Proposed questionsHow do cinema/animation create a 'sense of place'?- How

does an object and an environment embodies one's memories and identity?

How film can manipulate space and time?

Key Terms:• Body and perception• Material and techniques -process, texture, structure,

tactility, motion, form, expression• Embodiment, objectification and personification. • Time, space and place• History• Memory • Identity

• psychology and social science • combination of art and science • cinemtography- effects, 3D, CGI, framing,

lighting, camera movement • sensory experience • attachment, bonds, relationship -childhood

1

'Sense of place'

• It is a characteristic that some geographic places have.• Authentic and historic sites• it is a feeling or perception held by people (not by the place itself). • A mental state, an emotional state eg. fear • It is often used in relation to those characteristics that make a place special or unique, as well as to

those that foster a sense of authentic human attachment and belonging. • Urban and rural studies- attachment of communities to their environment or homeland• "outer space" (environment) vs "inner space" (inside mind)• how to differentiate between 'space' and 'place' - "a place come into existence when humans give

meaning to part of the larger, undifferentiated space"• To develop a strong sense of place : comparison between places, learning and observing and from

childhood experiences ("primal landscape"). places which have a strong "sense of place" have a strong identity and character felt by the invidivdual. ' sense of place' is personal and relies on perception.

2

Case Studies How does an object and an environment embodies one's memories and identity? How do cinema and animation create a 'sense of place'?

Caroline Leaf• "The streets" by Caroline Leaf It's about a boy's

grandmother dying where she takes longer than expected and the boy is promised her room but grows to be impatient.

• she uses paint on glass technique instead and metamorphosis to transition scene to scene seamlessly with no cuts. The technique used gives it this tactile quality and allows this flow to resemble the process of recalling memory.

• Metamorphose is a good way to convey change in moods and express the sense of time passing.

• The bedroom is a significant place for the boy, often people associate a place with a memory, in this case the boy associates this bed to not only a memory but also a person; his grandmother.

• Usually sensory experiences trigger the memory and in the film the boy uses different senses to describe her or the experience, for example (taste and smell) "when we sat down to eat we could smell her", (touch) "...go in and kiss my grandmother goodbye", (sound) "Boi yo bio yo, the only sound my grandmother could make" and "what's the use of telling her".

Hiyao Miyazaki • One theme that's similar to my project is the 'Environment' where Miyazaki's

film often stresses it's importance of "man's concern for nature" for example in Princess Mononoke there's destructions of nature and homes of animals, which highlights the effect of the human's greed. This was reflective of Miyazaki's own beliefs and experience. So in way Miyazaki's film in captures his own memories where there's a feeling of nostalgia with the use of nature as well as the use of dated back props and architecture.

• Many of the time his characters are an embodiment of a place or nature for example in 'Spirited away' there a river spirit mistaken for the "stink spirit" This character also demonstrates the current issue of human's waste contaminating nature and effects of pollution.

• Often Miyazaki's uses flight imagery to express freedom or growing up, one significant scene which demonstrated this is from spirited away is when Haku and Sen is flying, this is also the scene when Haku memories come back and regains his identity, so it could express escape and happiness and it looks at "the world from a different prospective and allows character to transcend reality." This expresses one's identity is a reflection of one's memories and one's experiences. Zeniba says "memories are never forgotten, they are just difficult to recall" which closely relates to when miyazaki mentions "[He] created a heroine who is an ordinary girl, someone with whom the audience can sympathize. It's not a story in which the characters grow up, but a story in which they draw on something already inside them, brought out by the particular circumstances. .

• In Howl's moving Castle, the caste represents Howl himself. the castle has differnt faces and a lot of baggage which makes it heavy and it moves around to be hidden and his way of escape which is a metaphor for a man who puts on many faces to the world to keep his true self hidden because of his painful past. 3

How film manipulate space and time? -Still images and sequence of images• La Jetée ("The Jetty") (1962) by Chris Marker.• Constructed almost entirely from still photos connected by straight cuts, fades and dissolves • A story of a post-nuclear war experiment in time travel.• The editing rhythms and variations in camera position make it seem like we watching a conventional movie.• The film demonstrates there's a difference between event time and film time. How time can be manipulated

in films. • The man is able to time travel and lives in the past witnessing a man being killed only to find that its himself.

Where time travel depends on the notion that all events are somehow present. An analogy would be a film reel where as the film moves through the projector with each image becoming the present. so in a way we can feel a sense of time traveling when watching a film.

• Flip books are essentially a primitive form of animation. They rely on persistence of vision to create the illusion that continuous motion is being seen rather than a series of discontinuous images being exchanged in succession. Rather than "reading" left to right, a viewer simply stares at the same location of the pictures in the flip book as the pages turn. The book must also be flipped with enough speed for the illusion to work,

• Time lapse- is a technique whereby the frequency at which film frames are captured is much lower than that used to view the sequence. It's shortening real time, the opposite method would be slow motion.

4

Investigation and Methodology

• How does an object and an environment embodies one's memories and identity? How do cinema and animation create a 'sense of place'?

• Journals: • Michelle R. Nelson and Jacqueline C. Hitchon. (1999). LOUD TASTES, COLORED FRAGRANCES, AND SCENTED

SOUNDS: HOWAND WHEN TO MIX THE SENSES IN PERSUASIVE COMMUNICATIONS. Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly. 76 (2), 354-372.

• Anne-Marie Kramer. (2011). Mediatizing memory: History, affect and identity in Who Do You Think You Are?. European Journal of Cultural Studies. 14 (4), 428-445.

• Nigel Morgan and Annette Pritchard. (2005). On souvenirs and metonymy: Narratives of memory, metaphor and materiality . Tourist Studies. 5 (1), 29-53.

5

Experiment 1

http://www.personality-and-aptitude-career-tests.com/cube-personality-test.html

80%50% 20%

Picture an enormous white room. In this room, there is a cube.

1.) What color is the cube?2.) What size is the cube?

3.) Where is it located in the room? Is it floating, or on the ground?

Now imagine flowers inside of this room.

4.) Where are the flowers located?5.) How large are the flowers?

Next, imagine a ladder inside of the white room.

6.) Where is the ladder?7.) What size is the ladder?

Next, imagine a horse in the white room.8.) Where is the horse?

9.) Name three personality characteristics of the horse (mean, funny, sad, happy, etc).

Lastly, imagine a rainstorm inside the white room.

10.) Where is the rainstorm located?11.) How large is the rainstorm?

Interpretation of the AnswersFor example:

• If your cube is small, it means you have a small ego, you are humble.

• If your cube is large, it means you might be “full of yourself”.

• A small ladder means that you have a few or no goals in life. • If your ladder is large, it means that your goals and expectations

from yourself are set higher than average.

6

• Gosling's work on social perception seeks to examine the fundamental processes of impression formation through everyday environments.

• A considerable amount of information can be gathered about another person by observing his or her belongings found in their personal living space,

• Although consensus among people tends to vary, most people tend to be relatively accurate in their personality predictions based on others’ personal spaces. Stereotypes can play a helpful role in accuracy when there is slight truth to the assumption as well as when the observer correctly guesses the gender of the individual.

Samuel D. Gosling, a psychologist and author of Snoop: What your stuff says about you (Basic Books,

2008), he analysed photos from a handful of New Scientist readers to see what he could deduce about their

personalities.

He's learned how a person's personal belongings reveal quite a bit about how they score on the "big five"

personality traits: extroversion, emotional stability, openness, conscientiousness and agreeableness.

http://www.newscientist.com/blog/shortsharpscience/2008/07/what-do-your-belongings-say-about-

you.html

This person values structure and neatness. This is someone who thinks ahead (they buy supplies before

they run out), is methodical, organised, and neat. There is evidence that this person is highly concerned with and sensitive to aesthetics. The space is crafted

for efficiency, revealing a highly effective worker.

7

Experiment 2

This room has a sofa which shows the person is very socialable and likes to entertain often. This room has a few large posters which shows there fandom.This room has lots of cushions and a diffuser which shows the person value comfort and relaxation.

This person has gone to great lengths to create a sense of calmness, order and relaxation with the use of candles and

lighting and cushions.

The room is small but appear spacious and uncluttered. The art piece suggests someone very high on openness, and an imaginative, inventive and unconventional person. This person has a personalized the guitar which shows this person is creative, contemplative, and thoughtful. However these could just be things from the person childhood or past as you can see the person has created a collage of memories and kept their childhood photos.

This person room is organized but not necessarily neat. There's distinctiveness of the space which suggest that this person scores high on conscientiousness, openness, and agreeableness.

This place does not have very much stuff in it - it's not high on external stimulation suggesting someone not particularly extraverted. The person seems relatively organised. There's a narrow variety of stuff and not much evidence of diverse interests. There is not much evidence of social relationships, either, or efforts to make the place comfortable and inviting to others - suggesting someone introverted.

This person values comfortable and attachments with the throw over on the bed to the teddy bear and cushions. These spaces are quite conventional in terms of décor and contents, suggesting a person with scores lower on openness dimension however would form strong attactments to things or people.

This room is organized into sections, the entertainment and work area. so this person values structure and efficiency. The entrainment area is very cluttered and work area is more neat. which shows he approaches work and play differently. His interests is very narrow in variety, however he has a strong interest which shows a passionate person. This bedroom is designed for socially and work rather than comfort and resting so it suggest this person is an active and social person.

The various items of décor here seem to have a personal meaning to the occupant, and don't seem to be displayed primarily for the benefit of others. These items show the person's connections to the past such as the picture of friends and family , posters and paintings, the person has kept the old tickets and postcards that would have some special meaning to the occupant. This suggest that a sense of self that's strongly rooted in the past. Along with the art supplies and the distinctiveness of the space suggest that this person scores high on conscientiousness(being through, careful and vigilant), openness, and agreeableness and lower on neuroticism(negative moods). 8

Reflection on your own filmmaking processOur documentary is about memory where aesthetically we tried to convey a sensory experience because often a sense triggers a memory.

The intension of our film is to show our memories can be fleeting and fragmented and similar to the film making process its itself, its a series of images pieced together to make a sequence that that be processed and made sense of. Another point we make is that the most powerful memories are those that have an emotional attachment to which is usually our worst memories.

Often our memories has a root, a source or a location where it began. There's a method of memorizing called The Method of loci , also called the memory palace or mind palace technique,

This is a technique where by you use visualization to organize and recall information. Many memory contest champions claim to use this technique to recall faces, digits, and lists of words. These champions’ successes have little to do with brain structure or intelligence, but more to do with their technique of using regions of their brain that have to do with spatial learning.

The method involves placing items in locations. Each location serves as a hook, to which you visually connect whatever you want to remember. You accomplish this by creating an image or scene in mind, in which the location and the to-be memorized item interact. The order is provided by defining a precise journey with distinct locations along a route you are familiar with. Also, like with any journey, you need to define a fixed starting point.

At the Wellcome Museum, I saw a chart of head containing over 30 images symbolizing the phrenological faculties. Phrenology was the theory that a person’s character and abilities could be read by the shape of their skull. Through this is considered a pseudoscience Franz Joseph Gall’s assumption that character, thoughts, and emotions are located in localized parts of the brain is historical advance toward neuropsychology. It was believed that the human mind had a set of different mental faculties, with each represented in a different area of the brain.

9

Key Bibliography References

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La_Jet%C3%A9e• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Method_of_loci• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Samuel_D._Gosling

10