Messages without a language

For many stories or dramas, most usual ways to reveal a story or a character are dialogues, narrating and visual texts. One film, programme or play can become more classical if there is one sentence shocking the spirits.

Picture of Scent of a Woman From The film freak of NZ

'... But there is nothing like the sight of an amputated spirit. There is... no prosthetic for that. '

- The film Scent of a Woman (1992)

Despite the attractive contribution the words can give to a story, there are also numerous of amazing films, plays, or part of them that without any dialogues, or singing. 

Poster of The Gold Rush from Spectacular Attractions

Many silent films were performed with sparse dialogues showed by texts on the screen which could consume much time of the film to make audiences feel bored if there were more. This was definitely restricted by the technology in that age. Contrarily, many attention could be captured simply by the movement and visual revealing. This even make fantastic effect to contemporary watchers.

In my practice project, the animation Quenching Blue, one idea I would like to embody is to implement the messages in it without any language. There are two relative considerations. One is about the time arranging. It is quite a simple play. However, it would be drastic time-consuming if I project to finish most work alone. Face moving and speaking animation is never what I am good at. This complex job may cost more time to me than others. The other concern is giving the characters dialogues would bring some complicated work of finding voice suppliers ( for seven main characters).

Picture of Machinarium from its Official Website

As a simple story, dialogues can be less necessary to complement the revealing. About this, the fabulous tiny video game Machinarium definitely inspired me a lot. It can not be denied how this impressive work effects me for every aspect. One peculiarity of it is there is no one word spoken by any character inside. However everyone playing can understand the meaning of them. Of cause, there are some numbers and English characters in some puzzles. Meanwhile they did not ruin any ambiance of the whole game.

What I am planning to give my small work is a style like this. Furthermore, a trail will be embodied that no text would appear in this animation except for titles at beginning and ending.

For this shot, I wanted to show an attitude of the factory that 'ancient robots are expired'. It was not easy for me to give a symbol to render this meaning. Consequently I could just show an alternative meaning which was 'ancient robots can never come back into this factory'. It can be observed this plan is quite a challenge for me. On the other hand, every challenge is an opportunity to improve myself. It can be believed that every puzzle can be dealt with work and to discuss with friends, professors and my tutor.

Reference

Amanita Design. (2009). Machinarium. Retrieved from http://machinarium.net/demo/

Brest, M. (Director), (1992), Scent of a Woman [Motion Picture]. USA: City Light Films.

North, D. (2009, December 31). Picture of the Week #10: The Gold Rush. [Web blog post]. Retrieved from http://drnorth.wordpress.com/2009/12/31/picture-of-the-week-10-the-gold-rush/

The Film Freak of NZ (2012, March 22). Scent of a Woman. [Web blog post]. Retrieved from http://nzfilmfreak.wordpress.com/2012/03/22/scent-of-a-woman/