Media Research and context of Autism my chosen speciality and subject matter for my final major project.

What messages about Autism are you trying to convey in your film?

Back when I was in school people misunderstood me as they thought that my ‘odd’ behaviours were an attempt at getting attention.

I was not wanting attention more like upset and wanting other people to go away and leave me alone, even the teachers thought I was being a naughty kid.

So growing up at school wasn’t a lot of fun so what I wanted to achieve by doing this film is:

To explain what Autism actually is and for people to better understand as to why someone on the spectrum may behave in a different way and may need to be supported differently than a Neurotypical person.

Speaking to people like Gemma, and other research I have noticed that this misunderstanding still continues even after leaving school.

Even at the age of 20 I still encounter some staff that don t fully understand me.

Although my film does take some creative liberties, it is in essence autobiographical about my life as an individual on the Autistic spectrum so I hope this representation of my story and experiences will make people think before judging the next time they meet or are with someone with additional needs but especially Autism.

What research into how Autism is for other people and about Autism in general have you done?

Of course I know that this is different and unique for each person on the spectrum so I appreciate I will not be able to represent every Autistic person with one film and would not want to as Autism is a very personal thing and affects each Autistic person in an individual way.

But something I have encountered personally and through my research is that Autistic Individuals are often a target of bullying.

I hope that with my film I can raise awareness that this is an issue and an issue that lots of people on the Spectrum can relate to.

A common theme of videos by Autistic Individuals I have watched as part of my research and interest is that of Misunderstandings and feeling constantly misunderstood.

An example of this feeling of being misunderstood would be’ How to be Autistic’ by Charlotte Amelia Poe who won the Autism Art Prize with her video.

It is visually simplistic and basic with a girl on her bed narrating her thoughts but it is the narration which makes the video complex and at times rather hard to listen to as she describes her inner most thoughts and experiences.

But though it makes for hard listening it is an essential watch to at least try and take her perspective and acknowledge the difficulties and misunderstandings.

I would like to take from this, that my video needs to be impactful in it s message of talking about difficult to listen to topics.

For me personally though it s necessary to be impactful and include the negative emotions, I feel I need to balance that with a positive ending which leaves with a feeling of hope.

What other Films have influenced how you would like your Project to look?

One of my personal favourite animated films from the last decade is Mary and Max by Adam Elliot.

There is a particular scene which caught my interest and I would like to replicate in some way in my film.

It is where Max is reading a letter from Mary where she is talking about love and asking his advice and as poor old Max has not had much luck with love and has little understanding about relationships himself, the letter makes him extremely stressed.

The way the animators convey this message and Max s feelings is to use extreme close ups on his face so the viewer feels as uncomfortable as Max does.

The tension builds through the music and overdramatises to reflect the overload going on inside Max s head. There is a sequence in my own film where I want my own main character to be just as equally stressed out, it isn’t an easy task trying to show the thought process of an individual as to what exactly is their thought process in there head, it’s especially even harder trying to show the thought process of an autistic person, as every autistic person is different so there isn’t no set standards on writing on an autistic character, but for my stressful scene what I will be doing is establishing as to little quirks that stresses out my autistic character and having them build up ever so more from the duration of the video, establishing this will help into giving people an insight as to what problems the character deals with, so that the audience are on his side, and by doing what Mary and Max did angling the cameras and directing the sequence to be uncomfortable to watch with the build-up of the music structuring it like so will help the audience to follow as to what the main character is thinking of in his head

The documentary ‘life’s animated’ is about a boy called Owen with autism. This boy struggles to connect with his family until his they discover he likes Disney films. They use the Disney films to connect with Owen and help him to understand real life situations.

In the film, when Owen’s parents talk about a past event, they illustrate it using a past animation. I watched the documentary several times before realising the symbolism that anything relating to Disney films contains colour.

For example, in one scene Owen’s dad attempts to ask Owen about his problems. The dad uses an ‘Iago’ puppet parrot from Aladdin to try and communicate with Owen. Owen confines his problems in Iago, in a way that he wouldn’t have been able to with his dad. The technique of having the coloured puppet against a grey and white background shows how much the Disney films brighten up Owen’s life.

A later scene in the documentary shows that Owen thought of himself as a sidekick of the Disney characters. As a child Owen begin to write a story of himself as a secondary character, alongside Disney sidekicks. In the documentary, we have a scene of Owen re-enacting a scene he wrote as a child through animation. The animation starts off with Owen waking up to a flash of lightning, originally uncertain of what’s happening. The mysterious nature of the scene is portrayed by using cold blue colours inside a darkly lit room. When Owen runs down the stairs to try and escape the darkness, the background becomes unfocussed and warped, with Owen emerging beside a wood. The unfocussed background illustrates how a autistic person, when stressed can struggle to recall a past event. This shows that when put under pressure an autistic person will not always be able to construct their thought process.

However, after initially entering an unsettled environment, we get a sense that things are about to get better by the use of a lighter blue colour. This is followed by optimistic music and a bright light following Owen like a firefly. The yellow flashlight follows Owen, before a white flash of light that transports Owen to a forest. The forest is light and warm to represent safety. He’s reunited with Disney’s characters Iago, the parrot and Sebastien, the crab to lead him to a safe place in the forest represented by a camp fire party. What I will take away from this is use of colour, greyness to reflect the real world, and bright colours to represent safety and comfort.

I intend to use this in my final project. I will do this by having a young boy around school in a colourless environment in order to show a sense of not belonging. I will contrast this by having brighter colours when the boy has a moment of inspiration or travels into a place of safety.

A video by the National Autistic Society illustrates how stressful it can be for individuals with autism travelling into a busy area. The video is called ‘can you make it to the end?’ and it’s about a boy and his mum walking through a shopping centre. The boy experiences sensory overload. This means they become stressed due to too much sensory processing. They way they represent this is by having the video shot from the point of view of the young boy. They over-dramatise what he sees such as bags rustling, coins dropping, the noise of an alarm or a mop. Every time this happens the video zooms in to focus on the object and we hear a large noise. This is intended to inform the viewer of the difficulties in sensory overload that an autistic person experiences.

I will use methods such as close-up shots and the heightening of smaller noises to give an uncomfortable feel to the video. In conclusion, by using examples of how an autistic character is portrayed in film, I have a better knowledge of how to execute a scene for my final film.

How to be Autistic

By Charlotte Amelia

Adam Elliot

2003

2009

Mary and Max

Panic Attacks Seen

Life's Animated 2016

Can you make it to the end?

By the National Autistic Society

2-D Animation

Media Research and context of Autism my chosen speciality and subject matter for my final major project.

Lynda.com

Flash Program

The type of technique of animation I’ll be using to create this upcoming short film is 2D animation and flash animation. 2D animation is essentially animation that uses hand drawn

pictures by resketching the same picture again and again but changes the poses slightly on each picture, but once combined together creates of movement and alongside stop motion is probably amongst the oldest animation techniques, but flash animation is relatively new as it is exactly the same as 2D animation but all the frames are created on a computer and often times does reuse the same pictures over and over again as a cost effective technique.

Typically, when it comes to filming, if you film one second of film, that one second is made up of about 24 images called frames. The principles are still the same in animation, you have to make about 24 separate images to create one second of animation. So it can be quite labour intensive to create that many frames. So back in the early days of 2D animation, when the Walt Disney animation created their first feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, to make the job much less intense to work on they animated each second in 12 frames instead of 24. But as the Walt Disney company built over time, Walt Disney and his 9 men who worked at the very start of the corporation began documenting the best tricks and tips on how to animate as a guide to newcomers to the studio, they did an intense amount of research on looking at live action footage, slowing it down to fully see the physics and they eventually realised to truly convey a smooth motion to the animation that the animation frames would have to be up 24 frames per second instead of 12.

This higher frame rate was greatly beneficial for creating much smoother motion within the frame and made the animation look far more realistic, but the rival competitor Warner Brothers, with their Looney Tunes cartoons, they were facing some tight constraints on keeping the animation budget low, so what they did since they weren’t conveying any kind of realistic motion to the animation, as the cartoons they were making were slightly more exaggerated, they were animating on twos. What that means is instead of creating 24 original pictures in one second, they would use the same picture for 2 frames, so that way they didn’t have to resketch the same picture as often. While this small detail within the animation wouldn’t be as noticeable to the general public, it looked as good at the quality of the Warner Brothers cartoon. Eventually other companies that didn’t have the same animation division as the Walt Disney Production team, borrowed some of their techniques by animation on twos and animation per 12 frames. So over time in the animation industry, animating on twos has always been seen as the cheaper and quicker option.

So upon thinking about this philosophy of 12 and 24 frames, I decided when I went to do my test animation for the piece, I would animate on 12s frames per second but then actually animate on 1s, so each picture would be unique from each other. Doing my test animation I decided to follow the same animation technique that was shown in a Scribble Kibble cartoon tutorial on how to make a bouncy animation. The technique featured on having the animation model bouncing by having any component of the body parts within five frames bouncing, with the first two frames instantly jumping down to the furthest position that it can jump down to with the second frame with object being slightly squashed outwards and then the final three frames would be the object returning back to its original position.

By the having the first two frames being really quick down to the end position, using those remaining frames going back up to the original position makes the animation itself look snappy. I decided I would use that as an easy transition for my animated characters to change positions. So for example if the first scene where the first character is looking down, if he needed to look straight up, I would do the same bouncy snap animation with the whole body with the final image of him looking up, but between the transition I would add in a mid -way shot where his head is looking straight forward that would last for perhaps two frames before transferring to the final frame where he is looking straight up.

Snow White and Seven Dwarfs

Script Writing

Draft One

Script Writing

Draft One

Research