The Digital Medium Has an Important Contribution to Cinema’s Artistic and Entertainment Values

For more than 100 years since its birth, the movie industry has evolved much as an art form and a creative industry. Since then, it has provided major contributions in the arts, culture, politics and technology. And whether it's in Hollywood, Bollywood or any other film industry center in the world, each one continues to develop better technologies to keep up with the rising demand for valuable and entertaining content. And this is where computer animation gets incorporated in the film’s special effects, which serves as a powerful tool to tell impressive stories in the film medium. Instead of the traditional way of drawing each movement frame by frame (24 hand-drawn frames with incremental changes in each drawing's movement for a one second motion), the digital process allows for less drawings and utilizing computer software to enhance each image of the moving picture.

A Brief History of Computer Animation
Computer animation started way back in the 80’s with Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan using computer techniques to generate the Genesis Effect scene. Jurassic Park also used computer-generated images for realistic living creatures in the film. The 90s saw the significant impact of computer animation with Toy Story, the first full digital animated feature that became a box office success and garnered many technical awards in top award-giving bodies such as The Academy Awards. Babe, a combination of live and computer animated effects, became a huge hit as well. This animation timeline continues in the new millennium with Shrek, The Lord of the Rings and many more.

Animation and Special Effects
Going beyond the realistic world allows the viewers to escape from their own lives towards an out-of-this-world and hyper-realistic experience in audio-visual form. There are even some cinematic works mainly relying on computer artists’ digital animation and special effects skills to make the film bankable with such visual flair and “wow factor”.

There are many aspects involved in the job which includes character design, digital painting (traditional painting techniques such as watercolor and oils are applied using digital tools through computer software), texture mapping (a method of adding detail and surface texture, a bitmap or raster image, or color to a computer-generated graphic or 3D model), in betweening (a process of generating intermediate frames between two images to give the appearance that the first image moves smoothly towards the second image where key frames help create the illusion of motion), lighting effects, camera movements and other special effects and animation methods.

The full spectrum of animation in filmmaking is quite large. Animation jobs may include works for an opening/closing billboard or credits (making the opening credits of Spiderman or the closing credits of Alice in Wonderland), a production outfit’s logo (making the Warner Bros. logo fit the mood and look specific to a film like in 300), special effects on scenes (like in Harry Potter movies) and more. There are films requiring photorealistic and seamless 3D rendering and animation (like in Avatar). There are those requiring the use of motion capture technology where a real actor’s movements are captured into the computer through attached points on the actor’s body in order to recreate an entirely new character (the historical use of motion capture is best utilized in the character Gollum of The Lord of the Rings).

Fantasy, Epic and Adventure Movies
Fantasy and adventure movies like The Chronicles of Narnia, King Kong, How to Train Your Dragon and 2012 offer the spectators the chance to explore a world beyond imagination. And filming such thrilling creations of the mind require much resources. And to a certain point, it is impossible to shoot all the required elements live. And this is when animation, digital art and graphics become parts of the overall special effects process of creating a spectacular fantasy world for viewers to enjoy. From the digital backgrounds to the magical creatures, animators and special effects artists work hand-in-hand to realize the filmmakers’ vision for the film.

Action and Superhero Movies
For all those engaging stunts and chasing scenes for films like Wanted, Transformers, Iron Man and Sin City, the magic of recreating or enhancing the live action shots become the source of adrenaline for those action movie fans. Animation and special effects can make a huge blast without the risk of getting people hurt if something would instead be literally blown out during the shoot. Martial arts and fight scenes are also enhanced to make them look more suspense-filled. The way blood is shown during fights can be realistic or anything beyond real-according to the director’s more detailed instructions.

Horror and Suspense Movies
Using digital magic through the concept of animation and computer graphics are very important in horror movies requiring gore and goosebump-inducing sights of spirits (The Ring), monsters (28 Weeks Later) and possessed beings (The Exorcism of Emily Rose). With animation, special effects, sound effects and music, a horror film becomes such a hit. Otherwise, if the audience doesn’t get to accept the movie’s make-believe offer, the motion picture loses the chance to tell a good story. And it fails to impress the viewers from getting those horrific chills.

Romance, Musical, Comedy and Drama Movies
Even romance, musical, comedy and dramas movies can utilize computer animation to make the storytelling more technically polished. It doesn’t always have to be a magical scene or a huge explosion. It can be a simple background change or a significant computer-generated image to enhance specific scenes. And these are usually utilized to make them look as if they are part of any regular scene. Such effects are available in movies like Australia, Mamma Mia, Shallow Hal and The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

The Success of Walt Disney
Since Walt Disney’s release of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937, animated films aimed at family audiences have become the company's niche. For decades, Disney has produced films using traditional animation, until computer graphics came in during the 90’s. The animation medium extends into the many formats becoming more available to filmmakers. And Disney continues to explore the ever-changing playing field of cinema by also producing live action films within the same target market. Recently, showing 3D movies is fast becoming a trend. And the company keeps up with this demand as well.

The Impressive Track Record of Pixar Animation Studios
Pixar Animation Studios has a consistently impressive track record for quality feature and short films (their trademark is having a short film before the main feature like in Academy Award-winning films as Finding Nemo, Wall-E and Up).

After a few films mainly pioneering in computer animation, Pixar films readily rose up the ladder during the 90’s to become readily in par with the works of top animation companies in Hollywood. And its box office successes back up the studios’ countless awards for both the technical and thematic brilliance of their films including other major award-giving bodies as the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Films for The Incredibles, BAFTA Awards for Monsters, Inc., and Golden Globes for Ratatouille. The company proves that the right combination of proprietary technology and world-class creative talent is the key to the animation film industry’s success. And with such memorable characters and heartwarming stories appealing to audiences of all ages, it is no surprise that Pixar teams up with the veteran Disney in creating many great films that are now mostly classics in world cinema history.

 

 

Credits

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Paul Wheeler. Practical Cinematography. Focal Press, 2000.

 

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