Introduction to Mass Communication

Institute of Communication Studies

Animate d Movies

March 5

2012
Submitted to:

Prof. Shafeeq Kamboh

Submitted by:

Ayesha Aziz Amna Farooq Iqra Sayed Mahnoor Qureshi Ayesha Saddique Faiqa Parveaz

Contents
CONTENTS................................................................................................2 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................4 HISTORY OF ANIMATED MOVIES.................................................................4 SILENT AGE...................................................................................................4 FIRST ANIMATED PROJECTION (SCREENING)......................................................................................4 FIRST ANIMATED PROJECTION (PHOTOGRAPHED) ...............................................................................5 FIRST ANIMATED PROJECTION (TRADITIONAL)....................................................................................5 FIRST ANIMATED CARTOONS......................................................................................................5 GOLDEN AGE.................................................................................................5 ANIMATION IN PAST AND PRESENT ...........................................................6 WALT DISNEY: ..........................................................................................6 THE DEBUT OF MICKEY MOUSE: .................................................................7 THE FLEISCHER BROTHERS: INVENTORS, CARTOON MAKERS ......................7 KO-KO THE CLOWN ...................................................................................8 BIMBO .....................................................................................................8 BETTY BOOP ............................................................................................8 POPEYE .......................................................................................................9 SUPERMAN ...................................................................................................9 INTRODUCTION OF COMPUTERS AND ANIMATION ......................................9 TELEVISION....................................................................................................9 PRIMETIME ANIMATED SERIES...............................................................................10 2|Page

HOW ANIMATIONS ARE MADE?.................................................................10 BACKGROUNDS..............................................................................................10 DIALOGUE AND MUSIC.......................................................................................11 ANIMATION..................................................................................................11 INK AND PAINT..............................................................................................11 FILMING.....................................................................................................11 FOR EXAMPLE ..............................................................................................12 LESSON FROM MOVIE UP .......................................................................................................12 MORAL LESSON FROM SNOW WHITE ..........................................................................................13 VIOLENCE IN ANIMATED MOVIES..............................................................13 EXAMPLES...................................................................................................14 ACCORDING TO RESEARCHES................................................................................14 STUDY BY ALBERT BANDURA...............................................................................15 IMPACT OF VIOLENT ANIMATED MOVIES ON CHILDREN.......................................................15 COMMITMENT OF VIOLENCE BY CHILDREN IN SCHOOL.......................................................15 WOMENS RACE AND CULTURE IN ANIMATED MOVIES................................16 RELIGIOUS ANIMATED MOVIES ................................................................16

3|Page

Animated movies
Introduction
The word animate comes from the Latin verb animare, meaning to make alive or to fill with breath. Animation by modern definition is Animation is a graphic representation of drawings to show movement within those drawings. A series of drawings are linked together and usually photographed by a camera. The drawings have been slightly changed between individualized frames so when they are played back in rapid succession (24 frames per second) there appears to be seamless movement within the drawings.

History of animated movies

Early attempts to capture the phenomenon of motion into a still drawing can be found in paleolithic cave paintings, where animals are often depicted with multiple legs in superimposed positions, clearly attempting to convey the perception of motion. The phenakistoscope (1832), zoetrope (1834) and praxinoscope (1877), as well as the common flip book, were early animation devices to produce movement from sequential drawings using technological means, but animation did not develop further until the advent of motion picture film.

Silent Age
First animated projection (screening)
First screening animated projection was created in France, by Charles-mile Reynaud, who was a French science teacher. Reynaud created the Praxinoscope in 1877 and the Thtre Optique in December 1888. On 28 October 1892, he projected the first animation in public, Pauvre Pierrot, at the Muse Grvin in Paris. This film is also notable as the first known instance of film perforations being used. His films were

4|Page

not photographed, but drawn directly onto the transparent strip. In 1900, more than 500,000 people had attended these screenings.

First animated projection (photographed)

The first (photographed) animated projection was "Humorous Phases of Funny Faces" (1906) by newspaper cartoonist J. Stuart Blackton, one of the co-founders of the Vitagraph Company arrived. In the movie, a cartoonist's line drawings of two faces were 'animated' (or came to life) on a blackboard. The two faces smiled and winked, and the cigar-smoking man blew smoke in the lady's face; also, a circus clown led a small dog to jump through a hoop.

First animated projection (traditional)

The first animated projection in the traditional sense (i.e., on motion picture film) was "Fantasmagorie" by the French director mile Cohl in 1908. This was followed by two more films, "Le Cauchemar du fantoche" ["The Puppet's Nightmare", now lost] and "Un Drame chez les fantoches" ["A Puppet Drama", called "The Love Affair in Toyland" for American release and "Mystical Love-Making" for British release], all completed in 1908.

First animated cartoons

One of the very first successful animated cartoons was Gertie the Dinosaur (1914) by Winsor McCay. It is considered the first example of true character animation. At first, animated cartoons were black-andwhite and silent. Felix the Cat and Oswald the Lucky Rabbit are notable examples.

Golden Age
From the 1930s to 1960s, theatrical cartoons were produced in huge numbers, and usually shown before a feature film in a movie theater. MGM, Disney, Paramount and Warner Brothers were the largest studios producing these 5 to 10-minute "shorts". The first cartoon to use a soundtrack was in 1926 with Max Fleischer's My Old Kentucky Home. However the Fleischers used a De Forest sound system and the sound was not completely synchronized with the film. Walt Disney's 1928 cartoon Steamboat Willie starring Mickey Mouse was the first to use a click track during the recording session, which produced better synchronism. "Mickey Mousing" became a term for any movie action (animated or live action) that was perfectly synchronized with music. The

5|Page

music used is original most of the time, but musical quotation is often employed. Animated characters usually performed the action in "loops", i.e., drawings were repeated over and over.

Animation in past and present

Early animations consisted of simple drawings photographed one at a time. It was extremely labor intensive as there were literally hundreds of drawings per minute of film. The development of celluloid around 1913 quickly made animation easier to manage. Instead of numerous drawings, the animator now could make a complex background and/or foreground and sandwich moving characters in between several other pieces of celluloid, which is transparent except for where drawings are painted on it. This made it unnecessary to repeatedly draw the background as it remained static and only the characters moved. It also created an illusion of depth, especially if foreground elements were placed in the frames.

Walt Disney:
A classic animator in the early days of cinema was Walt Disney, originally an advertising cartoonist at the Kansas City Film Ad Company, who initially experimented with combining animated and live-action films. The very first films he made himself at his own animation studio in Kansas City were short cartoons called Newman Laugh-O-Grams, such as Little Red Riding Hood - the first Walt Disney cartoon, and the Four Musicians of Bremen. His first successful silent cartoons, after relocating and setting up his own studio in Los Angeles (the Disney Brothers Studio) were a series of shorts including 56 episodes called Alice Comedies that debuted in 1924 with Alice's Day at Sea. Disney's Alice cartoons placed a live-action title character (Alice) into an animated Wonderland world. Soon after, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit became Disney's first successful animal star in a 26-cartoon series distributed by Universal beginning in 1927. Oswald was the first Disney character to be merchandized. Oswald appeared in a number of cartoon shorts, such as: Trolley Troubles and Poor Papa. Disney produced about two dozen of the silent, black and white Oswald cartoons from 1927-1928 until forced to give up the character to Walter Lantz. He moved onto another memorable character - first named Mortimer Mouse - or Mickey Mouse in 1928.

6|Page

The Debut of Mickey Mouse:

In 1928, Disney Studios' chief animator Ub Iwerks developed a new character from a figure known as Mortimer Mouse, a crudely-drawn or sketched, rodent-like 'Mickey Mouse' slightly similar to Felix the Cat. The first Mickey Mouse cartoon was released on May 15, 1928, Plane Crazy in which Mickey, while impressing Minnie, imitated aviator Charles Lindbergh. The second was Steamboat Willie, with Mickey as a roustabout on Peg leg Pete's river steamer, but without his trademark white gloves. The third was The Gallopin' Gaucho, released on August 2, 1928. (These early films were soon re-worked and re-released with sounds. To help make Mickey stand out from other cartoon characters at the dawn of the talkies, the 7-minute Steamboat Willie was re-released in 1928 with sound and premiered at the 79th Street Colony Theatre in New York. It was the first cartoon with post-produced synchronized soundtrack of music, dialogue, and sound effects and is considered Mickey Mouse's screen debut performance and birthdate. Animated star Mickey with Minnie was redrawn with shoes and white, fourfingered gloves. It was a landmark film and a big hit - the first sound cartoon to be a major hit - leading to many more Mickey Mouse films during the late 1920s and 1930s. Strangely, Mickey's first sound cartoon didn't include Mickey's voice -- he didn't speak until his ninth short, The Karnival Kid (1929) when he said the words: "Hot dogs!" Walt's voice was used for Mickey. Walt Disney was fast becoming the most influential pioneer in the field of character-based cell animation, through his shrewd oversight of production.

The Fleischer Brothers: Inventors, Cartoon Makers

At the same time, serious rivals to Disney's animation production came from the Fleischers (Max, Dave, Joe, and Lou). They were already making technical innovations that would revolutionize the art of animation. In 1917, Max Fleischer invented the rot scope to streamline the frame-by-frame copying 7|Page

process - it was a device used to overlay drawings on live-action film. The Fleischers were also pioneering the use of 3-D animation landscapes, and produced the hour-long Einstein's Theory of Relativity, the first feature animation. The Fleischer Brothers also made the first animated films (cartoons) that featured a soundtrack, in a series of 36 films called Ko-Ko Song Car-Tunes. The first sound cartoon was one of the Song Car-Tunes -Mother Pin a Rose on Me. They were also the first audience participation films, with sing-along lyrics and a 'bouncing-ball' helper. Twelve of the 36 short films were released in both sound and silent versions.

Ko-Ko the Clown

One of the Fleischers' first successful ventures occurred in 1919 with the premiere of the part live-action/part animation Out of the Inkwell series of shorts, featuring the animated Ko-Ko the Clown character in a live-action world - one of the first animated characters. Ko-Ko climbed out of the inkwell and interacted with the human animator.

Bimbo
From 1929-1932, their Talkartoons for Paramount starred a mouse-like character named Bimbo - who was soon relegated to a minor companion co-star with the Fleischer's next racy cartoon star.

Betty Boop
Max Fleischer was responsible for the provocative, adult-oriented, cartoon Betty Boop vamp-character, who always wore a strapless, thigh-high gown (and visible garter) and was, based on flapper icon Clara Bow's 'It' Girl and Mae West.

8|Page

Popeye
The Fleischers also obtained the rights to the tough, one-eyed, spinach-loving sailor Popeye with oversized arms who was introduced in January 1929 in creator Elzie C. Segar's "Thimble Theatre" newspaper comic strip published in the New York Journal for King Features Syndicate since 1919. Popeye became so popular in the comic strip that it was renamed "Thimble Theatre, Starring Popeye."

Superman
Dave and Max Fleischer, in an agreement with Paramount and DC Comics, also produced a series of seventeen Superman cartoons in the early 1940s. The first Superman short, Superman, which premiered in 1941, introduced the terms "faster than a speeding bullet" and "Look, up in the sky!" The most famous of the series was the second entry, The Mechanical Monsters.

Introduction of computers and animation

With the introduction of computers, animation took on a whole new meaning. Many feature films of today had animation incorporated into them for special effects. A film like Star Wars by George Lucas would rely heavily on computer animation for many of its special effects. Toy Story, produced by Walt Disney Productions and Pixar Animation Studios, became the first full length feature film animated entirely on computers when it was released in 1995. With the advent of personal computers, it has now become possible for the average person to create animations.

Television
Competition from television drew audiences away from movie theaters in the late 1950s, and the theatrical cartoon began its decline. Today, animated cartoons are produced mostly for television. American television animation of the 1950s featured quite limited animation styles, highlighted by the work of Jay Ward on Crusader Rabbit. Other notable 1950s programs include UPA's Gerald McBoing 9|Page

Boing, Hanna-Barbera's Huckleberry Hound and Quick Draw McGraw, and rebroadcast of many classic theatrical cartoons from Warner Brothers, MGM, and Disney.

Primetime animated series

The Hanna-Barbera cartoon, The Flintstones, was the first successful primetime animated series in the United States, running from 1960-66 (and in reruns since). While many networks followed the show's success by scheduling other cartoons in the early 1960s, including Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! The Jetsons, Top Cat, and The Alvin Show, none of these programs survived more than a year (save ScoobyDoo, which, despite not being a primetime cartoon, has managed to stay afloat for over four decades). However, networks found success by running these shows as Saturday morning cartoons, reaching smaller audiences with more demographic unity among children. Television animation for children flourished on Saturday morning, on cable channels like Nickelodeon, Disney Channel and Cartoon Network, and in syndicated afternoon timeslots. Primetime cartoons were virtually non-existent until 1990s hit The Simpsons ushered in a new era of adult animation. Now, "adult animation" programs, such as Aeon Flux, Beavis and Butt-head, South Park, Family Guy, The Cleveland Show, American Dad!, Aqua Teen Hunger Force (currently known as Aqua Unit Patrol Squad 1), and Futurama are a large part of television.

How animations are made?

The story is developed as a "storyboard", a giant-sized comic strip. As the story develops, new drawings are added to the storyboard. Since the drawings are pinned onto a cork board, it is easy to make alterations to the story.

Backgrounds
The backgrounds are painted on cardboard or celluloid with tempera, acrylic or sometimes even oil paints. The backgrounds are the "landscape" in which the characters are moving, and they are often made into large-size panoramas, "pan backgrounds", considerably larger than the picture format. The camera follows the characters as they move across the background. This background is painted in a format suitable for a vertical camera move. 10 | P a g e

Dialogue and music

Before the tedious drawing work can begin, the dialogue is recorded on tape and then transferred onto magnetic film. This filmstrip is analyzed in a sound reader, and every syllable is registered on an "exposure sheet" - necessary to obtain perfect synchronization between sound and picture. The sheet is divided into many rows, each corresponding to one frame of film. Music and sound effects aren't usually recorded until after the film is finally cut, and an optical sound track is then prepared and printed onto the film.

Animation
Now the real work begins. Every second of finished film consists of 24 frames, requiring 12 to 24 drawings, depending upon the speed of movement - faster movements need more drawings per second, slower moves can be animated with less, with three or even more frames shot of every drawing. The difference between two successive frames can be almost negligible, an arm moves a fraction of a millimeter, for instance. The animated drawings are filmed on black & white film to check the smoothness of the movements (this is called a pencil test).

Ink and paint

In order to superimpose the animated characters on the backgrounds, the drawings are copied onto transparent sheets of celluloid or plastic, usually called "cels". The lines are traced in ink, and the colors are filled in on the reverse side of the cels, in order to get completely even colors when viewed from the front.

Filming
The filming is carried out on an "animation stand". Sometimes the picture is divided into several levels (4 on this "multiplane" stand), separated by about 30 cm, or 12". The foremiddle- and backgrounds of the landscape are on different levels, so a certain 3dimensional effect is achieved, especially when the camera or background is moving.

11 | P a g e

To make an 8-minute animated cartoon you need:

7000 sheets of paper

150 sheets of cardboard 10 crow-quill pens 5 erasers 10 liters (2 1/2 gal.) of paint 1200 meters (3600 ft) b&w film

7000 sheets of celluloid

50 felt-tip pens 50 pencils 20 brushes 2.5 dl (1/2 pint) of india ink 240 meters (720 ft) color film

and of course a LOT OF INSPIRATION

Impact on society
Animated movies leave an impact on our heart and mind. Kids are greatly influenced by these movies .Since they are usually seen in primary age, they leave an impact that remains with us throughout our long life.

For example
Lesson from movie up
Presented in beautiful 3D animation, Up tells a story that is both funny and tender, conveying a moral that our connection with others is what makes life meaningful. Several moments of peril may be frightening for young children, and the movie deals with the reality of death and loss.

12 | P a g e

Lesson from beauty and the beast

For me the moral is that despite what befalls you in life you should never treat innocent persons as though they are responsible for your state of misery and you should never become so bitter with life that you no longer wish to be a part of it because the one responsible for the state you're in is staring back at you in the mirror-YOURSELF. Also you should not become so frustrated with life that you fail to recognize when someone has entered your life to help you change it!!!!!

Moral lesson from Cinderella story

In Cinderella, the theme of the story is that you should treat people the way you would like to be treated and then more good comes out of it than evil. This is the theme because the two evil sisters and the wicked step mother were really mean to her and when they went out they left the poor Cinderella to wash the floor. But then in the end Cinderella goes to a princes princess and the others didnt get a sniff of it. Good always win in the end despite how evil has been planning and being a good person with a good heart will always get you to what you want. The richer person with higher statuses isnt better person or more beautiful one and in the end the poorer person will have the better ending. Moreover, everybody will get their prince, may be not as in Cinderella but some worthwhile. The moral to Cinderella is no matter what the situation is, dont give up on your dreams. The moral was probably something about hope and how if you are a good person, your dreams will become a reality. This is also about hope, faith, enduring, goodness over selfishness, beauty over ugliness. Its a great fairytale

Moral lesson from snow white

Snow white is such a beautiful fairytale in which there was a princess named snow white. She was the prettiest girl in the whole world but her cruel step mother treated her really bad. Once her mother asked her slave to kill snow white. He took her away but he didnt kill her and left her free. She ran and stayed with seven dwarfs in their small house. At the end her prince came and took her with him and they lived happily forever. This story teaches a lesson that we must help others in bad time and it also teaches the lesson those things me look nice on the outside but can be mean on the inside.

Violence in animated movies

Violence in cartoons is an integral part of cartoon content. In fact, frequency of violence in cartoons is higher than in live-action dramas or comedies .As a consequence, youth are more likely to view media

13 | P a g e

depicted Violence during Saturday morning cartoons than during prime-time television hours children do imitate their heroes, hoping to emulate them and be able to stand as strong and powerful as they do. Parents see the television as a babysitter of sorts and let their children sit in front of it, absorbing everything they see mindlessly, while the parents do chores or work they must complete that involves not having their children distract them. This is when children receive the full force of the violence in television; studies conducted have shown that children either imitate their heroes or let the actions of these heroes influence their later, more aggressive actions.

Examples
The best-known examples of such violence are in the short Warner Brothers "Looney Tunes" cartoons, those that star Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Wile E. Coyote. These cartoons generally portray Bugs Bunny as the protagonist, finding quick and witty ways to save himself from the antagonistic Elmer Fudd, Yosemite Sam, or whoever the villain of the moment may be; Daffy Duck has been seen as a competitor with Bugs and usually ends up on the losing side. If Wile E. Coyote is involved, the Road Runner always manages to best him, evading capture and leading to Wile's numerous falls off cliffs or collisions with them, due in part to the Road Runner and to Wile's faulty Acme products. These ways often involve violence, mainly guns or running off cliffs, but the violence is portrayed in a humorous manner that disguises its malignance, thus fooling children: "The cartoon "Zipping Along," featuring Warner Brothers' Wile E. Coyote and Roadrunner, is a cartoon which contains 22 separate acts of violence, and is a mere 7 minutes in length.

According to researches
Every film contained at least one violent incident (average duration 9.5 minutes), with 49% showing a character celebrating a violent act. Only 32% of the films had at least one non-violent message. The intention to cause bodily injury was present in 81% of the films, and 62% of the films (46) showed an injury. Of these 46 films, only 22% showed treatment of the injury, and 24% showed someone experiencing pain. In all the films, there were 125 total injuries, and 40% of them happened to "bad" characters. Sixty-two of the injuries were fatal, and 71% of the fatalities happened to "bad" characters (fatalities were significantly more likely to happen to a "bad" than "good"/"neutral" character - odds ratio, 23.2; 95% confidence interval 8.5-63.4). In 72 movies, at least one "good" character participated in a violent incident. Unilateral violence by "good" characters was mostly "light" (72%), whereas unilateral violence by "bad" characters was mostly "dark" (51%). 100% of the films had at least one violent act where the body was the weapon, and 99% had at least one violent act with a weapon. 14 | P a g e

Study by Albert Bandura

A study conducted by Albert Bandura with several groups of children, each watching a different form of violence, agrees with this and suggests that the type of violence a child performs is shaped by the type that he or she sees on television, a person displaying violence on film is as influential as one displaying it in real life. Televised models are important sources of social behavior.

Impact of violent animated movies on children

Children see and accept this violence without ever recognizing the truly violent content; "social audiences typically normalize the violent antics of Bugs Bunny, the Roadrunner, and other assorted cartoon characters. Because these characters execute violence within the animated lay frame of 'make-believe,' their attacks rarely are treated as heinous or deviant in kind. This acceptance has been present for over thirty years because Bugs Bunny and other Warner Brothers characters are seen as American icons, their cartoons thus, for the most part, unquestioned. Children imitate the actions which they see in the cartons and in this way they develop the sense of violence which is the worst effect of animated movies on children.

Commitment of violence by children in school

The recent increase in school violence have cause Pakistani residents to panic. Parents are now scared to send their children to school for fear of being victimized by school violence. The most important age for any person is his early childhood. This is the part wherein a person is vulnerable to anything, and absorbs anything be it right or wrong. This is where they learn almost everything that will eventually shape a persons very being, mentally, morally and emotionally. Imagine a child him and learns it quickly. They then practice this new found knowledge or skill in school and on other children. What they dont know, is that what they are doing is wrong and will eventually ruin their life and future learning ways on how to kill by simply watching a movie. Since movies today involve new ways of killing a person, a child not knowing which is right or wrong takes it like any other lesson.

15 | P a g e

Womens race and culture in animated movies

In most animated films made today, the women characters are either old, or attractive, but never both. There aren't many heroines that are successful and unattractive, either; in animation or in live action movies. The modern cartoon heroine may aspire to a career; but if she doesn't snag a handsome prince, too, she hasn't really succeeded. Feminists believe that women in fairytales rely on their looks and that they have no power, only the men can defeat evil so the female has to wait for the prince to save her. I.e. still old stereotypes are obeyed. According to theorist Bell there are only three female positions: that of an idolized teenage heroine, wicked middle-aged women, or nurturing post-menopausal woman. Although traditional roles have changed and women have developed to become more modern, cleaver, strong and brave, one problem lies in every Disney film, the power that men and true love have over the female characters. The best thing that can happen to a Disney heroin is to marry her prince charming. Does this ending have to be, so that the woman can live happily ever after?

Religious animated movies

Religious teachings can be conveyed successfully through a short animated movie .in past and even in present film makers are making religious movies so that kids become aware of the bases of their religion for example The Lion of Judah- movie review- This Christian movie is centered around a group of animals that live in the stable where Jesus was born. These animals were present when Jesus was born and meet Him (the King) and the movie is set 33 years later around the time when Jesus will die on the Cross .even Indian cinema has made movies like Hanuman.

16 | P a g e

17 | P a g e