Last night i watched Fritz the Cat, it is an animated movie about a 70’s cool cat in the bustling city of New York.
Back then it probably cost a lot to make cartoons, and for establishing shots they used drawings instead of a real pan of a cartoon city (Fig. 1). It surprised me because I’m used to seeing things change when the camera moves, probably because real things are 3 dimensional and it looks different overtime. But now I realised Cartoons do that all the time. Still images in the backdrop of moving cartoons are normal in anime, its to save money for fighting scenes like in Dragon Ball (Fig. 2).

(Fig. 1) This is Washington square and after a pan, the ‘camera’ zooms in and transitions to an open space scene with people.

(Fig. 2) behind Goku and Cell the colours are slightly faded because they don’t move. It’s hard to tell on this image, but the darker lines are the only ones to move in any scene. usually the lips or the limbs, sometimes the yellow hair.

I think of times when ‘real’ movies/series use these gimmicks, its a trick as old as time.But my favourite example would be How I Met Your Mother for using this trick the most. As we all know the TV series uses narration to guide the story along. The voice of Ted Mosby 30 years ahead telling his kids (Viewers) of how he met their mother. Like any father they would have momentarily pauses to fill you in and give context to us before proceeding with the stories. They would regularly freeze frame for Future Ted (Bob Saget) to explain. It also works to cut time, some take their time with tedious processes, but by having a narrator and stills we split the time and ‘GET ON WITH IT!'(Fig. 3).

(Fig. 3) stills like these are used before seeing Neil Patrick Harris falls down.

So Maybe I could use these two things; narration and Stills transitioning to the scene. I only mention narration because I watched Sans soleil (Sunless) for Film history and the only guide was the lady who just kept on reading letters to us going through random clips of the world. So it sort of inspired me…..along with the director of 12 monkeys Terry Gilliam.

Transitions from black and white still to faded tungsten flashbacks are the best. I’m Sure theres a name for these sorts of techniques. But these are some techniques I might want to use for my final project.