DARK FEMININE COMEDY AND THE APPEAL OF CONTRAST IN THE AUDIO-VISUAL:
Most of us are taught in school english classes that juxtaposition describes the process of placing two things with contrasting meanings together. Their closeness creates a comparison or even a new meaning. In film school we learn about Soviet Montage Theory and the Kuleshov effect: a cognitive event discovered by Russian film-maker Lev Kuleshov in the early 1900s, whereby a viewer derives more meaning from the sequential editing of two shots as opposed to one.
The overall point here, is that it is widely understood in art and film that the act of combining two ideas or images with different meanings can create a more profound and nuanced meaning in and of itself. I've been thinking about this idea in relation to a selection of films that I like to call dark-feminine comedy.
These are :
The films in this curation explore a darker side of femininity, from a small-town pageant where contestants keep being murdered by someone deadly-set on securing a crown and sash (Drop Dead Gorgeous), to a failed virgin sacrifice leading to a demonic killer in the form of a popular teenage girl (Jennifer's Body), or a witch so desperate to be adored by men that her spells work a little too well, causing some quite deadly consequences (The Love Witch).
The thematic thread that weaves this curation together is the juxtaposition of hyper-femininity with death, decay, gore and monstrosity. Two ideas seemingly in opposition to each other are aligned causing a new meaning, in this case the films are able to create a nuanced understanding of societal pressures on girls and women to live up to the ideals of femininity: be beautiful, be popular, fit in with the crowd, stay young, be virginous but also sexy, place boyfriends and husbands above anything else, the list of demands go on.
The strange comedy of contrast in these films bring to light the absurdity of pressures placed on girls and women to adhere to societal standards of femininity, and reveal the darkness that can come by upholding these ideals.
Watch the video explanation here ->
EFFECTING FEAR: USING VFX AND ANIMATION TO CREATE EXPERIMENTAL HORROR SHORTS
This collection of short experimental films explores the use of visual effects and animation in order to elicit feelings of fear, horror and discomfort in their viewers, via experimental formats and attention to corporeal experiences.
From traditional drawn animations in Morgan Miller’s There’s Too Many of These Crows and Kitty Faingold’s Body World, to boundary-pushing experiments in digital sculpting in Ian Anderson’s Double Blind No.1 and Matteo Zamagni’s Horror Vacui, these films vary in aesthetic, material and texture. They are however, are drawn together by their creativity and experimental attempts at the horror genre.
On animation’s particular ability to produce the element of caricature, Tim Cawkwell describes, in ‘Beyond The Camera Barrier’, how it is “a good vehicle for the comic and grotesque. People can be given rubber heads and bodies that bend into all shapes; objects can explode and reassemble”. In other words, animation allows for a whole world of possibilities to be opened up; for a whole realm of imaginations to be explored, especially, those which are grotesque, dark and unhuman. This notion, then, applied to the horror genre, makes animation and the use of visual effects particularly powerful in re-creating and re-imagining the nightmares that horrors are founded upon, beyond the constricts of traditional live-action cinematography:
“animation, by its ability to manipulate shapes, patterns, movements or indeed any aspect of the perceptible world, could be a central means of illustrating the 'inner reality' of dreams, visions or the impossible, rather than a peripheral technique best suited to the caricature of the physical world.” (Cawkwell, T.)
“the simulated materiality of digital media allows for an extraordinary amount of play and experimentation, providing opportunities for creative exploration and surprising results that would be impossible in the real world.” (Husbands, L.)
What further draws this selection of short films together, is their experimental use of animation and visual effects for horror. In each film, one is able to identify the central tenets of experimental animation, as defined by Paul Taberham in ‘It is alive if you are: Defining experimental animation’ as “the free exposure of the materials used to make the film, the discernible presence of the artist, the centrality of surface detail and the tendency to evoke ideas rather than explicitly state them”. Each film, in its own way, employs techniques of either animation, visual effect, or both, in ways which draw the viewers’ attention to the surface of the film, through texture and sculpting, subversion and fragmentation of narrative, and disturbing corporeal experiences which leave one aware of their viewing.
With an awareness of how these films make our skin crawl, our palms sweaty, and our chests tighten, we become self-aware of the things that scare us and haunt us, and are pushed to question and examine our own sense of horror and fear.
Horror Vacui (Matteo Zamagni, 2018, 4 mins)
As the Latin title suggests, this film explores the 'fear of empty space' or 'emptiness', through impressive CGI and visual effects which fill the screen, morphing real images of natural and urban landscapes with frantic and aggressive computer-aided designs and digital reconstructions. By merging real images with visual effects and animations, a viewer may be left uncomfortable in their disturbed perception of the familiar spaces presented to them throughout the four minutes.
There’s Too Many of These Crows (Morgan Miller, 2016, 4 mins)
Created with drawn-animation in black and red ink, on flecked paper, ‘There’s Too Many of These Crows’ imagines what would happen if humans went up against a never-ending army of crows, escalating quickly into violence and destruction. Tapping into a primal fear of human-overthrowal, this film explores aggression and escalation of events, posing human destruction as a catalyst. With a jarring soundtrack of squawks and weaponry, and flickering, simplistically sketched visuals, animation here provides a space to explore dark, uncomfortable themes.
Double-Blind No.1 (Ian B. Anderson, Zenon Kohler & Ricky Marks, 2016, 2 mins)
An award-winning collaborative project by VFX artists, using a selection of raw footage of a goat in a scientific test setting and a woman wearing a bikini and a gas mask, that was edited individually by each artist, according to their particular skills and creative techniques. Disbanding with a need for narrative, this film instead creates a foreboding sense of dystopia and digital chaos, perhaps representing a deep-set fear of the digitally-scientifically-technologically advanced and uncontrollable age we find ourselves in.
Nocturne / Nachtstück (Anne Breymann, 2017, 5 mins)
Stop-motion animation, using photography and physical manipulation between shots of highly-detailed sculpted puppets and set pieces, Nocturne shows a group of unearthly woodland creatures who meet at a cut down tree to gamble with something mysterious from inside their bodies, “putting their innermost at stake” (A. Breymann). What this might be, is open to interpretation, but the film certainly uses stop motion animation to explore the fear of ‘losing it all’, enhanced by its ability to portray a deep-rooted human fear through a very unhuman perspective, it’s textually and impressive foley, further creating a sense of unease and tension throughout.
Fortune Faded (Alexander Heringer, 2012, 4 mins)
This tense short, experiments with time, structure and narrative, as a camera moves through a frozen scene and traces a disaster unfolding, creatively weaving timelines together with three-dimensional visual effects. Subverting the conventional flow of narrative and action with its experimental format, creates an uncomfortable, alarming sense of inevitability and allows for the viewer to become more involved in the story-line, piecing events together, greatening its dramatic impact.
Body World (Kitty Faingold, 2017, 7 mins)
In this existentialist horror, a woman realizes that she is figment of someone else’s imagination. Exploring the human fears around derealisation and depersonalisation, the viewer is taken on a journey in and out of a surreal human body landscape, illustrated by saturated, drawn animation, which serves to provide a garish and surrealist landscape beyond the restraints of reality, and the film is able to re-imagine the horror of nightmares and existential dread that can be otherwise difficult to express.
Old Man (Leah Shore, 2012, 6 mins)
Visualising the words of Charles Manson via multi-media animation that employs various techniques such as drawn animation and stop-motion animation as well as digitally edited visual effects, Shore taps into the dark mind of an infamous murderer, and re-interprets his rambling thoughts through frenetic, aggressive sequences. Using animation as a way of expressing ones inner-most darkness, then, serves to illustrate and invite viewers into a horrific mind and world-view which many may struggle to comprehend themselves.
Dead Ahead (Donal O’Keefe, 2016, 2 mins)
Using three-dimensional, digitally sculpted animation, 'Dead Ahead' nods to the world of horror films, with references to classics as Friday the 13th, Jaws and Pet Sematary. Creating game-like visuals, the film subverts traditional narrative perspectives of the genre, by resembling build-your-own universe games, the viewer is perhaps made an active participant, viewing the film from the game-player's perspective. There is a discomfort in this complicity, as the films characters are hit by nearly every horror trope in the book.