Assignment 17: Waking Life reaction

After watching the movie Waking Life, discuss why the people who made it used animation rather than using film of real people. Because this is an assignment, make sure to use proper grammar and spelling (not chat-room style writing). Have several ideas (minimum of 3), back them up with examples from the film.

If you missed the ending and want to watch it at home, the link is here: http://watch-movies.net/movies/waking_life/ Once you are on that page, click the link that says "watch full."

Grading:

4 points total:
3 points: having three main ideas, backed up by examples
1 point: Spelling and grammar. (I recommend using a spell check.)

I really feel the reason the author used animation in the film is because some of the things the people did were like cartoon characters like when the man started to float in the air after he was talking to the man a real person can’t do that. Just like if you were watching a cartoon the author wouldn’t just put real people in the cartoon it just wouldn’t be right. In one part of the movie when the man was in the car and his face jumped from a normal skin tone to a bright red the more he got mad. Also when the man was talking about god and how emotional he could get if he looked in someone’s eyes after a while they turned into clouds. I don’t think a real person could do that.
I really like the animation in the film because it’s like if you really didn’t get what they were talking about, all you really had to look at was the animation and everything will come together. The film also throw me off a little because one moment they will be talking about one thing then jump to something else, but over all the film was great.

In the movie Waking Life, I think that the cartoon like characters brought more of the story out. It's hard to believe but having a cartoon face real life situations but in dream like form; actually grabbed me in the story. The main character met with so many people in his dreams that it became so life-like, though weird also. The writers may have chose to use the cartoons to show a different way of telling their story. It might have made it a lot easier for the writers also. However, overall I liked the movie. It was very indie-weird and very creative.

I think the reason for them using animation is to make the movie be more entertaining , because from my perspective when I see a animation film I kind of enjoy it a little better than a regular film. When the movie is in animation it brings out the creativity side of the film and they probably figure that they can do a whole lot of things with the animation people they can make them float, hang you can do the same thing with real people but it maybe a little easier with animation.

I think they did a great job on the movie and the way they added the animation to the movie.

The way this film was done is amazing! I can’t even imagine how long it took to finish. I was wondering for about the first day if they shot the film with real people then went back and animated them. I found out about the second day that it was played in class that they did film the movie first with real people and then a team went over it.
A reason I think they decided to animate it the way they did is to just simply show what can be done. It is amazing and seems like it would be tremendously time consuming.
Another reason why I think they chose to animate the way they did is because they could exaggerate facial expressions and features on the face. There were a few characters that in real life must have had distinguishing features in which the animator just had to exaggerate to give character.
A last reason of mine is also that they could add unrealistic things to it, like things that wouldn’t happen or wouldn’t be there. For example, one of the guys towards maybe the middle of the movie filled up with water. Also, there was a guy that was talking about how God does powerful things and whenever he moved his hand quickly, there looked as if they were sparking and had lightning coming from them.
In the end, I thought the movie was interesting. The concepts were ones that made you think.

The animation in this movie is way different than any other movie that I have ever seen. Not only is it made with pen tool, but it emphasizes the subject of not only the movie in general, but the tone of the scene.
I think the artists use the pen tool to give the texture of the film a more dreamy sequence. The general topic of the interviews and discussions in the movie so far are mostly about dreams. Using the pen tool gives at a less detailed structure, like how it mainly is in dreams.
A lot of the accents that they put on people are like something that would happen in a dream. When the two men are talking abut god and holy nature, the effects that were added resembled what they were talking about. His hair was constantly flowing like maybe a gods’ would. When he used his hands to describe something, the artists added a spark between his palms to represent the kind of holiness. At the end of the scene, when the two men looked into each others eyes to have a “holy moment”, the turned into clouds. This animation represents the holy aspect of the situation and the god that they both obviously believe in.

In ‘Waking Life’ they had used animation instead of real people. I think they used animation to catch and keep the interest of the audience. The film has a lot of talking, and deep conversations. I’m sure they did it for that reason not to turn people’s attention away. Another reason I think they used animation is, because most of the film was supposedly a dream. They could have used animation to make people do such things that people can’t normally do. Like floating or abnormal expressions. Even the scene where a monkey is giving a demonstration then later eats his script. Making it more unique as well could be another reason. To me I see it as them using animation in this film was more of an experimental indie project. Overall I enjoyed the film very much.

“Waking Life” is a movie about loused dreaming. Our main character goes in and out of dreaming state where he meets a hand full of interesting cast members that enlighten him with awesome information!
It’s animated with the pin tool to make it look unreal and “dream like”.
In scenes where you have to have a, baseball capped little boy being turned upside down by the wind and blowing away in the breeze, using the pin tool allows you to do that, while making the movie ethereal and very creative. The picture moves around in some scenes as well, which is how dreams sometimes are, murk, and blocky.
Another reason the pin tool might have been used is to place in things that weren’t there in the filming. In one part where two men are having a philosophical conversation about a theory, using a lot of hand gestures and expressions, the artist adds in explosions between his hands, and sparks, making what he’s talking about exciting (it looks cooler too). I think the movie wouldn’t be as amazing if they didn’t do it how they did.

WAKING LIFE

Through watching this film I have found how expressive and emotional graphic art in a film can be. I think the reason for using art in the way they did in this movie was, to really show a characters mind to the us; to bring us into a new level of thinking through shape, sound, color and movement. The animation gives me a real feeling of breaking the real world down and showing our bare skeleton; our passions, our emotions, our stories. It brings you to the underlying world of dream and thinking through a void, where hunger for knowledge is born. You cannot always connect and perceive these things in everyday life, with everyday people. You need it to change you in some way to really impact who you are.
There is a scene in the movie where this young man is sitting at a dinner listening to this other older man talk to him. This older man is very expressive with is hands and eyes, but also with his torso and his hair and all the lines and structures of this face. The animation of this man is shifting and changing along with his words...conveying and giving you an idea about his true inner feelings about what he is saying. His chest and arms move like water as he speaks and his fingers, eyes, mouth and skull grow and shrink and swell with shadow and light.
Another scene I really like is with a chimpanzee teaching what I think is a college class. The chimp is speaking in a deep smooth voice and showing a film to the class on an old film projector. This scene is very interesting and a very appropriate touch to this movie. It’s another thing in this movie that keeps it from just being a movie…because with this you must pay attention.
The animation with the artists switching throughout the film just draws your eye to it . It’s captivating in the way a character will not only change emotions or the topic of conversation but the artistry also changes. So things in the picture may become more blocky with very defined shapes and colors or it might change to a smooth flow of colors where it is all about the movement and textures shown in the person.
To pull it all together, what I am trying to say about this film, is that the mix of colors with music and the shape-shifting through different artists animation makes this a very rich captivating movie. It goes beyond the material world and really gives you hope for imagination. And it does all this through animation. Who would have thought.

Even the title itself, “Waking Life,” tells the story of the movie. The many epiphanies of life in this movie were hard to grasp and comprehend because they flowed out continuously. I think this movie was animated how it was because, with animation, they can provide visuals to help us understand what they are trying to say.
In the beginning, there was a professor looking man talking to the main character at a table in some sort of café talking about evolution, and his head kept changing shape. This gave the scene an extra persona a normal film would lack. There was another scene towards the middle of the movie where there’s a guy riding around in his car with an angry tone screaming into a megaphone. In this scene, his face is literally red. The red in his face gives you more of a feel of his emotion. The beginning and the ending both have scenes where the main character floats up into the sky. I know that they had to have had ropes around him to get him to float in the first place, but using animation, they can get rid of the ropes easily. Only through animation, is this possible.

I think that “A Waking Life” is animated as opposed to real-life people because of its surreal feel. The movie is dark and philosophical and with animation, it has conveyed certain points and ideas. The animation gives the film a vibe that real people could not quite accomplish. Also, the film is all a dream, the experiences the character has are not real, so it wouldn't fit right to use real people. The character flies around and meets all these people and sees all these things, like a person disappearing and turning into something that could be carried away by a breeze, so using animation made it easier to show different perspectives and people transforming onto different things in different scenes.

First of all, I loved this film. “Waking Life” is the type of movie created to really make people think and reflect on what they’re seeing. A likely reason for using animation instead of live-action filming is to achieve a certain effect. For instance, in one scene there is a man in a car, driving wildly and yelling his views through a microphone and loudspeaker. As he gets more expressive with his anger, his face keeps turning redder. If the creators were to use regular people for this scene, they would’ve had to use makeup or something along those lines to make him look extremely angry. With animation, it’s easy to tell that by making his face red, they’re conveying that he is angry, and it’s believable.

The entire movie is very dreamy, and there are a lot of profound conversations being had throughout. I think if it were shown with real human actors and not animated, most viewers might get bored. By adding animation it provides visual excitement and catches the observer’s eye.

With the animation the characters aren’t only speaking with their words and mouth, they’re using their fingers, caricatured and exaggerated facial expressions, even their hair or the colors around them. The artists even changed or added extra details that weren’t in the original filming such as glows, sparks, or even altering the shape of the character’s head. By using cartoon-like animation, the full idea comes together with what the makers are trying to get across.

A few times throughout “Waking Life,” the animated effects changed because of the different artists and, I think, it purposely throws you off a little bit. The entire film wakes you up like a splash of cold water in your face. Its ideas are very “out there” but in a good way. The combination of the conversations being had with the animation is very cleverly and enjoyably executed.

While watching this film I became conscious of the extent of how expressive graphic art can be. Any type of movie can evoke emotions but this is to the extreme. Overall, “Waking Life” was very eye-opening for me and I’m very interested in seeing more films or projects similar to it.

I think they used animation in the movie Waking Life to represent the dream state in a more creative way. Like when the people are talking and their heads get bigger or things pop up on the screen in front of them. I think using animation helped it look more like a dream because if they used real people and digitally did changes it wouldn’t seem dreamy to me it would just seem fake. The animation helped them do more things. They were able to create more, also when the main character was floating. I also think it could keep peoples attention more because the whole movie was talking. I know I wouldn’t be able to watch it if it were just real people doing nothing but talking. That’s why I like the art not only was I trying to listen I was also studying the art and the different ways the people did it.
I thought that movie was great.

I believe Waking Life is animated rather than shot with real people for the simple reason that the movie is about dreams. Waking Life talks about lucid dreaming, and the animation helps get the viewer in a dreamlike mindset. With real people, it wouldn’t have been as effective. In a dream, people, places, and objects are not portrayed as they would be in real life. This film gives things a surreal quality.

Animation helps make Waking Life dreamlike in many ways. One of the more subtle ways is the exaggeration of normal human traits and actions. Movements can be more pronounced, which is demonstrated in how fluid one man’s arm movements are. Similarly, prominent features can be accentuated, like the man in the yellow shirt whose eyes grew larger when he stressed a point or exclaimed something. Also, colors can be more vivid, such as those of the angry man in the car whose face grew red as he yelled.

Besides making realistic characteristics and movements bolder, things also happen in this film that would never happen in real life, making it necessary to employ animation. For example, when the two men are discussing holy moments, sparks come from their hands, and they eventually turn into clouds. Also, when the kid is walking along the beach talking, he gradually disappears. During the bar scene, when a man gets shot, words in comic book bubbles (like “SPLAT”) appear. Another obvious but good example of this is that characters fly in this movie.

Waking Life keeps the viewer enthralled. Even when the dialogue becomes hard to understand for some, the animation makes it clear what is being discussed. Throughout the entire film, it’s apparent to a watcher that this is a surreal film, helping to keep the main idea, lucid dreaming, in mind.

I think that animation may have been used by the makers of the movie Waking Life because of the amount of dimension that it gave to the contents, allowing the scenarios and ideas portrayed by each clip of dialogue not only to be expressed verbally, but visually as well. For instance, while the odd little bald fellow with the funny voice goes on his rant his physical form is able to change to add greater depth to the meaning that he intends to get across. The animated style also suits the experimental tones of the film, allowing the creators a much greater range of artistic expression in a movie based upon concepts of unorthodox contemplation. The entire film was an example of this non-traditional presentation, of the artistic play on the films environments and contents that paralleled the philosophic play on thoughts and considerations that the film regarded. Finally, animation was able to show scenarios that would have otherwise been very difficult to show in real footage, such as the characters flying about in his dream and the one fellow who lit himself on fire. Using animation would have been a great way to overcome the limited resources that I’m sure the makers had, allowing them to still be able to show these scenes despite perhaps a lack of ability to create them in real life.