[Animation] David Cameron

This is a week project I did in University, we had to make an animation which the theme had to be politics using stop motion animation. The stop motion animation could have been made using glass layered on top of each other in which I could have used if I wanted to add backgrounds. Below is the animation:

Using newspaper cut outs for heads and drawings for bodies, limbs and backgrounds I created an animation based on an article I read about David Cameron wanting citizens of Europe to help slash the number of illegal immigrants entering the country, I do not know much about politics so I chose the first article I found that was politics related in "The Guardian" newspaper.

I found this project alot easier than the previous animation technique; Sand animation as when you move the cut out images to a new place to create a movement effect it doesn't change what it looks like, whereas moving sand and salt proved difficult to move as it'd change shape when moving. I think the sound quality is quite bad in this animation as it requires the volume to be turned up to the max to hear it, and even then it is still a little bit hard to hear. Although the sound quality is low on volume there is no background noise which I think really helps the sound as it is clear. One thing that lets the animation itself down is the brightness, Instead of using natural light I used a back light which made the back of the images bright yellow and made the faces of the characters unclear. Although using After Effects I lowered the Saturation and Lightness to make it look a little bit better.

The animation is to show a ‘Political event’ or ‘Taking a position on a recent news event’, so I chose the first recent article at the time, headlined; ‘David Cameron launches immigration crackdown’. The article was about David Cameron making it harder for illegal immigrants to enter the country; in the article it states “David Cameron, who wants people to report suspected illegal immigrants to the UK Border Agency.” By using this line I created a short animation based on him asking citizens of the United Kingdom to help stop Illegal immigrants by reporting people suspected to be illegal immigrants to the UK Border Agency. I think I show a political event very well in the animation, it is easy to grasp the story of the animation as well as the news event.

The story itself is original so cannot be influenced; I tried to re-create a South Park style animation with the arms flailing and not much leg movement when walking. I was influenced mainly by the side cartoon in South Park; Terrance and Phillip. Terrance and Phillip is basically a cartoon show within a cartoon, about two people who talk and makes crude jokes to each other. I was influenced by their lack of common sense, but ability to get a story across, even if they appear for almost less than a minute on screen (particularly in the 1–3 season of South Park) Their animation style is different from the South Park universe, all of their joints move and I although in my animation the arms are all one joint I tried to get that across in my animation. Although the humour that I used in the animation was not taken from Terrance and Phillip, the entire script was improvised so any jokes that where made where from the top of my head.

The intention of the animation was to joke at Cameron’s wish to have citizens of the United Kingdom report suspected illegal immigrants who enter the country, while he does nothing about it. Obviously this is making fun of his statement and focused on that alone instead of other things he may or may not have done to help stop illegal immigrants. ‘David Cameron urges people to report suspected illegal immigrants instead of doing it himself’ was the intended joke.

I chose to represent politics to fit my ideology also, my animation was based around a news article of the time, ‘David Cameron Launches Immigration Crackdown’. In my animation I made it seem like Cameron wants everyone in the UK to stop Immigrants from entering the country, because in my understanding of David Cameron he doesn’t know what he is doing most of the time. I represented him as someone who mumbles his words, forgets things and wants other people to do the dirty work for him. Whereas in contrast, the Media represent him as a great, handsome person. To represent him as this to the public the conservative party spend hundreds of pounds on Photoshop to make him look handsome. This animation follows its own conventions; you wouldn’t see David Cameron jumping out of nowhere to beat up an illegal immigrant. Using the film form I subverted the traditional form of the news story to allow David Cameron to do such things. I wanted to have him do this as I thought it would add humour to the animation.

The next time I do cutout animation I will not use a back light and instead try to get light facing the images to make them alot more clearer. I will also make my voice louder as so people can hear the voice alot better, or get a new voice actor.