Sunday, April 28, 2013

Exploring Film Techniques - Stephen Mason


I was really a fan of this class, considering that it was a good break from our established norm of watching full length movies and discussing their importance in regards to religion. While I enjoyed all of the short clips that we watched, the movie that stood out to me the most was the short film Bunny. In the story, an elderly female rabbit is baking a cake and is being bothered by a moth that keeps flying around in her kitchen. After finally killing the moth, it falls into the cake batter where she mixes it up, puts it in a cake pan, and throws it in the oven. After waking up from a nap, the bunny goes to the kitchen to find the oven glowing. At this point she crawls inside the oven and is met by many moths all going towards a great white light. Having grown moth wings herself, she follows them towards the light.
The oven in this short story acts as a portal to the afterlife, through which the female bunny can be reunited with her deceased husband. One of the things that struck me in this film that we watched was the significance that animation can have on the story telling process. Like we briefly discussed in class, all elements of an animated movie are purposefully included by the animator in order to tell the story. Because of the choice to animate this story we can experience fantastical things, such as a human sized bunny that crawls into an oven that opens up into a portal through which the afterlife can be reached. The animators should also be commended for the emotions that they were able to capture, specifically on the female bunny, which really helped to connect the feelings of the character to that of the audience. 

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