Context of Practice 2: Seminar 1

Seminar 1: Briefing and Visual Analysis Exercise 

During the first seminar of the year we started off by first talking briefly about the programme and everything that we would be doing throughout the course of the year and how we would achieve our goals. We have 4 different seminars this  year which are all based around some of the lectures that we have each week and we then discus them and get set a task, which will probably be an essay.

After discussing the seminar details we then moved onto watching 2 very different animations from the 60s. The first being Jiri Trnka, The Hand from 1965 and the second Duscan Vukotic and Zagreb film, Surogat (Ersatz) from 1961.

Both of these were very strange animations and look at two very different topics. The Hand is an animation based around a puppet living in a dolls house until he is invaded by a hand, who manipulates him and makes him do things for him like create sculptures of hands which he doesn't want to do. It is based around events that happened in the Czech Republic during the 60s about Communism and how freedom was limited; and this is represented in the puppet.

The second one we watched was very different, it is an almost upbeat and happy animation, due to the music and humming in it. It follows a strange looking man who goes to the beach and blows up everything that he needs, like a lilo, umbrella and drinks. It is all quite normal until he blows up a woman and adjusts the size of her until she is perfect, but because he is fat she isn't interested in him but another buff looking man who is on a small island across the sea. She goes off with him instead so the small, fat man pops her with a pin to ensure the more handsome man can't have her. It is quite a dramatic and sad ending as we see him then deflate the beach and blow up a road to get home and a car to travel, only to run over a nail and everything goes pop. 

We were then set a task to write a 500 word essay comparing and contrasting different points in these two animations, mainly looking at: 
- Technology/Production values
- Colour and light
- Context and symbolism
- Historical and contextual factors
- Relationship to the soundtrack
- Function, and fitness for purpose
- Target Audience and how it is communicated with them