In every animation, a new world is created. Compared the
worlds in animations to the real world, the animation worlds have imaginary
creatures, distinct society systems, and fabulous new laws of physics; all of these
allow audiences to enjoy what they cannot experience in reality; especially the
new laws of physics that the animators play around to build the foundations of
the new worlds, they make every animation distinctive from each other. In this
essay I will talk about one of the Disney classic movie Mulan, released in 1998. In
the movie, animators distorted the real world’s laws of physic to entertain the
audiences and illustrate the ideas they want their audiences to understand.
However, it is a dangerous game to play with the laws of physics, because going
too far will cause confusions.
One of the main purposes of making animation movies is to
entertain audiences; and Exaggeration is a great tool for it. Exaggeration in
animations means pushing the states beyond the reality, and making things to do
more than their capabilities, such as jumping too high, eating too much, or stretching
too long. Let look at a great example. At the beginning of the movie Mulan, Mulan’s grandma goes across a
busy street with her eyes closed, and then two carriages run into each other
and leave a ruin of explosion behind her.
This scene
exaggerates the consequence of carriages accidence. In real life, carriages won’t
run really fast as they are in a busy street shown in the movie. Even if carriages
collide, they will just break their front part at most. Though, the whole
carriages fall into pieces in the movie; it looks like they blast from inside
out. Yet, this exaggeration seems appropriated. One of the functions of exaggeration
is to make fun, and this scene does look funny. Besides, this exaggeration also
shows how much the grandma doesn’t care about the consequences her behaviors cause.
Another example is from the dragon Mushu. In the last fight with San-yu in the
emperor’s palace, Mushu uses only one blow of fire to burn out all the feathers
of the evil hawk in half of a second
Despite the fact that
in previous scenes Mushu’s fire basically serves as normal fire to burn stuffs.
Anyway, this exaggeration does look funny. What’s more than
that, it humiliate the evil hawks. In brief, exaggerated scenes are entertaining
and common in any other animations. The exaggeration means that they won’t
happen in real life, so they surprise and amuse the audience. It is a good tool
for animator to use.
Bending laws of physic can not only entertain audiences, but
also consolidate the ideas pointing out in animations. In Mulan, animators twist Isaac Newton’s the Law of Inertia to highlight
the qualities of characters’ physical-ability. For instance, to be on time for
the matchmaker, Mulan jumps out from her horse and lands steadily without any inertial
effect.
According to Isaac Newton’s Law of Inertia, an object moves
with constant, uniform motion until acted by an unbalanced force. Therefore, even
though there is strong fictional force from the ground, Mulan should still have
a lot of momentum as she just touches the ground; and she should more or less move
forward in the same direction with her horse. Yet, taking off the inertial effect
just telling the audience about how physically strong Mulan is, as she can land
from high-speed horse so easily. Further more, it is a clue hidden that, Mulan
is very different from the other girls who might never ride horses before. It
totally makes sense that she fails the matchmaker later. On the other hand, twisting
the Law of Inertia can describe how bad a person’s physical-ability is. In the
boot camp, when the rookies are trained above water on some wooden stickers,
they bump into each other and maintain on the air for a long time.
This scene is very funny, and the reason of it is that all
the rookies fail to control their body flexibly. That is to say, because of
inertial effect, the rookies stay on the air after they stop moving forward. Nevertheless,
they stay there too long, since there is gravity pulling downward without any
other forces to balance it. Yet, stretching the law of inertia, animators can
impress the audience by showing what the characters can do or cannot do. However,
if animators push it too much could result in unbelievable scene. If the
rookies bump into each other and maintain in the air for a really long time,
and make a long “train” behind Li Shang. Then audiences would realize
immediately that “Wow that is impossible to happen”. So we need to be ware that
there are limits to distort the laws of physic to present the points.
Besides twisting the laws of physics, animators can also
create new ones. Creating impossible forces help to amuse audience and support
the characters’ for their tasks in stories. For example, in the last fight with
San-yu, a kite flies Mushu and the cricket directly to the firework’s tower
without any strong and “obedient” winds.
Creating this imaginary winds is to serve
Mushu to get to the place he wants. Otherwise, it will take forever for them to
walk and the process of getting to the place is not significant to the movie. Moreover,
imaginary force will create funny scene as well. As Shang’s troop meet with
San-yu at the snow mountain, everybody is trying to escape from the avalanche, and
Ling’s hat fly high without a reasonable force.
It is similar to Mushu’s situation. Ling doesn’t throw the hat;
nothing else is flying except for the hat. It makes no sense, but it looks
funny and tells the audiences that Ling is very panicking. Just like a cat,
when cats are scared, their fur will straighten up. So the hat acts as the same
way; it flies high to show how scared Ling is. All of these imaginary forces
designed by animators to help characters to achieve their goals or to amuse the
audience. It is good to use imaginary forces so that the movie doesn’t have to stick
to the reality’s rule and explain every detail about how it happens. But
animators shouldn’t create any force that looks funny or helpful. That is to
say, they need to be “real” for the world in the animation. Mulan is not a pure fantasy or Sci-fi
movie, so if animators push the impossible forces too far will result in
confusions. For example, if Ling’s hat fly 10 feet high and fall back to his
head, audience will begin to think about where does the force come from,
instead of feeling the intense of the scene. We don’t want our audiences to
loose focus from what animators want them to see.
Mulan is great movie that teaches me a lot about the physic in
animations. There are so many tools for animators to use to build an
interesting world in a movie. One of the best ways is to bend the real world’s
laws of physic, so that the audiences can experience what they cannot see in real
life. For animators, breaking law of physic helps story telling and creates
funny scenes to amuse people. However, pushing too far will result in
confusions and make poor-developed movie. As a future animator (or
illustrator), bending laws of physic will be really helpful to amuse my
audience and consolidate my setting to the world. On the other hand, I should
also be concerned about how far I can go to maintain my works’ clearness.
