"Father and Daughter" is an animated short film of only 8 minutes and 13 seconds, directed by Michael Dudewitt of the Netherlands, which won the Best Animated Short Film at the 73rd Academy Awards in 2001 prize. This is an animated short film with strong artistic color. The director is like a poet who cherishes ink like gold. He conveys rich and profound thoughts and emotions in a very simple way.
This article will appreciate the success of this animated short from the aspects of characterization, narrative structure, theme ideas, camera use, color and sound, and focus on exploring its "less is more" artistic features.
1. Character building
As the title "Father and Daughter" indicates, the main characters of this short film are a father and a daughter.
First of all, in terms of modeling design, animation, as an art full of fantasy, often extracts image elements from real life, and makes animation characters more distinctive and prominent through certain deformation and exaggeration in the presentation. In the film, the father only appears at the beginning and end of the film, and the image does not change much. He wears a coat and looks tall, while his head is disproportionately small, and its width is even narrower than the legs of his trousers. Although this is unlikely to appear in real life, it highlights his father's lofty, warm and reliable characteristics, which is in line with the usual people's perception of "father's love is like a mountain".
Since the story mainly revolves around the daughter's life-long waiting, it shows the daughter's changes from childhood to teenage, middle age, and old age, and her clothing and posture are very suitable for the characteristics of the corresponding age group. As far as hairstyles are concerned, the daughters in childhood wore woolen hats, the girls had long hair that was messed up in the wind, and the youths who rode bicycles with their female companions had neat short hair, married as a man. Empresses have medium-length perm hair, wear headscarves in middle-aged and old age, and sparse hair in old age, combed behind the head, although it is consistent with the style of painting, the change of hairstyle is only a concise summary, it can only be seen from this point The inner intention of the designer. At the same time, the legs of the daughter, including the women in the film, are very slender, like a "stickman". On the one hand, it shows the elegant characteristics of women. When pedaling the bicycle with difficulty, it highlights the value of waiting and perseverance, and reflects the daughter's deep miss for her father. The father and daughter are tall and slender, which also presents a subtle contrast, reminiscent of the fact that after the father's lack of protection for his daughter, the daughter's subsequent growth process may be difficult, but she always Not forgetting the concern for her father, it can be seen that her daughter is a strong, independent and affectionate person.
Secondly, the general animation characters will have rich movements and expressions, and a distinctive feature of the character's shaping in this film is that it mainly conveys emotions through movements, ignoring facial expressions. The proportion of the head in the design of the characters in the film is relatively small, and the facial features are not prominent or even completely blurred, which makes it impossible for the audience to directly read their inner activities from the faces of the characters, but the way of conveying emotions through actions is more subtle and moving. And it needs the audience to carefully figure out and integrate into it.
For example, in the two hugs at the beginning of the film, the first time is when the father brings his daughter to the water. After the father gets off the bicycle, he wants to walk directly to the water. The daughter hurries to him. He touched his daughter's head to show intimacy, the second time his father walked to the side of the boat and looked back, and once again went ashore to lift his daughter up and hug her in a circle. It can be guessed that the first time was the father's determination to leave silently, and the daughter's reluctance made him feel trapped. The second time was the father's stronger love for his daughter, and he wanted to take a good look for the last time before leaving. she. The simple movements express the emotional fluctuations of hundreds of turns and thousands of times, which are very delicate and touching.
The structure of the narrative
"Father and Daughter" is mainly developed in a linear order of time development. The narrative structure is very clear. Except for the beginning and ending, it can be roughly divided into three segments.
The first paragraph is 00:09-01:38, mainly about the father taking his daughter to the water on a bicycle and leaving alone in a boat; the second paragraph is 01:38-05:24, describing the daughter's long life after that Zhong often came to the place where his father left to look into the distance, looking forward to seeing his father come back one day. During this period, the daughter went from being a young girl to having a family of her own, and then to old age, but her father never came back; the third paragraph is 05:24-07:24 , the daughter, who had become an old woman, came alone to the dry, reed-covered water, went to the depths of the reeds, and found a boat half-buried at the bottom of the former water, in which she lay down and fell asleep, In the dream, she seemed to be a girl again and saw her father. The film ended in a deep embrace between father and daughter.
In general, the narrative style of this film is simple and concise, but the story of my daughter's life is interpreted in just a few minutes. The highly generalized expression method is indispensable, that is, through the changes in the appearance of the daughter's clothes and her partner each time she is waiting. Showing the passage of time allows viewers to guess what is going on in her daily life. For example, when the daughter passes the bank on the back seat of her boyfriend's bicycle, it can be presumed that she is in love, the next shot is all black, only a flashlight, and then the scene with her husband and children to the bank. We can guess that the all-black scene is that the daughter came to the shore alone at night and wanted to tell him the important events of her life. It can be seen that the daughter expects her father to participate in her life, and all the complicated details can be omitted. , to make the main line of the film clearer and more focused.
The biggest highlight of the film's narrative is the open ending. The previous father's departure seemed to be a suspense carefully set up by the author. The suspense was revealed at the end. It can be understood that the girl was really reunited with her father in a dream, and the actual father may be alive or dead, or the fact of the father can be inferred from the remains of the boat. I have already been killed... In any case, the fairy tale-like surreal technique makes this ending give people endless reverie, sadness but not sadness.
3. Theme idea
First of all, combined with the analysis of the characters and the plot, it can be seen that the most intuitive expression of this film is the deep affection between the father and the daughter. At the same time, friendship and love also appeared in the daughter's growth process. These are interspersed with the daughter's waiting for her father. Over the years, her life has become rich and complete. The daughter's waiting for her father symbolizes the eternal watchfulness of human beings for love. For the most cherished and important people in life, they will never forget because they cannot be forgotten. This is the spiritual pillar that supported her through difficult years.
Just like at the end of the film, when the old woman came to the shore by bicycle, the bicycle fell many times but could not be lifted up, so she threw the car on the side of the road, her life was about to come to an end, and she no longer cared much about the things outside her. But she has fulfilled her childhood dream and reunited with her father in the dream. This can be said to be a miracle of love, or that love is the destination that the human heart is looking forward to.
Fourth, the use of the lens
In terms of the use of screen shots, the outstanding feature of this film is the extensive use of objective and still shots, with a few push, pull, pan, and shift shots flexibly interspersed. In terms of scenes, there are more distant scenes than close scenes, and he is good at borrowing scenes to express emotions, forming a quiet and lyrical story rhythm.
Take the set of shots at the beginning of "Father Brings Daughter to the Water's Edge" as an example. At the beginning of the film, there are three scenes of white clouds, and then the father and his daughter ride bicycles from far to near, and subtitles appear floating above. These four scenes do not move, but switch naturally like a frame of photos. Yes, very soothing. Followed by the side shot of the father and daughter riding a bicycle, which appears many times throughout the film, but the movement here is also level with the composition of the picture, so it is very stable and does not give people a strong sense of visual impact or stimulation. It also makes the combination of dynamic and static, and will not be monotonous. Then there's the wheel close-up, a symbolic shot in the film that hints at the passage of time, and it's one of the few close-ups that is repeated several times in the film. Then, they used the aerial and flat shots of the distant view, and then zoomed in slightly (always a panoramic view), showing the whole process of the father and his daughter riding a bicycle.
Because this film focuses on expressing the hearts of characters through actions, the use of such long-range shots and characterization techniques complement each other. In addition, the backlit shooting angle from the side makes the outline of the characters very clear, and the strong light and shadow effects make the characters look like silhouettes. Although the composition of the picture looks very concise, it is very particular about the aesthetics of form. For example, a group of pictures showing a snowy day - a horizon in the distance, clusters of trees from far to near, from big to small, with bare dots of land on the ground; a symmetrical tree with fallen leaves in the wilderness ; Fields delineated by lines - these three shots express few things, but the use of lines and dots is full of changes, just like the blank space in Chinese painting, thus forming a unique beauty combining printmaking and ink painting.
5. Color sound
The film uses charcoal and pencil to render the background, with hand-painted texture effect. The tones are mainly ochre, black and white and gray. The daughter's clothes sometimes use light gray and blue, which forms a subtle contrast with the yellowish ochre to highlight the characters. , The embellishment of the active picture creates a simple, warm and nostalgic atmosphere.
Excellent animation music can play a finishing touch to the film. The background music used in this film is adapted from "The Waves of the Danube" by the Romanian composer Jan Ivanovic at the end of the 19th century. The prelude, four small waltzes and the epilogue are composed. The melodious and moving sounds of the accordion and piano run through the whole film, and there are corresponding changes in line with the ups and downs of the storyline, and the combination is very clever. In addition, there is no dialogue in the whole film, only natural sound effects, such as the sound of water, birdsong, and wind, conform to the overall concise style of the film, making it like a quiet lyric poem.
Epilogue
The director of the film, Michael Dudewitt, once said: "Poetic films are really beautiful. The director shows his soul in the film, without the slightest commercial meaning." As an artistic animation short film, "Father and Daughter" " can be said to be a work that expresses the author's artistic ideals more purely. It not only allows the audience to obtain a pure spiritual experience from it, but also follows the "less is more" aesthetic concept and expression method, which can also be used by today's animation filmmakers. to enrich enlightenment.
references:
[1] Zhang Ran. From "Father and Daughter" to see the personalized characteristics of experimental art animation [J]. Design, 2014(6):89-90.
[2] Zhang Sancong, Jiang Xi. Analysis of the Charm of Narrative and Lens Language Art in "Father and Daughter" [J]. Film Literature, 2012, No.557(8):65-66.
[3] Yu Xiaofei, Tang Xuemei. The density of 8 and a half minutes: Analysis of the narrative skills of the animated short film "Father and Daughter" [J]. Decoration, 2011(8):80-81.
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