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Waltz With Bashir

spoon_man

By spoon_man
in Off-Topic Mayhem

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neon_git Newbie

neon_git

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There's loads of poster's up for this in London, it's been intriguing me for a while but I hadn't seen the trailer before. It's obviously visually very impressive and oddly juxtaposed to the subject matter.

 

I think it's going to be one of those films you have to be in a specific state of mind for.

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neon_git Newbie

neon_git

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Fair enough. I thought it captured feel the book pretty well, and I thought the stuff that was added improved the story. Now Paycheck, there's a movie I'm sure we can all agree was compromised.

 

Back on topic: Waltz With Bashir definitely has that sort of jerky rotoscoped feel in places now you mention it. Anyone know if that was the case or if it was all hand animated? Wikipedia has few details on the animation process.

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spoon_man Newbie

spoon_man

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I'm not sure if it's rotoscoped or not, I just know that it looks like it's going to be a very aesthetically pleasing film. I'm interested in it for the subject matter more than anything else. I want to pursue a career in journalism and modern warfare is one of my main interests. Modern warfare represented on a humanistic level especially.

 

As for A Scanner Darkly. I thought it was a great film, I'm a big fan of Richard Linklater and Philip K. Dick and I found it very enjoyable. Sure beats the hell out of anything else adapted from one of Dick's books (except for Blade Runner.)

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neon_git Newbie

neon_git

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I'm never too sure what to think about human interest stories in the news and documentaries and such.

 

On the one hand a human interest story will provoke a emotional response that clouds judgement and the ability to rationally assess the situation and produce an informed opinion. On the other hand it's difficult to dismiss the events impact on people's lives as being irrelevant to the formation of an informed opinion.

 

What do other Mojo-ers think? Anyone care to argue one way or the other?

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Haggis Newbie

Haggis

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Well, human interest stories may not always be for you, but they're the very foundation of the mass media. You and I may prefer to read about the cold facts, but there are many people out there who expect an engaging story when they read their paper. I suppose it makes things more real for them.

 

So whether you like it or not (and sometimes I do actually like it - just as biographies from the past can shed interesting light on a historical period, human interest stories can make a war or other big event more tangible), human interest stories are part of the reason why newspapers are so popular.

 

As for the film, the graphical style doesn't appeal to me at all, really. It just seems to water down what the film is about to me. I appreciate that it's an artistic device supposed to support the film's subject matter, but I think it just doesn't work for me, I prefer seeing real people in a film that's about war.

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  • 3 weeks later...
SyntheticGerbil Newbie

SyntheticGerbil

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I don't care about the story, this movie looks awful.

 

That style didn't fly well with Scanner Darkly and did okay (financially) with Waking Life.

 

But ultimately rotoscoping is both lazy and needlessly excessive work at the same time. There's tweening in flash/after effects on the stuff they traced on some parts and were too lazy to rotoscope the rest of the scene.

 

There's no real animation in this thing, it's all stiff and badly executed. It gets points because it's a niche film and is supposed to be serious and artistic, when it's really a hollow shell.

 

I mean if you guys just learn some adobe software, you can make this film as well, there's no background in art needed, just trace. If only the regular Joe knew how much work doesn't go into a film like this.

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SyntheticGerbil Newbie

SyntheticGerbil

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I'm not going to sit through a rotoscoped film like this, I've seen the trailer plenty of times, and I can hate all I want without seeing it, it's only natural. We all do that with books, games, movies, and music everyday. This is obviously a niche film, which isn't necessarily a bad word, and there's not really much of a way to argue against it. Some of the best movies out there are niche films.

 

It just simply doesn't qualify as real art done by an experienced artist who bears their soul with their output, no matter what you think. Ari Folman has never had any publicity for his films outside of Israel until he had a team of people put his filming through a computer with deluxe Adobe software. Suddenly it's known internationally and in some circles as an animated film, which I would say is incorrect. He's definitely riding Linklater's coattails. Why even do this to your film if not for the gained publicity?

 

Like I said, learn some Adobe products, specifically Illustrator and After Effects, and you can make this film too, no animation or art background required. Even the inherent sloppiness of Waltz with Bashir's blocky backgrounds shows inexperience with the programs.

 

You do know that's what they were doing to finish Scanner Darkly over in Austin, Texas? They were handing out fliers even down here in Houston to just to desperately get their work done. All you had to do was accept low wages and vaguely know some Illustrator, (or be willing to learn) and you were set to be an "animator." No portfolio or artistic experience required. This kind of trendy rotoscoping truly is the bottom of the barrel.

 

Read the infamous story here if you like:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.03/scanner.html?pg=1&topic=scanner&topic_set=

 

Soon though, you won't even have to hire artists. You can just buy a plug-in and have a Linklater animated film at your fingertips:

http://www.cartoonbrew.com/feature-film/year-of-the-fish-an-animated-feature

 

But just earlier in this thread you couldn't even tell if it was rotoscoping or not, so you obviously aren't an aficionado, nor someone who understands how animation works. Granted, some of the parts use really low rate 3D models, or move the camera through vector art planes in faux After Effects 3D, but that's not the core. And like I already stated, it appears they even got lazy on their rotoscoping and tweened some of it instead of finishing the job.

 

The thing that bothers me most about this stuff is these directors get praised for doing hardly any work. They aren't the ones diligently tracing frames, and all they have to do is a few weeks of shooting very low budget on a digital camera, with a conservative amount of thought given to sets and lighting, unlike when you make a real movie. The rest is put through the post production team while the director sits on their ass. When this stuff gets hype it detracts from real animators who have real work to do involving understanding acting, movement, staging, pacing, and how to make things move. Rotoscoping isn't even near that cerebral. At least it could be given some flair before the late 90s when it was often done by hand, by real animators, and not just some majorly inexperienced Austin dirtbag with a mouse pushing around vector shapes.

 

But I'm just trolling at the moment (obviously), and I feel very strongly about the politics of this stuff, as someone who is an animator for a living. Nothing much else I can say besides elaborating more on the above will change anyone's minds, with the actual film and story existing before post production withstanding. So I'll leave you guys alone now.

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