Simulacra -
The dream world hides a lack of reality, as is shown when Cobb first takes Ariadne into a dream, as she has a conversation with Cobb without realising they appeared at the cafe or how they got there.
Architects -
Postmodernism's foundation is the idea that everyone has their own idea of what reality is, and Inception's Architects are the physical form of this, as they can bend reality, changing what they want as long as the individual's subconscious can recognise it as being part of their own reality.
Fragmentary Story -
For the most part, the story follows a direct (although confusing) path apart from a small number of exception, namely the beginning and end. In the beginning of the film, Cobb infiltrates Saito's dream in order to get a safe code, waking up on shore and being dragged to Saito's table; while at the end of the film, Cobb is shown waking up on the same beach and being dragged to the table in the same way, with Saito looking old and 'full of regret', much like in the beginning of the film, with the only difference being a change of circumstances.
Time -
Time plays a major role in Inception as each layer deeper you go within a dream, time in the real world is slower, so five minutes in the real world equalled about 40 minutes in the first dream layer when Cobb was teaching Ariadne. This is explained as the subconscious is able to think faster than time goes by in the real world, although that is a hard claim to make as time is relative to an individual's perception, as someone who is having an enjoyable time watching a film might feel as though 2 hours has gone by quickly, someone else who dislikes it might believe that it felt like significantly longer than only 2 hours.
Ending -
When Cobb wakes up in the plane after escaping Limbo and arrives back home to see his children, the viewer is left wondering whether what is being shown on-screen is reality or just another dream, as the spinning top is never outright shown stopping. But, this also causes the viewer to ask 'what is the difference between a dream and reality?' as your world is filled with your own perceptions that define your interpretation of what reality really is.
Structuralism - The idea that everything has a structure, be it religion, language or culture, and that these 'structures' are what lie beneath the surface of meaning. Meaning, a structuralist may claim to understand why a language uses a certain sound, even though the native speakers themselves don't know
Ahistorical - A lacking of interest for tradition and history/historical development
Irreducible - Something that either cannot or should not be reduced or simplified in any way
Objective - The ability to view something while disregarding your own biases
Universal - If something is 'universal', it can be seen, felt and understood by everyone around the world, no matter their background, as it transcends language and culture
Definitive - The final iteration of something as it can no longer be improved due to having reached an absolute peak
Post-Structuralism - A critique on Structuralism, especially in regards to how it claims to study the truth but is heavily influenced by biases and the structuralists own thoughts
Reflexivity - The idea that a person's own thoughts and behaviours are biased, meaning their values and thoughts will be portrayed within their work
The Unreliable Narrator - A narrator or character within a story who feeds the viewer/reader with a story that shouldn't be taken at face value. An unreliable narrator can also be used as a plot point within the story as the viewer/reader becomes aware of the falsities they've been told
The Enlightenment Project - The 'enlightenment project' is reflected in 'positivism'; the importance of scientific methodology. It is the belief that human rationality is the source of knowledge, leading to the encouragement of the rejection of past authorities such as the Church. This led to an increase in belief that rationality can be applied to all aspects of life and the world, resulting in all problems faced by humans being solved.
These are the ideas we've come up with so far, although 1-3 are the ideas given to us during the brief by Alan.
Numbers 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 11, 12 and 15 - 23 were ideas put forward by me (17 overall).
1. Easily
Distracted Girl
2. Captain
Angry
3. Health
Man & Safety Boy
4. Someone
who can make anyone sweat profusely
5. Hero
with skewed priorities
6. Road
Sign Placer (who thinks he has control over where people go)
7. Environmentalist
8. Man/woman
who doesn’t need to Blink
9. Galactic
Man
10. Juggler (Has ‘Super Strength’ but
only uses it to juggle)
11. Man/woman who doesn’t sleep
12. Time Traveller
13. Man/woman with bad luck
14. Vegan Warrior (he/she is vegan but
only has the power to create cooked meat)
15. The Damsel
16. Man/woman whose hair grows
quickly/instantly (gets his head shaved by a barber but hair grows back
immediately)
17. Librarian/Historian who can see the
entire history of an object by touching it
18. Man/woman who can fly (& super
strength?), but only uses it to give private air tours
19. Man/woman with the ability to
control arachnids, but has arachnophobia
20. Man/woman with the power to
manipulate metal but only uses it for the manufacturing industry
21. Man/woman who can control
electricity, but works as an electrician
22. Man/woman whose body heals
immediately (and cannot die) who works as a test dummy
23. Man/woman who can read minds, but
must stare intensely with fingers on his temples for it to work (leading to
most people thinking “why is that creep staring at me like that?” etc.)
We've discussed making our animation be comprised of a number of short animations, each featuring a separate 'failed superhero', similar to '25 Ways to Quit Smoking' by Bill Plympton. As a group, we'll now narrow down the number to approximately 5, which will then be fleshed out. Please let us know which of these you think would work well, or even contribute your own ideas! It would help a lot.
Genre -
Throughout the film, Tarantino takes inspiration from a variety of different genres, including horror, action and Japanese cinema, never sticking to one and instead meshing them all together to create an original melting pot.
Animated Scene -
Perhaps the most immediately noticeable example of disjointedness in Kill Bill (2003), is the heavily Japanese-inspired animated scene which introduces O-Ren Ishii (Lucy Liu). While it still maintains the same directed style and over-the-top gore with a sense of humour as the rest of the film, the fact that one section suddenly switches to being animated feels very strange, both while watching and after the fact. Music -
The clearest examples of this are all in the final act, when The Bride (Uma Thurman) goes to the Japanese inn to confront O-Ren Ishii. When the viewer is first introduced to the historical and very traditional inn, all that can be heard is a small Japanese band performing songs in a modern Western style. Then, a while later during the final confrontation between The Bride and O-Ren, where you might again expect traditional Japanese music, Tarantino chose to use an upbeat Spanish-style soundtrack instead, almost creating the feeling that the visual style is butting heads with the audio.
Discontinuity -
Tarantino frequently delivers a discontinuous narrative as he not only stops the film to label what Act the viewer is witnessing, but he also shows the story in a disjointed way, as the film starts with The Bride killing Copperhead (Vivica A. Fox), the second planned kill on her list. After which, Tarantino switches to show how The Bride was almost killed a number of years ago and her waking from a coma, before progressing with the first kill on her list, O-Ren Ishii.
Humour Within the Gore -
Kill Bill (2003) is a bloody and gory film throughout, with the vast majority of the scenes featuring blood spraying from someone's lost limb. In fact, it's so gory that Tarantino had to make the Crazy 88 fight scene black and white as a means to censor it. But despite this, Tarantino gave the gore a comedic quality with how excessive it is, even including lines of dialogue in an attempt to give the scenes comedic effect, like this for example: https://youtu.be/NJbo_8mKG-c
High Modernism - A form of Modernity, which heavily focuses on science and technology and relies heavily on the expertise of scientists, engineers and other intellectuals
Capitalist - A system in which those in control of production, distribution and exchange of wealth largely consists of private individuals or corporations
Superabundance - An excessive amount of something or excessively abundant
Disconnected - Not coherent or irrational
Pop - 'Pop Culture' references something that is aimed directly towards the tastes of the general masses
Fragmentary - Broken; disconnected; incomplete
Simulacra - A slight or superficial likeness
Eclectic Nostalgia - Various causes of a nostalgic feeling towards something in the viewers' past
Superficiality - Insubstantial, insignificant or shallow
Flippant - Not being serious, despite the subject perhaps being serious, in an attempt to appear funny or clever
Depthless - A lack of depth; insubstantial
Fabulation - To tell invented stories
Pastiche - A piece of art that was made to resemble artwork from another period of time or artist
Bricolage - Something created using diverse variety of things
Aleatory - A random events or something relying on chance
We each went off to design logos based around our group name 'Twisted Turtle Studios'. All of us ended up with a fair number of sketches but managed to narrow it down to one design from each of us.
Michaela, Douy and myself were put together as a group for this term's project and, after a bit of a struggle, decided to call ourselves 'Twisted Turtle Studios'. We then quickly came up with a plan to each go off separately and design some logos, consulting each other along the way. This is what I came up with:
We all agreed that the more simplistic and playful look of 3 and 4 worked best, but looked more like a tortoise because I gave it legs instead of flippers
I then set out to design the flippers, trying to replicate the simplicity of the original design while keeping it recognisable. We agreed that 2's front flipper worked best, but the rear flipper of 3 was much more interesting
Michaela suggested getting rid of the facial features for a more simplistic look, as the nose and eye didn't add much to the overall design. We also decided to ditch the spikes on the turtles' shell as, again, they didn't add much to the logo
After trying a fair number of colour combinations, we decided to go forward with 3, 14, 15 as well as a mixture between 10 and 14.
I still wasn't quite happy with the way the designed looked, so I completely removed the line art which created a much simpler and more professional look to the design
I then created a bigger gap between the shell and the body of the turtle, and better defined the gap between the turtles head and flipper, resulting in this as the final design