When CGI is used to deliver a visual masterpiece

In this essay I would like to analyse the french animated feature “The Little Prince” (2015) focusing particularly on how photography has been used in order to deliver a final product that uses the images above all to communicate.

“The Little Prince”, as stated above, is a french animation made in 2015 by Canadian animators and directed by Mark Osborne, the American helmer behind “Kung Fu Panda”.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s story, published as a short novella in 1943, has been reproduced in many forms and multiple times quickly becoming one of the most famous children’s tales in the world. What differs in Osborne’s version is the incredible job done in ‘extrapolating the book’s theme into a new story’ (Scott Foundas, 2015) thus creating a story within a story that perfectly accompanies the movie’s main plot. Saint-Exupery’s original tale, in fact, is only presented to the viewers as a book in which The Aviator, one of the protagonist of the film, has written his life’s story. A wonderful touch by the authors is that the book actually contains the real pages from the original novel.

The film is brilliantly divided into two story-lines: the present, represented in the nowadays standard hyperrealistic CGI, with exaggerated cartoony big eyes figures, detailed lighting and gradient shadows, and the story told by The Aviator, written and illustrated in his book, executed via a lovely stop-motion. Besides the contrast given to the two different narratives, the exquisite touch of the cutouts is that the ‘papery textures of the characters […] evoke their fragility’ (Leslie Felperin, 2015).

CGI in movies is most of the times used to create something that would be impossible or would take too much time and/or money to make in other ways, for example Visual Effects as spaceships or non-existing species, see “Avatar”, but sometimes Computer Generated Images can be used as an extension to the narrative, this is what Aylish Wood (2002: 375) would call ‘non-dynamic’ spectacle. What differs them from the ‘dynamic’ (Aylish Wood, 2002: 375) spectacle effects is that they ‘can be used to evoke detailed images, but they remain primarily in the background’ (Aylish Wood, 2002: 375).

The benefit of using non-dynamic spectacle effects is that you can create situations otherwise impossible to have, for example the scene where in the first episode of the first season of “Breaking Bad”, the protagonist Walter White has gun in his hand and the camera goes inside the pistol as a transition between the scenes. A shot like this without CGI would be impossible. In this way, the director can expresses and transmits to the viewers different emotions and put them in an unusual position where they have never been before. Because something like this would not be possible in real life, the viewers experience something unexpected and, more importantly, beyond their imagination.

However, in animation features this is on a completely different level. As animated films are entirely done in CGI, at least the 3D ones, they have both dynamic and non-dynamic spectacle effects. The cleverness is in the director’s choices and in “The Little Prince” Osborne, with the help of cinematographer Kris Kapp, has done an incredible work in selecting whether to add spectacle and whether to remove it, creating a visual masterpiece that narrates the story through images rather than words, completely in contrast with Voltaire’s (1989) idea that “the focus [of a play] must remain in the lines that are spoken, not in the décor”.

Extraordinary is the way Kapp manages to separate the two worlds. In this case I am not talking about the differences between CGI and stop-motion but rather the different worlds in which the two protagonists live. To better understand my point let me briefly overview the main story of the film; there is a little girl whose life has already been planned to the minute by her single mom. On the other hand there is an old man, an old aviator of whom life’s only purpose is to never forget his childhood.

These two very different worlds are perfectly represented in the most simple, but nonetheless clever way just using photography. The Little Girl lives a life which is scheduled to the minute and even graphically explained on a wall-board done by her mom. Kapp represents this utilitarian lifestyle by using only symmetrical framing and geometry, especially perpendicular and parallel objects or lines, to create a sense of structured industrialisation. On the other hand, the scenes with The Aviator are chaotic in their composition. Everything is quite confusing, messy and definitely not perfectly nor symmetrically arranged, conveying the bizarre protagonist’s personality and his disorder in which asymmetrical balance reigns, creating ‘a feeling of movement and [suggesting] a creative and dynamic mood’ (Bronwyn Lewis: 2014). Whilst The Little Girl has a daily routine to follow, The Aviator does not have any rules, nor schedule, he simply goes where his heart takes him. This contrast is majestically done merely through the use of cinematogrphy. Similarly to what Kubrick did in many of his movies, one particular example is “A Clockwork Orange”, simply by employing ‘the use of symmetrically framed scenes to imply the shift from a balanced environment to one of chaos’ (Allison Janes: 2008). Osborne uses symmetry also to introduce calmness into a scene, for example when The Little Girl is studying, and then alter it by having The Aviator entering in the scene, not necessarily in person but oftentimes with objects related to him, like when the plane he is building in his garden explodes and one of its blades crashes into The Little Girl’s house.

Besides how the scenes were framed, another factor which had particularly relevance in differentiating these two lifestyles is the colour palette used. The Aviator scenes are much brighter and saturated and as Camgöz, Yener & Güvenç (2002) discovered, ‘colours are seen as more pleasant by an increase of both [these] characteristics’. The scenes are filled with warm colours that, Hemphill (1996) suggested, evoke pleasing feelings such as ‘happiness, joy and hope’. On the other hand, The Little Girl, and her surrounding, is always portrayed in grey, gloomy oleaster tones, which are associated with negative feelings, ‘such as boredom and sadness’ (Grandjean: 1973) and even ‘hatred and depression’ (Dimitrova, Martino, Elenbaas & Agnihotri: 1999).

What differs this film from its competitors is the genuine and sincere idea behind it. As Peter Stache (2013) perfectly described in his thesis, Hollywood’s main goal has always been ‘profit maximisation’, but considering that “The Little Prince” is a French production it has nothing to do with Los Angeles’s studios’ approaches to making movies. In fact, this film is one of the most expensive animation features ever done, which perfectly accompanies Osborne’s goal in the making of the film, a statement against an utilitarian and industrialised society. It is a film about emotions, fear of forgetting what truly matters in life, fear of becoming one in the million, with no originality nor personality. It wants us to realise where our society is addressing us, trying to make us remember what are the true things in life. “The Little Prince” has done what Hollywood never accomplished, this film was not done to make money, but rather to make art.

“The Little Prince” is a clear, but very simple example of how even in animation features cinematography is extremely important and does not have to be underrated. It has to be used well and sometimes even pushed over the limit so it can deliver the message wanted. As human beings we have always been more attracted to images rather than words, so it is not surprising that we are more fascinated by good photography in films than good dialogues. Ivan Turgenev (1862), the first of many who discussed this theory, said that ‘the drawing shows at a glance what would be spread over ten pages in a book’. In his case he referred to the art of painting but his statement is easily transferred to new medias such as photography and film. Jean-Pierre Geuens (2005) analysed deeply the real meaning of style and what really differs a good film from a bad one. Good films spread ‘the creative imagination, artistry, and vision of concerned filmmakers’, in bad films nothing ever happens, they’re just multiple scenes put together that do not deliver anything to the viewer. Because it is “undercover”, photography in movies is oftentimes taken for granted by the viewers, not knowing how much work goes behind each shot and how important good cinematography really is in the making of the masterpiece.

Sources:

• Camgöz, N., Yener, C., & Güvenç, D. (2002): Effects of hue, saturation, and brightness on preference. Color Research & Application
• Dimitrova, N., Martino, J., Elenbaas, H. and Agnihotri, L. (1999): Color SuperHistograms for Video Representation
• Felperin, L. (2015): ‘The Little Prince’ (‘Le Petit Prince’): Cannes Review. The Hollywood Reporter
• Founders, S. (2015): Film Review: ‘The Little Prince’. Variety
• Geuens, J-P. (2005): The Grand Style
• Grandjean, E. (1973): Ergonomics of the home
• Hemphill, M. (1996): A note on adults’ color-emotion associations. Journal of Genetic Psychology
• Hulshof, B. (2013): The influence of colour and scent on people’s mood and cognitive performance in meeting rooms
• Janes, A. (2008): Fearful Symmetry: Symmetry and Architecture in Film
• Lewis, B. (2014): 12 Days of Framing: Tips & Tricks for Great Composition
• Pierre, J-M. (1989): L’Invention de la mise en scène
• Stache, P. (2013): Hollywood is Dead. Long Live Hollywood
• Turgenev, I. (1862): Fathers and Sons
• Wood, A. (2002): Technoscience In Contemporary American Film: Beyond Science Fiction