Even after learning the basics of animation, my favorite animation (3D) is still Final Fantasy VII Advent Children. In fact, learning how animation works makes me appreciate it so much more. The art of every single shot looks tasteful. It’s like putting all of the best choreography, camera work, art, models, and coloring into one movie and having – instead of one – multiple “best parts” of the movie. Usually, I can figure out – in a movie or show – what an artist could do to achieve certain effects, but there are still some things in this movie baffle me.
In particular, there is one fight scene that is one of my favorite animations of all time:
One thing that this clip really shows is how much you can do to add to a normal action scene with camera movement. If you tried to imagine this scene from a distance, it would seem nothing like the final result. Some animations don’t take advantage of the unlimited camera movement in a 3d world.
Another thing that this clip uses is time remapping. To me, related to the original Disney principles, time remapping is like the squash and stretch and exaggeration applied to time. Actually, if you look at a line or graph editor of time, that is precisely what you are doing: bending, squashing, and stretching a line representing time. The time remapping mixed with the smooth camera shots, combined, make a great effect.
One thing that I’m learning more and more as I animate is that it is hard to fully take advantage of the 3d space for cinematography while also maintaining taste. My initial inclination is always to try something crazy, thinking that it will look just like my vision. But it never is, and watching a scene like this makes me really appreciate a few things:
1. The decision of how close and far away shots should be for which parts. It is very easy to miss some of the action and disorient an audience when whipping a camera around in circles and flying around a room. But, the shots are framed in ways that you can tell what is happening as well as get up close shots of parts that are happening. The shots are framed so well, in fact, that almost every 15 seconds, you could go through and take a still frame of the animation and use it as a still picture. (The cinematographer follows the rule of thirds well in most shots and breaks it well in others.)
2. The decision of what movement is appropriate for what shots. There are a number of ways that you can move a camera to get different effects. The camera movement enhances every part of what they are trying to convey to their audience. Fast turns and zooms give the idea that a camera man is having a hard time keeping up with the action. Shaking the camera gives the idea that there is a physical camera shaking because of the power of something hitting the ground or a wall.
3. The cuts. After all is said and done, having five or six cameras swirling around a fight scene, how do you decide when to cut what and where to cut? Some are timed with the beat, and others are timed with an action. The practice of a successful cut in an action sequence is to cut in the middle of an action so the audience is focused on the action and doesn’t notice the camera changing. That is the aim, to change shots without distracting the eye of the audience. They do a phenomenal job with cutting in this scene.
I’d like to say just one more thing about these three things combined in animation. Now that there is more control with cameras in 3d environments, Disney’s principles to exaggerate life in animation can be transferred to a camera for shots to give the same effect. For instance, instead of making a hand bigger for a punch, an artist could use a wide angle lens and get up close to the hand as it passes. This has been done very well in 2d Japanese animations; however, they have to emulate a wide angle or fish-eye lens instead of using a “real” fake fish-eye, like in a 3d program. Another thing, which I mentioned already, is the shake of the camera. The shakiness of the camera mixed with time remapping can make a powerless scene very dramatic and powerful. Last, the scene with the girl landing on the wall, while going into slow motion, is one of my favorite shots. She squashes to the wall, while complying with her realistic body and rig, and there is not a whole lot going on because she is just on the wall in slow motion hardly moving. But then the camera moves back quickly to see the flowers go up in the air in front of the camera. It is almost as if the power of her landing on the wall is not shown through her landing on the wall, but through the camera and the flowers in slow motion and fast camera movements. This prime example of what I am talking about.
