The Hand vs Surogat

In this essay I will be comparing and contrasting two animations. The first one is Jiri Trnka- The hand, and the second is Dusan Vukotic and Zagres Film Surogat (ersatz).

The hand is a stop motion animation with a bit of pixilation about a little man who likes to make pots on his pottery wheel. He owns a little plant that he looks after that stands in one of his pots. He seems like a happy man until one day a giant hand comes into his home and tells him to make a hand sculpture. The man refuses and as a result gets forced into doing what he's told. He still stands up for himself and tries to get away and because of this he dies.

Surogat is a 2D hand drawn animation about a little triangle man who has everything he needs in the back of his car, he just has to use a bicycle pump  to blow them up. He is having fun until he blows up a woman for himself that doesn't like him and he tries to win her back. When he fails, he kills her and the guy she liked by deflating them, then leaves but on the way home he runs over a nail which bursts his car and he dies.

I believe both of these stories are about consumerism. The hand was about a man making things he likes but wasn't selling them and the hand wanted him to make something that the public wanted. He would be famous and honoured for his work. He didn't want to do this though he was just happy with his life.
Surogat on the other hand was about a man who had everything he wanted or needed and was very happy. The only thing he couldn't conjure was love.

In this respect the two animations are quite similar. They both also end in death, have no dialogue.

In my opinion The Hand is quite a long animation and to me, not particularly interesting however the art work was good if a little dull in colour but the guy had no facial expressions which could have made it better. It was a neat idea having a big hand forcing him to do things as that's just like what big bosses and society does in real life just with laws and things not physically moving you.
Although it is 'one of the milestones of Czech and world animation. In 1984 the American Film Academy declared it the fifth best animated picture in history', I did not enjoy it. 
Surogat was a more captivating story with really clever ideas and a catchy tune, but less than inspiring artwork although brighter than The Hand. It was also very funny whereas The Hand was  more of a drama. I really enjoyed Surogat and thought it was quite cleaver that to kill someone, you deflate them. It's like a funny and less gruesome way to die but still getting the point across. Also the fact that the whole world deflates reminds the audience that the whole thing was fake, but you still feel empathy for the character.

Both animations get their point across they just do it in very different ways.

OUAN401- Context of practice Lecture 1

Lecture 1

Today was our first lecture on context of practice. The photography part was quite interesting. It was about the Mass Observation founded in 1937, documenting life in Britain. We learned that it was done from a Posh persons perspective, so they went to the worst places they could find and this is how the lower working class ended up being portrayed to everyone else, when in actual fact it was not all like this.

The image to the untrained eye looks like a 'carefully composed, gentle, humorous photograph' but it's actually a guy with a camera under his coat and the guy holding his hand up like he is waving, is actually objecting to the photograph being taken. I find it fascinating that things can been seen in a totally different way to what actually happened. If someone tells you its one thing then that's all you see.

The second part was on animation. We watched 'The hand' or 'Jiri Trnka'. It was quite strange and almost a little scary.

It was about a little man who was minding his own business when a giant hand decided to force him to make a statue of a hand. The giant hand make the little man into a puppet and forced him to work. When the little man tried to run away, the hand killed him. This portrays a message of how society works, how we are to conform to rules and regulations and how we are told what to do and if we don't, there are consequences. We are all puppets to the higher powered people.
We also watched 'Tested for the unexpected' by tony Kaye.

It was to advertise Dunlop tyres but it was a bit off the wall for its time. It was shot in black and white then coloured in post production. There is debate about whether it is an advertisement or a piece of art in its own right.

We then had a bit on illustration. It started off about Norman Rockwell. He illustrated small town American life which became very popular.

This art was done in a time of depression and in the rise of abstract Avant garde art. It was basically like the fairy tale version of America, but it isn't how everyone lives. It was a bit of a front. a 'mythic identity for America'. His art was very technically good and other artists like graphic designers depended on that skill to help them, but with new technical and digital processes, there was a decline in the need for illustrators.

Lastly we looked at graphic design, particularly typography. We were taught about three typefaces. Times New Roman, Fraktur and Universal. Firstly, Times New Roman which is an English typeface by Stanley Morison in 1932.

 It started as a Roman font, which the English decided to use to link the Romans great empire to Britain's great empire, showing cultural superiority.
Fraktur was a German typeface used for signage and propaganda posters in the time of the war.

 Its supposed to represent the Germans superiority of cultures and people and national superiority. I just found it difficult to read (yes I know the poster was in German).
Universal was a European typeface created at Bauhaus, proposed by Herbert Bayer but never actually created.

 It was to be a typeface that everyone can use, with no political connotations or historic content, no uppercase letters, very plain and neutral. He wanted to create it to unify people not separate them like the previously mentioned typefaces.

In conclusion these contextual studies lectures will be about seeing things we don't usually get to see from the 21st century outside of the cultural paradigm.

"The unexamined life is not worth living" - Socrates