Poetry in Animation

After looking at To This Day, I decided to look at some more poem's in animation, to try get a better feel of performance because I thought these might be more inspiring and an approach not everyone else is taking.



Unlike To this Day the main feature of this animation that works really well and impresses me the most, is the way it slickly transitions in between each scene. I really like the performance of the poem, doesn't distract from the animation. I think the animation has some other great qualities that might of been lost if it had an overdone performance. For example all the noise, and chattering of the images hoil they so irregularly boil take up quite a lot of concentration to watch, I also think this is added to by the impurity of the quality of line in the drawings and therefore the quiet performance which is understated and melancholy works really well with this particular animation.

I however don't feel that the performance itself is fantastic, the diction of some of the words isn't always clear, and it's a bit monotonous, so at one point I did actually stop listening to the words and just watched the pictures. So even though the performance isn't great I think it works with the animation but overall it is just average.





I really enjoyed the quality of line of this short animation, mixed with the different layers and textures of paper, i think this proved a simple yet effective animation, and I think it doesn't draw away from the narrative of the poem, because I think that's the most important thing, is about grief and the loss of this Grandad. I think the most important feature of this animation is how the animation aren't obviously linked to the imagery of the words and innovative ways of not just portraying what was being said but something slightly related is used. I really like the dropping of the crumbs of the cracker and then it turning into bread crumbs for the duck. I think that rhythm and poeticness of the animation really emphasises the words it doesn't detract from them.

I think the performance of the actual poem is quite melancholy which fits the tone of the narrative, but I think it could have been more effective and emotive with darker pauses, and a darker tone of voice. I think it was quite averagely performed and I think I would of rather seen this poem over performed to make it more emotive and resonate more with the viewer, because I think this animation could be quite forgetful without the strong performance that To This Day had.





I think this performance is the most interesting of the ones I've commented on so far. This animation clearly is more about the narration, and the imagery is just an add on, that is often quite busy but you don't really take it in because the viewer takes in the performance. I think that's how you know it's a successful performance. Besides having a really interesting voice, you can tell the speaker is drawlling certain words to be extra long to fit the beat of the poem. Another thing that makes it successful is how the volume changes quite frequently which makes your brain react to the performance and keeps you more engaged in the sounds rather than the imagery.

Another feature that makes this performance more interesting than the others is how the pace is really fast, if you want to find out what happens to this guy, you know you'll find out soon because of how fast he is telling the story. It's interesting how he repeats things, as if just in case you missed them you still get the gist of what's happening.




 I think the poems in animation I have looked at so far have all been pretty serious, so I thought I would include this bazaar one as well, which I guess would be comedic. There's a very emotive performance given by the speaker, but the sound effects are quite over the top. But this does match the over the top gore that's in the animation. I think my biggest problem with it is the main character, although he is technically a fantastic puppet and brought to life really successful there just isn't any appeal for him. I think he's confused as to whether he's good or bad as a character and therefore the viewer feels confused about the character and becomes indifferent to him and so it makes the whole performance really surreal. I think if I was going for a creepy performance I might reference some of the poses this character is in as key frames.