Narrative Film Screening 1

Today I watched the short film 'Bobs Birthday'. It is a 2D animation looking at the life of a Dentist called Bob who questions his lifestyle and whether or not he should have an affair with the dental nurse. He doesn't but then his wife throws him a surprise party, inviting friends around. Bob arrives home and talks badly about each guest, not knowing they are there, waiting to jump up. The animation ends where all of the guests are left in the house and Bob and his wife go out for a meal.

The scenes are very good in showing what the characters are focusing on meaning we can insinuate what they are thinking. This just goes to show that words are not necessarily needed to communicate with the audience within an animation.

Additionally today, we watched an animation called 'Mary and Max'. This is a stop-motion animation which focuses on the relationship between an 8 year old girl called Mary who lives in Australia and her Pen Pal Max who is a 44 year old man with Asperger's syndrome living in New York. This film tells an emotional tale, as Mary and Max both seek friendship which they find in each other. The colour scheme throughout this film is key to showing the mood of the characters. It starts off with very dull, brown colours as shown below:

However as the story continues, more colour is brought into each of the characters lives:

Mary and Max never have the chance to meet and experience a few bumps in their relationship along the way, but when Mary finally goes to meet Max, she is too late. She finds Max dead on his couch staring up at the ceiling. When she looks up though, she finds that Max truly valued their friendship as he spent his dying moments staring at the years worth of letters Mary had sent him, which he had stuck onto his ceiling.