When
you think of tactics for storytelling in animation, you don’t usually think of
the transitions. In reality, the transitions used to flow through the film can
add a new dimension to the story being told. Transitions can be used in many
creative ways to tell the audience more about the story that you are trying to
show them. A good example of this is the hidden imagery that film director Kon
Satoshi put into every film that he created in his career. Kon put care into
his work, and considered his use of animation more powerful than if he used live-action. He took advantage of designing every frame to cut out unnecessary images
and put as much information into his films as he possibly could. |
| The background wipes away while the character remains static |
Many
of the transitions that Kon uses in his films are based on camera and editing
transitions used in live-action films. There are 5 basic types of transitions:
Cut, Wipe, Dissolve, Fade, and Iris. A cut is when the film jumps directly from
one scene to another, with no frames in between. Cuts are the most basic kinds
of transitions, and are the most common. This also means that there are
many different kinds of cuts as well, but I will go into more details about
them later in the blossay. Wipes are transitions where the first scene moves
across the screen, revealing the second scene behind it and “wiping” across the
screen. These are also fairly common transitions, especially in Kon’s films.
Kon would disguise his wipes by using an object or character moving across
the screen as the edge of the wipe. Dissolves are similar to cuts, but instead
of immediately transitioning between the two frames, they instead slowly fade
from one scene to the next. Fades are essentially the same as dissolves, but
they transition either to or from a solid color. Fades to and from black are
the most popular ways to begin and end films, with fades to and from white
coming in a close second. The final type of transition is the iris. This kind
of transition involves a solid color border closes in on a singular point,
usually in the middle of the screen or on the face of a character. It is a more
old-fashioned transition and not often seen in modern films. Despite this, Kon
Satoshi was able to effectively use an iris, but also found creative ways to
use every other kind of transition on this list throughout his career as an
animator and director.
Kon
spent the early years of his career working on other creator’s anime. His first
work in the world of anime was on the animated film Roujin Z where he was an
animator and layout artist. He moved on to working as a supervisor for Oshii
Mamoru’s popular film, Patlabor 2: The Movie, a classic we are all familiar
with. He continued on with work on a few short films. Before moving on to
directing his own work, he scripted and co-produced the fifth episode of the
original video animation JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure in 1993. After taking a short
break, Kon returned to anime in 1997 to start working on his directing debut
that this class will also be familiar with, Perfect Blue
As you all know, Perfect Blue is
the story of Mima Kirigoe, a pop idol who decides to retire from music and
become an actress. It blurs the line between her public and private lives,
confusing the viewers and leaving them trying to piece together small bits of
information to make sense of what they see as even Mima begins to wonder what
is real in her life. Perfect Blue was a big for Kon’s career. Not only was it
the first film that he directed, it was also the first film that he produced
with Madhouse, a company that would go on to produce every feature film that Kon
would direct in his career. Seeing how Perfect Blue was Kon’s first film, it’s
not surprising that there aren’t quite as many notable transitions in the film.
He had only just begun directing his own films, and was perfecting his artful
use of transitions. Although he has not mastered the art yet, there are many
transitions that do really show that he was thinking about the concept. Around
22:50, we see a partial match cut hidden by cameras flashing, the transition is
used to highlight the disorientation that Mima feels having all the cameras in
her face. The next transition I thought was well done was around 26:44. Mima
gets into an elevator to see a newspaper clipping about one of her aggressors
being hurt. She looks out of the elevator as the doors begin to close and sees
one of her fans. Kon uses a match cut to zoom in on the fan Mima is looking at
to see him deviously smiling as the doors close in a two-fold wipe. This set of
transitions is seemingly trying to tell the audience that this fan is the one
that attacked the aggressor, but it also shows how he carefully plans out his
actions. He knew that Mima would get into the elevator and see the newspaper
clipping, so he positioned himself outside the elevator so that she would see
him, as opposed to just handing her the clipping directly. This scene is later mimicked
when we watch a murder, assumedly committed by the same fan. A scriptwriter for
the television series Mima stars on is in a parking garage when he hears far
off music being played. When the elevator arrives, he is greeted by a boombox
which is the source of the music. The film then cuts to the same elevator on a
different floor. As the elevator doors open, we see the dead body of the script
writer and hear the same music. This second scene is so similar to the first
that it clearly is trying to allude to the fact that they are similar without
telling the the audience outright.
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| The otaku watches as the doors slowly close |
After Perfect Blue, Kon wanted to adapt the novel Paprika, written by Tsutsui Yasutaka, but his plans were stalled by troubles with Perfect Blue’s distribution company going bankrupt. In 2002, Kon was finally able to release his next work, Millennium Actress. This film centers on a retired actress named Chiyoko telling the story of her career as an actress to a pair of men who are creating a documentary of her life. As she begins to tell her story, it becomes so immersive that the men find themselves actually living her stories as if they were scenes in a movie. Many of the transitions in Millennium Actress are match cuts. A match cut is a type of cut where the two scenes have visual similarities, allowing the audience to understand a similarity in the two scenes, or to use a single similarity to highlight the differences between the scenes. At 1:06:17, there is a fairly long montage of the main character, Chiyoko, running to meet an old friend. Kon uses scenes of her running during every part of her career to emphasize the theme that she has been constantly looking for her friend for her entire life. The montage ends with her finding his easel set up in front of an empty valley, right after cutting from a matching scene of her on the moon while acting in her final movie. Kon is trying to show the audience that after all her time searching, she is still alone. The end of her career as an actress searching for her friend matches up perfectly with the end of her actual search for her friend. Another kind of match cut that Kon used in Millennium Actress is in a scene where Chiyoko trips from one movie to another. In the first, she is running down a dirt path when suddenly she trips over a chain. We expect to see this scene continue and reveal the reason for the chain being there, but instead, we jump to a new scene, where Chiyoko falls to the ground and immediately begins acting for the new scene. This sequence acts as a seamless transition between the two points in Chiyoko’s life, telling the audience that at this point in her film career, she is starting to feel like every movie that she does is the same.
Following Millennium Actress, Kon
strayed from the standard formats he had become famous for. Kon’s next film was titled Tokyo Godfathers, a
story about three homeless persons and a baby. Tokyo Godfathers is in my
opinion the black sheep of Kon’s films, as it doesn’t focus on a blur between
realities, and has very few transitions of note. It does have a really good
story about homelessness and how fortune occurs in odd ways, which more than
makes up for the parts it lacks. Both of the transitions I really took note of
in Tokyo Godfathers were match cuts. The first one was at 20:45 where a
character points out a cemetery, and the scene jumps to a similar frame inside
the cemetery, showing that the characters went to the cemetery without actually
showing their entire journey. The second has a similar function where it starts
with a frame showing to towers off in the distance, and dissolves to another
view with the towers in the same place, but the city around them different,
once again showing that the characters have traveled through the city, but
without directly showing the audience their journey to save frames and time. |
| After studying his work for this assignment, I'm now tempted to go watch all of this show |
After Tokyo Godfathers, Kon
directed the 13-episode series Paranoia Agent, straying away from his typical
feature-length film format. Unlike Tokyo Godfathers, Paranoia Agent does look
at the blending of imagination and reality, but I will not be analyzing it for
this blossay. I would like to note however, that it has been said that the
series was created from many of the ideas that Kon felt didn’t fit into any of
his other projects.
 |
| This is a zoom, followed by a match cut to almost create a whole new transition! |
Finally, in 2006, Kon released his last feature-length film, Paprika. Paprika was all about a new form of psychotherapy that uses a type of lucid dreaming to diagnose patients. Throughout the film, the boundaries between the real and dream worlds begin to fade, making the audience struggle to follow along with which world the characters are in at any point in the film. While watching Paprika I saw more artistic transitions than any other film Kon had directed. This makes sense, seeing how it is the last feature-length film he finished before he died. One that I think most emphasizes the themes of Paprika are the multiple dream sequences throughout the film. Just about every one of them has Kon’s favorite match cuts and wipes, as well as an iris in one of them. The abundant use of transitions in these short sequences are meant to emulate real dreams, where we think about something and it immediately happens. We don’t dream about moving from one place to the next, it just happens. Another common transition Kon used in Paprika is using a shot of glare on a window or a bright light in a doorway to fade to white and signal to the audience that something has changed. The first time it happens, the main character Chiba Atsuko is moving into the world of dreams. There are not many other signs that she has done so, making the fade even more powerful once you realize what it signifies. One last transition that fascinated me during the film were two pseudo-iris transitions. The first is the one in the dream sequence, where Paprika jumps out of a shirt. The border of the shirt moves towards the viewer, imitating an iris transition, then Paprika jumps, and Kon perfectly times a match cut to give the illusion of Paprika jumping out of the shirt. The next use is actually a reverse-iris. Around 41:05, we see detective Konakawa Toshimi falling in his dream. As he plummets, the “camera” zooms out to a movie theatre, where Paprika watches the detective’s dream play out. The edges of the film screen act as an iris to the first scene, but are quickly shown to be part of the following scene.
 |
| The sunlight becomes a fade to white |
As I’ve explained my project to
people over the past few weeks, I’ve talked about one thing that I really like
about Kon’s films. The way he progresses his stories flows nicely. There are no
boring parts in any of his films, and you never feel like the story is taking
unnecessary time. All of the transitions are active, with all the wipes and
cuts from one movement to another, Kon’s films are alive. This is a perfect
example of how careful use of transitions can improve film and animation. Another
way that transitions improve Kon’s films are in the subconscious messages and
images that Kon is able to hide in them. An example of this can be seen in
Perfect Blue around 45:50. In this scene, we see Mima’s old idol group CHAM! performing
in front of a crowd without her. The two strike a pose at the end of their
song, and the way the camera is positioned we see space between the two of
them. The scene then dissolves to Mima, positioned directly between the other
two. This transition sends a message to the audience that Mima misses being a
part of CHAM! and is not enjoying her life after leaving the group. All of Kon’s
films have these kinds of messages, and the transitions add a new dimension to
the film, paving the way for future directors to follow in the art of
transitioning.
Sources:
Primary
http://watchcartoonsonline.eu/watch-tokyo-godfathers-2003-full-movie-in-english/
Secondary
