Music in Short Films

Growing up I had numerous influences of music in my life. From playing the saxophone from 4th-12th grade, to listening to my classically trained sister sing in concert. Music has always been prevalent and I have found that melodies are what drives my mind. For the life me I couldn't remember lyrics without studying a printed piece of sheet music. But the way music progressed was something I could always follow and even predict.

I've always wanted a good musical accompaniment with any video work I've done. For the video below I had found a song I enjoyed the melody to and from there all I needed was something to put on screen. With a little help from a friend, I was able to make one of my favorite pieces of work.

Air from Skyler Bocciolatt on Vimeo.

Using both the hits of the choreography and the music I had a blast editing and the possibilties of which direction  I took the short were endless. While this was just a small project I shot on a whim. I applied the same idea of music being a character in the film with my Junior level film "Before Your Eyes." 

"Before Your Eyes" follows a young man who is given the opportunity to look back on his life. Drawing upon the strong bond that can exist between father and son, this story looks at the actions we make when pushed to our greatest limits. Throughout the film there are only two scenes with written dialogue. Music was able to fill this space and help evoke any emotion from the film that typically would be exposed through dialogue. 

Last night I also began to watch "Walt Disney's Animations Studios Short Films Collection." Each short animation was introduced with interviews of the creators of the short. They talked about how music inspired them and that for a specific short "Lorenzo" they searched hundreds of tango scenes just to find a song to use, and in the end it was the first one they had listened to. The trailer can be scene below and all of the shorts are available on Netflix.

It was so interesting to me that the creators were able to make a story out of music they found. Even if there aren't lyrics the melody and progression of any song is a story. For me, I want to continue to find these stories and provide a moving image for as many as I can. The ways music and film complement each other is like no other thing in this world. These mediums are what people turn to to escape there problems and worries; they are necessary for society to function and I want to create them for the rest of my life.

Hands Down BIG HERO SIX is one of the Greatest Disney Movies of the year !

Big Hero 6 is an action packed comedy about "boy- genius" Hiro Hamada, who develops a strong relationship with Baymax--- a plus sized inflatable health-care robot made by his brother. This was an excellent movie. Walt Disney Animation Studios, presents the team behind "Frozen" and "Wreck- It- Ralph", and now "Big Hero 6". (Great job team you've done it again!  #Favorites! )

In recent Disney Animations I feel that the plot is more developed and brings a lot of stimulation to the viewers. I first noticed this with Frozen. Instead of the bad guy being introduces to the view as soon as the movie starts we have to figure out towards the end who really is the villain. In Frozen's case it was Prince Hans.. Which I didn't really see coming.

In Big Hero 6, it was even more complex... First, you have Hiro and brother Tadashi both geniuses. Then the relationship between the Professor Callaghan and Alistar Krei. The relationship between Hiro and Baymax. Then we come to find out Yokai's connection to Hiro and Alistar. All very complex and a bit confusing I might add, but extremely complex. I enjoy movies that do not provide me with enough information to know what is going to happen next.

Overall, this movie was a touching movie. As a young adult I never get tired of watching anything cartoon, disney, or animation related. Disney just keeps getting better from animation, to story complexity, and for filling the audiences enjoyment.

Hollywood and the Animated Movie

Once upon a time, Disney Animation was the only studio making blockbuster animated features. Today, animation is perhaps the most crowded of all the film genres in Hollywood. Disney Animation never used to have any competition, but in recent years Disney has been overshadowed by it's sister studio Pixar and other studios like Dreamworks Animation.

With so many studios producing so many animated films which studios and films are able to stand out, if any?

To start, we will start with the once dominant Disney Animation. Up until very recently Disney has been struggling. Ever since the end of the "Disney Renaissance" in the 90s, which includes the studio's films from The Little Mermaid (1989) to Tarzan (1999), Disney has struggled to maintain it's top dog status in the animation industry. For a while, that spot was taken by Pixar. However in the last few years it appears that DisneyAnimation may be making a come back.

Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, and Big Hero 6. Have all been well received by both fans and critics alike. Many are calling this new era of Disney films the "Disney Revival" or simply a return to form for the studio. I would have to agree with this sentiment. The Disney films between the Renaissance period and these more recent films, such as Chicken Little and Home on the Range, seem to be missing the classic feel that most of it's successful films have. They were focused more of flash and flare than on the emotional stories, which the studio is famous for. These newest films are a return to form in that the stories one again focus on the emotional relationships between friends and family, and I think this has made all the difference in getting audiences to connect with them. If Disney continues on this streak they may very well have another Renaissance on their hands. I think that Disney, although it will probably never be as dominant as it once was, is still one of the few studios that stands apart from others in terms of it's style, storytelling, and over all quality animation.

Pixar, which has long been a fan favorite studio for many years,  seems to have stumbled a bit in recent years. Ever since it's first film Toy Story, Pixar had been consistent in producing quality, original animation. However, recently the studio has been releasing more squeals than new content, and the sequels have been lack luster at best. There is the legend that the founders of Pixar came up with all the ideas of all their films in one day and have been using only these ideas (aside from the squeals) over all these years. Is it possible that the studio is finally running out of those ideas?

I don't think anyone will disagree with me when I say that Cars 2 was absolutely awful. Monsters University wasn't quite as disastrous, but it wasn't nearly as impressive as the first installment. Brave, while beautifully animated received mix reviews. Pixar's upcoming film Inside Out is an new franchisee for the studio. It will be interesting to see if they can redeem themselves and do their once flawless filmography justice with this new content.

Moving on to a Non-Disney studio, we have DreamWorks Animation. DreamWorks is arguably, and easily so, the only other animation studio currently that has as much brand recognition as Disney Animation and Pixar. DreamWorks has been extremely successful in recent years, with many popular franchisees including Shrek, How to Train York Dragon, and Madagascar.

Most of DreamWorks recent films have been well received by critics. Mr. Peabody & Sherman, received generally good reviews, while How to Train Your Dragon 2 received excellent ones. The studio has two upcoming films. Penguins of Madagascar is another installment in their already popular Madagascar franchisee, while Home is a completely new film. Home was originally supposed to be released this month, but has been pushed back until March, switching it with Penguins of Madagascar. It begs the question of whether or not there are problems with the production and if Home will be up to par with recent studio standards. 

 But these three studios aren't the only players in the field.

         

Illumination Entertainment has had huge success with their Despicable Me franchisee, while Blue Sky studios has long been successful with their Ice Age films and now their Rio franchisee. Animal Logic has had recent success with The Lego Movie, and is also known for the popular Happy Feet films. Sony Animation is probably at the back of the pack, their only big success has been the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs movies, but they have several films in the works now- including the cringe worthy Angry Birds.

With so many different contenders it's a wonder that the animation industry doesn't cannibalize itself. It may very well be on the way to doing so. As a fan of animation I can't help wishing that more of the studios would focus less on producing so many films, and instead focus on making the ones they do produce as high quality as possible. Unlikely that will happen, as this is Hollywood we are talking about, but come on a girl can dream.

Big Hero 6: Review

Hey guys, so guess what I saw last night. It's okay take your time to think about it. Did you guess Big Hero 6? Then you guessed right! I figured I would do a little review of this film for my post today!

Quick summary of the film for those you who don't know what it's about, much like me going in. The film revolves around Hiro, a young boy genius who teams up with Baymax, a robot designed for health care services (kind of like a nurse), and a group of college age teens- to fight an evil villain by using the advanced tech they design themselves. It's also based on a Marvel Comic book, which is a plus for me because you know how much of a superhero/comic book nerd I am.

I didn't really know what to expect going into this film. I had seen a few trailers for it and heard the song Fall Out Boy made for the soundtrack, but that was about the extent of my pre-knowledge going into the theater. This is also Disney's first Marvel film outside their extremely successful live action series the "Marvel Cinematic Universe" since they acquired the rights back in 2009, so I was interested to see how a different one of their studios handled the material.

I was actually extremely surprised and impressed by the film. For what sounds mostly like it's going to by a fun and goofy adventure film for kids, the backbone of Big Hero 6 is surprising the emotional relationships between Hiro and his brother, Tadashi, as well as between Hiro and Baymax. I found some of the best moments of the film to be those scenes in which these characters interacted and bonded.

Another thing I really enjoyed about this film was the setting and world building. The film takes place in the fictional "San Fransokyo", which is obviously a hybrid of San Francisco and Tokyo. The setting adds to the East meets West ideas of the film, and is brilliantly realized. All the shots of the city are interesting and intricate, and one of my favorite things about watching the film was discovering what was done to blend the cities together.

The only critique I can really give this film is minor, but it must still be said. I felt as the the secondary characters, Hiro and Baymax's friends and teammates, did not get as much time to shine as they deserved. That's not to say each of the characters were not unique or interesting, but we don't really get the chance to learn much about them other than their personalities. I know this is because the filmmakers wanted to spend more time with Hiro, Baymax, and Tadashi as they are the center of the film and it's message, but it would have been nice to learn at least a little more about some of the other characters who make up the Big Hero 6 team.

That being said, this was really fun to watch and overall a pretty great film. It's a fun film to go see with a bunch of friends. If you are a fan of Disney or animated films in general I would definitely recommend you go see it. I would give it a solid 4 out of 5 stars.

Disney's New Short "Get A Horse!"

Having seen Disney's Frozen three times in the week and a half that it has been out in theaters, I am very clearly obsessed. But instead of raving over how many boundaries it broke in the Disney sphere, I'm focusing this post on the short that proceeds: Get a Horse! As I mentioned in my last post, although Frozen is the first Disney film directed by a women, Jennifer Lee is one of two directors. The second director is a man. However, Lauren MacMullan of Get a Horse! is the first woman to single handedly direct a Disney production. Now let's be honest, Disney short films have a strong reputation of being wonderful. And in my opinion, MacMullan held her own.

My favorite part of Get a Horse! is that it reminded me a lot of one of my favorite movies, The Purple Rose of Cairo. In the Woody Allen romantic comedy set in the 30s, Jeff Daniels plays a movie character that walks out of the screen and into the real world. Similar to this concept, Micky Mouse breaks through the movie screen in Get a Horse! and plays between the two worlds.

Both pieces of work use color to differentiate between the worlds. I remember loving the idea of a character from a black and white film emerging into the colorful real world when I first saw the movie. Get a Horse! also did a great job contrasting the black and white screen with the colorful real world as a means to tell the story. MacMullan took it even further though when Mickey breaks through the screen and into the real world. He actually breaks the screen, ripping a hole in it. And through that hole, we can see the world inside the screen in color. I thought the idea was a very clever add on to the use of color in The Purple Rose of Cairo.

Six More Days Until 'Frozen'

On Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving, the newest Disney animated film Frozen will be released in theaters. It will be the third movie I see in theaters this break, after Catching Fire (which was amazing) and Thor: The Dark World (which I hope will be amazing). But still, I have decided it is worth becoming broke over. And here is why.

For the first time in history, a woman is directing an animated Disney feature. Screenwriter Jennifer Lee is doing the honors and I must say, it sounds like she did a killer job. Animation has a male-dominated industry for decades and this is the start of an era of female creative leadership. However, animation does not differ that much from the overall Hollywood breakdown of directors by gender.

One of the major perks of a female director is the perspective that she can add to the story and animation. Frozen is a Disney rendition of Hans Christian Andersen's fairytale The Snow Queen. The story revolves around the struggles between two princess sister, Anna (voiced by Kristen Bell) and Elsa (voice by Idena Menzel) in a fictional Nordic kingdom. With Lee's perspective impacting the sister conflict, reviews claim the sister relationship is relatable. Lee's goal was to humanize Anna and I'm excited to find out how she tried to do it.

Why the "Frozen" Trailer Means Nothing

I'm about as big a Disney fan as you can get. My first year of college, I brought my entire Disney VHS collection for my viewing pleasure. I've read books analyzing Disney's current business model, articles exposing Disney as an evil corporation (which I don't agree with), and biographies on Walt himself. Whether you, like Disney or hate Disney, I feel like they've earned some respect at the very least. 

In recent years, I've become especially intrigued by Disney Animation Studios. After Disney's decision to dissolve their hand-drawn animation studios, and then subsequent re-instate them under the tutelage of John Lasseter and Bob Iger, Disney has produced some good  movies. The Princess and the Frog was at least commendable, and a solid return for the studio. They followed up with "Tangled", a computer generated film which was critically acclaimed and became the 19th highest grossing animated film. That was followed by another computer generated film, "Wreck it Ralph", which was indisputably enjoyable. These three films, perhaps specifically "Wreck it Ralph" and "Tangled", were solid additions to the classic Disney canon, and a great shift from the films that come out during the bulk of the first decade of the 21st century. 

I think Disney is headed in the right direction with their animation, especially given the apparent decrease in Pixar quality (even though Brave and Monsters University had their own merits) (Also, Cars 2 should be destroyed). That's why I've been so excited for full trailer for Disney's new animated film, "Frozen". The trailer was released on Thursday, and to be totally fair, I was underwhelmed. 

The trailer although mildly engaging, seemed juvenile at times, relying largely on comedic relief from the Olaf character, the snowman. Following the "Wreck it Ralph" trailer, which is spectacular, this trailer seemed very two dimensional, and somewhat devoid of any emotional depth, save the blatant emotional hand-holding when Olaf says, "Some people are worth melting for". 

To be fair though, I remember having a similar feeling when the "Tangled" trailer was released. That seemed to ignore a large amount of the depth and charm that the movie had, exchanged for cheap laughs. 

These reductive tendencies in Disney trailers is perhaps a ploy to engage their main demographic, children. Most of the things that a person like myself would find exciting about the movie may go over the heads of their target demographic. The trailer, perhaps, is not indicative of the true movie quality. 

The point is, even though this trailer was "eh" at very best, I'm still excited for the film, given the recent success of Disney Animation. 

Monsters University

Not many sequels can live up to their predecessors, but Monsters University is one that'll surprise you. From start to finish, you'll leave as satisfied and as eager as you came in, especially if you had been a fan of Monsters Inc.  But let's be honest.

It was a huge risk on Pixar's part. 

See, the thing about sequels and especially  prequels is that they have to give so much more for an audience to enjoy as much as the first. Sure, you don't have to compare both versions but to identify a sequel in any form as nothing but what it is, is denying the history and the hard work that was put into making the first.  What prequels usually fail at, is giving us more to want from the worlds we already know. We've already seen the characters' fates and we already know where their roads will lead them. They (Pixar) had to give us more. They had to give us a reason to sit down and re-introduce ourselves to a world we've already become quite fond of.

And they succeeded. 

What started out as a narrative of the underdog soon turned into a relatable experience for me and my friends. Sure, they're monsters but they're not so different from humans. They get excited, they study, they take exams just like us. And they deal with a lot of the aspects that we struggle with in our own world. 

Mike returns to us in the form of a cute little bright-eyed ball of overenthusiastic joy. He's small, he's adorable, and he's set up to fail right from the beginning. And that's hard. Because we, as the audience, know what Mike will grow up to do. And that's not being a scarer. 

But that's such an compelling part of the movie. Because it makes us focus not on what'll happen later, but what will happen in this movie. It's almost relaxing, in a strange and unusual way. We know he's not gonna be a scarer, but we also know he will grow up to do a lot of great things. So we avert our focus instead to what is being shown to us in the now. With that little act of ingenuity, Pixar gives us not just a prequel but a movie that diverges into its own territory. Of course we can never not compare it to its iconic past (or rather future) but we can now not say it will not deliver on what is expected.

And boy does it deliver. I never thought I'd ever say that I could relate to a giant, blue-furred monster, but I can. Because finally someone tackles a movie in a setting so commonly used, in such a creative way. Mike gives me a character that I could see in myself and others: someone who just really wants to succeed and be good at what he wants to do. He's a freshmen, a new kid, an underdog. And maybe it doesn't work out for him, but he's always been one of my favorite character's in terms of his endearingly positive outlook on life. If anything, I'd be happy to be a Mike. A Mike Wazowski.

Then there's Sulley. I can not get over how in love I am with what they did with his character. From lovable oaf with great intentions, this pre-Inc. jock is anything but. He's rude, he's full of himself, and he quite honestly a jerk. But the thing I love about that, is I know who he turns out to be. I see him becoming that guy in this movie but he never quite reaches that point on-screen.

And that's such a powerful message. That people can change. Given the right perspective and the right friends, people can change. They can change for the good, and they can change for the bad (Randall). It all comes down to what and who you allow to get to yourself. Everybody is never the same person they were the day before and this movie hits it on the mark.

Speaking of which, it does a fantastic job of dealing with very real issues: of not fitting in, of finding friends when you feel invisible or ignored, of knowing that while hard work might not get you what you want it'll still get you to the place you want to be. It even, to quite frankly point out the obvious, deals with the issue of being scared and down right terrified in unexpected situations.

Mike and Sulley definitely do not start out as friends. But seeing that change is something that struck a very deep chord with me. All the characters did. From Squishy to Art, I felt like every character had something I could relate to (or something that I at least could sympathize with).

The most powerful moment in the entire film, for me, was Sulley and Mike's heart-to-heart in the human world. Because for the first time ever we hear Sulley admit he's scared. Terrified, even. And never before have I agreed because life is scary. It's a hard thing to face, but we can get through it. If we are like Mike, someone who knows whole-heartedly how mean the world can be but still chooses to look at all the positives, we can do it. He doesn't give up and he doesn't stop trying. He doesn't stop believing that somewhere out there, there is a place for him. And maybe it's not what he expected but that's okay too. As long as you know who you are and you embrace that.

You have to give it up, once again, to everybody who worked behind this momentous project. Right from the hairs of Sulley's arm to the sticky suction cups of Don Carlton, the animation team's work is something not to be overlooked. Even the camera work, the lighting, the sound, every single aspect that brought this film to life is phenomenal. You can actually believe you're attending class, sitting out in the quad, being chased by the librarian, or being intimidated by the ominous echo of Dean Hardscrabble as her many legs scuttle across the stone floor.

When the mood is light-hearted, so is the music and the lighting. When we need to feel intense or dis-passioned, it follows that path. It's smooth and flowing, and mixes into just the right combination of subtle influential power.

Even the comedy of the movie is as diverse and open as anyone could imagine. There's a joke for everyone. Kids can laugh, teenagers can laugh, adults can laugh, even the elderly will get a kick out of this film's wacky antics. It's such a refreshing breath of fresh (nostalgic) air, that'll make you want to see it again and maybe even throwback to its original.

Monsters University is nostalgic, heart-warming, heart-breaking, inspiring, and an all-around story of friendship and finding out who you are in a world that's full of so many unexpected opportunities. 

The animation used in Tangled v. Toy Story 3

So I watched Tangled for like the third time on thursday night and the animation still blows my mind. I found it shocking that it wasn't Pixar that created it but Walt Disney Animation Studios. The next day I watched Toy Story 3, which was created by Pixar Disney animation and it is obvious that the animation was different. I was wondering how the studio that produces the film effects how it is animated? Do they use totally different programs even though both are affiliated with Disney?