Chapter 9: ANIMATION AND EXPERIMENTAL MEDIA - Challenging Form

animation

the use of cinema technology to give the illusion of movement to successive drawings, paintings, figures, or computer-generated images

experimental media/films (aka avant-garde films)

media (including noncommercial, often non-narrative films, analog and digital video, installations, and computer-based media) that use elements of form and structure for aesthetic expression

video art

created by artists using the new format of video beginning in the late 1960s for installations and gallery exhibitions

new media

technologies including the internet, video games, mobile media, and virtual and augmented reality

modernity

the term designating the period of history from the end of the medieval era to the present as well as the period’s attitude of confidence in progress and science centered on the human capacity to shape history

absolute film

animated experiments in abstraction created by Dada artists Hans Richter and Viking Eggelings in Germany in the 1920s

live-action movies

film using photographic images

anime

Japanese animation

underground film

nonmainstream film associated particularly with the experimental film culture of 1960s and 1970s New York and San Francisco

structural film

an experimental film movement that emerged in North America in the 1960s in which films were organized around formal principles

Third Cinema

a term coined in the late 1960s in Latin America to echo the phrase and concept “Third World” that opposed commercial and auteurist cinemas with a political, populist aesthetic and united films from a number of countries and contexts

found footage

material shot for other purposes and turned to documentary or poetic use

machinima

computer-based work which modifies videogame engines to create computer animation

expanded cinema

term coined by Gene Youngblood in 1970 for installation or performance-based experimental film practices

augmented reality (AR)

environments that combine design elements with a live view of the space with which the user is interacting

traditional animation

images are hand drawn or painted and photographed in sequence onto single frames of film using an animation camera

cels

transparent sheets of celluloid that the components of the image are often produced on

2-D animation

only the moving elements of characters and props need to be changed every frame

multiplane camera

a camera used to move different layers of the image past the camera at different speeds

stop-motion photography

records figures in different positions in separate frames creating the illusion of motion when projected

claymation

a form of stop-motion photography popular in mid-twentieth century cartoons that accomplishes the effect of movement with clary or plasticine figures

pixilation

employs stop-motion photography to transform the movement of human figures into rapid, jerky gestures

computer animation

the process of digitally generating moving images

3-D animation

characters and objects are modeled in three dimensions, and animators move features, limbs, and props through keyframes

keyframes

frames that mark the important points and transitions between movements

photorealism

the reproduction in animation of the details obtained in photography

rotoscoping

an animation technique using recorded real figures and action as a basis for painting individual frames

documentary animation

tells true stories using animation images to emphasize subjective states or to avoid sensationalizing the subject matter

surrealist cinema

an expressive form which manipulated time, space, and material objects according to a dreamlike logic

counter cinema

films made in opposition to mainstream cinema, especially in the 1960s and 1970s