MYSTERY BOX - PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

This is, essentially, a part 2 to this post. This session, we were analysing our performances from yesterday.

But first, some theory. Mostly, it was the theory of performance itself. Within the Larbon Movement analysis, there are 4 main things to take into account: Body, Effort, Space and Shape. We delved a little deeper into Effort specifically, and learned it was made up of time, weight and direction.

We did a mini-analysis of a Charlie Chaplin short, looking at how Chaplin's performance is exaggerated and carnivalesque.

(A clip from one of Charlie Chaplin's films - credit: Charlie Chaplin)

The two main things picked up from this clip was how he moves very directly and that his poses are very clean cut. For the latter, this means that you could abstract his form as far as you want, and still get the idea of what exact pose he's making. There's no subtlety, there's no small movements, it's all LOUD. The reason for this, ironically, is because of there's no sound from Chaplin at all. He had to communicate entirely through his body, letting audiences know what he's feeling by moving and posing very clearly and cleanly.

Exaggerated poses like this break the Kinosphere; the personal bubble. By going into extreme reaches from it's X, Y and Z axis, you can achieve more far-reaching poses, where you dial your movements up to more than natural. Contrast that with smaller, closer poses, which are called near-reach poses. Anything between those two are just mid-reach poses.

Next, we moved on to the 5 main poses of physical acting. There are:

• THE PIN - Straight up, thin poses.
• THE WALL - Wide and tall, making yourself seem bigger
• THE BALL - Somewhat sphere-like, making yourself seem smaller
• THE SCREW - Your pose has some kind of twist in it (usually from the hips)
• THE PYRAMID - Poses where your base are larger than the top

Using the "Do You Want To Build A Snowman?" progression reel from last time, me and some of the others were asked to come up and show how the opening few shots use all 5 of these pose types.

After the presentation wrapped up, we went back and looked at our own performances from yesterday, and saw how the poses could be pushed further, especially after learning about the 5 Poses and Kinosphere. I looked at the poses from the last session, and tried to draw basic interpretations of them but with the added notes and enhanced performance elements.

I feel like this session was really beneficial to my Mystery Box animation! It's going to help out with making the performance more engaging, as well as following more of the animation principles than I would beforehand.