Week 3 Day 1& 2 : Bank Monday and Crits

Because of the Easter weekend and the bank holiday the weekly crits changed to the Tuesday. These crits consisted of checking our blog and the research work we had gathered together for our final major projects.

After all of my research work my ideas started to change. I honestly had thought about my first idea so much that I started to not like it at all. The creative week helped me to think of different ideas and take a step back from my project which I really needed to do. I went back to the basics and started to think about HOW to integrate and what you need in order to integrate. For me the major points of integration are communication: language, body language and culture. I decided that I really wanted to focus on these points and also the feelings you have while integrating. I want my animation to send a message to the spectator which is that we all need to integrate however the process of integration can be a frustrating and long process; sometimes it's never ending.

Instead of creating a whole entire story I thought it would be more fun to create a short sequence and keep my animation simple.

During this week I saw two different films: '' Planet 51'' (2009) and Spirited Away (2001) Studio Ghibli as I want to visit their film festival at the British Film Institute next week.

Fig 1 : Planet 51 Collage (2013) Authors Own

This film is based around the theme of integration. The idea that humans are the aliens and that the aliens are good. What I enjoyed the most about this film was the fact that the aliens had their own lives and that we view how they live in a humanized world. They own alien dogs, alien cars and they have their own culture which I found interesting and amusing to discover. It gave me a whole new point of view on our own culture and world. The aliens have their own different types of personalities and what I found intriguing about this inversed situation is the negative view on the humans that the aliens attributed to us. I was fascinated by the inversed idea of this film however I did not like the story. Throughout the film, the interaction between the main alien character and the human, we view a share of culture which links in perfectly with my theme.

Fig 2 : Spirited Away Collage (2014) Authors Own

I had seen this film as a child and so I thought it would be interesting to see it again. I thoroughly enjoyed this film. I found the animation astonishing and I am in awe at the storyline. This film links in with my theme through the way that they have integrated Japanese culture into this animation through the bathhouse and the idea of spirits, also the main character Chihiro has to integrate into this whole new world full of spirits in able to stay alive and save her parents. At the beginning of her forced integration she is miserable, however little by little she discovers new people and learns how to behave like the spirits. She learns their culture in order to survive. Throughout the film she becomes happier. Chihiro becomes stronger and a more rounded character throughout the film development, as of which we could compare to a real life person integrating into a new country.