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* Best International Film * Plug & Play  | A Short Film by Michael Frei

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My intention for my submission for this project is to create a short video revolving around the role responsibility. This includes various aspects of social and interpersonal situations and the balance required to maintain a healthy social outlook. I want to display this through a minimalistic stylized short that contains a compilation of short visuals I have chosen to represent both sides of these themes. These will be portrayed through a mix of techniques mostly done in drawn animation and stop motion. The result aims to be a video that gives a very stylized and atmospheric output. The driving idea behind this project is to make an outcome very personal to me and to show how social / collective responsibility can be interpreted in both good and bad ways in a social scene.

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My aim is for the visuals of my project to be minimalistic. In approach this is not dissimilar to my Design Domain project last year though I want to avoid its overwhelming effect unless completely intentional. In my 2019 project I had the entire frame filled with multiple videos.  With this one I want to have a much more minimal and singular focus. Given that this project will be viewed traditionally as a video I think this way of displaying graphic suits it better. The  minimalistic visuals of this video will stick to a very clear lined form and an incredibly limited colour palette focusing mostly on just black and white. This best complements the visuals and will give clarity of presentation to the entire project. I also have an idea of adding post processed distortion to the video as I expect the mood of it, due to the divisive nature of the subject and the contrast between a pleasant and turbulent mood, will be an eerie and anxious one - and I want the visuals to mimic this. There’s an animated short named “Kids” by artists Michael Frei and Mario von Rickenbach which uses a mimimalistic, monochrome animation technique to good effect. In this they use traditional animation techniques and a game engine which explores the way characters act in a crowd specifically in relation to matter, using physical concepts such as attracting, repelling, growing, and shrinking and focusing on how they relate to each other. Frei and von Richenbach also had a game by the name of Plug and Play which followed a similar (though slightly more surreal) style which I found to be very effective. 
Another artist whose work I’ve been exploring and has really inspired me is multimedia visionary Jack Stauber. I’ve been a fan of Jack’s work for a long time now especially the way all aspects of his work shines and complements each other. His audio and visuals are always closely intertwined, something I explored in my last project (Graphic Narratives), but would be eager to more abstractly and minimally explore in this one. Stauber also has a very effective way of mixing all types of media together be it 3d animation, live action footage, stop motion, or hand drawn animation. These are all very well presented in his unique style; another aspect of his work that I really enjoy. Whilst I do not intend on copying this I think I shall draw on some elements, keeping away from realistic and sensical visuals for this project. 
A third and final artist I’ve been influenced by? is Sam Gainsborough and his 2018 film “Facing It”.   He is skilled at mixing stop motion and traditional film on a really large scale. In this film he articulates emotions, especially strenuous and unpleasant ones, really well through oversized stop motion heads over regular footage of people’s bodies. Both Gainsborough and Stauber’s work are very impressive with their portrayal of emotion and feelings through simple animation techniques and pieces like “Kids” and Stauber’s videos such as his film “Opal” and short “Back” both use very stylized and formulated aesthetics. It is through using various theories of design such as texture and form that I wish to take influence from these design choices and push my design in an atmospheric and impactful direction.

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All of these themes and ideas focus on maintaining social balances and looking at different ways these balances can be carried out. It will be very personal to me and my experience within these fields. I really want the visuals to reflect this aspect of personalness. It is my full intent not to have the imagery I choose in my final product to be universally recognisable or understandable. That’s not to say I shall deliberately cloud how clear the visuals of the outcome are, but I will portray the issues and opinions that I have and have experienced and that are personal to me.

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I wanted to keep the positive parts of my visuals from my initial idea and focus and refine them more to complement this project. I still wanted to progress with different types of animation especially stop motion as this is something I haven’t explored in a uni project before. In the graphic narratives project I really enjoyed mixing multiple different media, in that case hand drawn animation and video.  I recognised that I would learn from, and  enjoy, exploring this mixing preferably stop motion, hand drawn, and recorded video footage. I’ve seen many examples of this being used to create a really immersive and emotive visual style especially when using distorted and exaggerated faces. To take full advantage of this I want to have visuals completely focused on conveying emotion and visuals that show not a story but represent the ideas and questions I'm trying to address. 
To this effect there are many sub-themes I want to convey and in several different ways. After considering multiple aspects of my initial idea I decided two things: firstly, I wanted to expand the idea behind my project. Whilst I still want the focus to be the balance between the roles responsibility can take in a relationship I want to expand this to balance in many aspects of life. Selfish and selflessness and how these two directly opposite ideas can intertwine and work in tandem in relationships of all kinds. Similarly the intricate balance between support and dependency and how fine a line is needed to be tread through this. I also wanted to really take advantage of how contemporary I can make my project due to the unusual and unique social situation we currently find ourselves in. As part of this I wanted to expand my idea to the responsibility we have for people's wellbeing both physical and mental during these times of complete isolation and social denial.

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I thought further about what could be the focus and driving message behind my project and went for something that really focused on individualism and personal matters. After thinking about it I came up with the idea of responsibility in a relationship, specifically about whether. or to what extent, you are responsible for another person’s feelings and mood. This alone has a very negative connotation to it as everything I’ve looked at and researched online has completely denounced the idea that someone can be responsible for another person’s feelings. I’m not entirely sure how much I agree with this idea: I think one thing that deters people from aligning with this idea is that when you consider yourself responsible for someone's feelings or happiness it provokes a very unhealthy balance over where you value yourself in relation to people's dependency on you and the responsibility you hold in relation to that. Because of this I would like to broaden my initial idea to exploring both sides of this argument. On one side trying to display being responsible for people and their emotional state through support and help, whilst also showing the opposing side, the anxious and unfair elements that can result in a bad and negatively dependant relationship. This will be one of the numerous sub-themes I intend to explore and implement into my work.

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These are all aspects that have been inspiring me during this project and elements I wish to draw from and implement into my future and development work. This will require me becoming fluent in more software and techniques. Adobe animate is a software I’ve been exploring this year and I intend on using it for the drawn animation. Dragonframe is a software I intend on using for the stop motion segments and a software I’m excited to learn as it’s not one I have a large amount of experience in. Premiere Pro is how I intend on compiling this project. I have a good understanding of the basics of this programme and am excited to learn more and try new techniques with this software during this project. I have many ideas for how the animation will be carried out using digital materials for the drawn segments with a drawing tablet and software and a tilted table and tripod for the stop motion segments positioning the images i’m photographing as the direct subject and focus of my work.

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I had a development idea of trying to mimic the form and figure of various animals from a bird’s eye top down perspective in animation. These animals would be made from litter and rubbish that gets discarded in the street. The imagery was the strongest part of this idea in my opinion. I’d be able to show the animals but due to the ugly materials and dirty way they look they’d have a disorienting and almost unsettling appearance. As much as I liked this Idea there were a number of reasons I didn’t go with it. My first one was that as strongly as I feel about climate change and population, I personally don’t have much to add to the topic’s discussion that hasn’t already been said. For this reason I decided I wanted to move my project to a more personal and individual idea. Another reason that solidified this is that whilst doing further research into PES’s work in preparation for this writing I found an animation titled “The Fish” which was very similar to my idea. This reinforced my view that my proposal may not have added anything new to the topic, and that the issue of environmental damage and social responsibility is a rather obvious and well-trodden path.

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My initial response for this theme was predictably to think of global warming and the collective social responsibility we have in relation to that. Every year an estimated 14 billion pounds of rubbish ends up in the ocean. This is something that is easily preventable, but continues primarily  due to laziness and a distinct lack of individual social responsibility. There are many ways to explore this theme.  My initial thought was a processing sketch of a blue circle representing the earth that slowly gets more and more tainted and discoloured as a counter at the bottom slowly ticks up the years.
Visually this described the situation well however I don’t feel it is particularly ambitious and neither does it highlight the severity of the situation I am wishing to convey. I also, as previously stated, want to delve more into video and animation during this project.  I then thought more about how this idea could be better visualised. While it is very time consuming and slow traditional media like hand drawn animation and even stop motion are both elements I want to learn and improve my skills with. I was looking into various artists for this project and had an idea drawing from an older animation by an animator going by the name of PES. The animation titled “The Deep” shows aquatic life formed from various metal inanimate objects such as screws, spanners, and various tools being brought to the form of sealife.  Expertly crafted animation and consideration of movement made the objects seem fluid and full of life. I really liked this video and wanted to try and take this approach and develop the idea further.

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From the outset I knew I wanted to investigate this topic through the medium of video. Having just finished the Graphic Narratives video project in year 3, further exploration of film and animation was something I was eager to continue. I’m also fast approaching year 4 so building a portfolio is becoming a more and more prevalent thought through my work and video editing is something I’d like to focus on in that regard; whether using video in relation to something like processing or unity or having a video as my final output. It’s something I wish to deliver for this project. The reason for this is I feel video is a very well suited medium for this topic. Through video I can very clearly display emotion and atmosphere using elements like sound and distortion. These are considerably easier for me to achieve in video and editing as opposed to something like processing.

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For Design Domain this year the theme was Responsibility. We were encouraged to think about responsibility in relation to creation, taking into account things such as the current situation with the pandemic and global health crisis we are in. This could also encompass issues such as climate change and the ever increasing issues we are facing with sustainability and the finiteness of our current lifestyle. (I’m going to call this collective social responsibility)

Another vein of responsibility we were advised to consider was responsibility in relation to being. That is to say Social responsibility as more of an individual way of looking at the theme. Here we could consider aspects like ethics and people’s choices (I’m going to call this individual social responsibility) as well as people in relation to the responsibility they hold to a community and to others. This was deliberately kept quite loose as a theme allowing us to manipulate the theme to our liking and explore a wider range of ideas. So long as we used the central theme of responsibility we could convey this in through any subtheme and more excitingly to me through any medium.