more drastically. In season four, the segment that previously showed Bojack finally leaving his house is replaced by a kaleidoscopic montage of characters, signifying his past and present collapsing, his mental grip on reality spiraling out of control. (The sequence is triggered by Bojack drinking coffee, which also could be a nod to Beatrice’s sleight of hand.) “We wanted to have a trip-out kind of moment to show that he’s losing it,” Roberts says.

Bojack’s disconnect from reality is brought to its logical end in the season six title sequence, which was designed by Peter Merryman. Rather than showing Bojack meandering through his day, he instead wallows in his most entrenched and devastating memories, whether being confronted by his dying ex-friend Herb or eulogizing his mother. The sequence serves an unsettling double function: showing how Bojack has become locked in a prison of his own memories, and as a quasi-curtain call for the show’s most memorable episodes. “You’re watching a part of show that reminds you of watching a show that was about a guy that was in a show,” Merryman says. “You can peel that onion for a long time.”

A downer ending

Over time, the title sequence wormed its way into the show’s ethos and plot. In season three, for example, Bojack chooses a mirror-based ad campaign for his film Secretariat that looks eerily similar to the sequence.

But its significance rises another level in the penultimate episode, when a relapsed and depressed Bojack returns to his old house and flatlines in his pool. To Roberts, the possibility of this ending had been looming from the start: “The sequence implies that Bojack could fall into a pool, drunk and high, and maybe not come out,” he says.

Bob-Waksberg says this wasn’t by grand design—he had no idea when or how Bojack would end when he began writing the series. But he says that “the motif of swimming versus drowning gradually accumulated a lot of poignancy—and part of that is because it’s in the main title sequence. When someone brought up the idea while pitching, it felt so perfect and appropriate.”

Bob-Waksberg and the writing team then added another devastating connection to the title sequence. While the viewer might expect Diane to come to Bojack’s rescue—given that she perennially and anxiously hovers over his fall—this time, she fails to pick up his call. The fact that he will not be saved by his best friend means that the cycle shown in the title sequence—where he emerges from the pool scot-free from his mistakes—has truly been broken.

That climactic moment was widely hailed by critics and fans—and its emotional impact surely would have been dulled to anyone who uses the “Skip Intro” button on Netflix. Bob-Waksberg wishes that the button would be removed entirely. “I think it’s useless and it hurts the show,” he says. “Especially when you’re binging, it builds up anticipation and gives you a moment to think about the episode you saw and the episode you’re about to see. If I didn’t think that, I wouldn’t have included it in the show that I delivered to Netflix.”

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

newstechreviews · 4 years

Link

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Bojack Horseman.

What do you see when you look into the eyes of Bojack Horseman?

Do you see anxiety? Do you see dysfunction and excess and addiction? Do you see yourself?

Lost-in-life feeling

“You’d feel the momentum”

Bob-Waksberg loved Roberts’ concept: “It illustrated what the show was going to be even when the show itself was not illustrating that,” he says.

A downer ending

#Blogger

0 notes

itsfinancethings · 4 years

Link

February 12, 2020 at 09:53PM

Warning: This article contains spoilers for Bojack Horseman.

What do you see when you look into the eyes of Bojack Horseman?

Do you see anxiety? Do you see dysfunction and excess and addiction? Do you see yourself?

Lost-in-life feeling

“You’d feel the momentum”

Bob-Waksberg loved Roberts’ concept: “It illustrated what the show was going to be even when the show itself was not illustrating that,” he says.

A downer ending

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes