Anime Cinematography Blog

Muybridge's Strings is a short film by Koji Yamamura telling parallel stories of Eadweard Muybridge’s life and a Mother’s life with her daughter. The connecting theme is time. Muybridge’s sequential photography captures moments in time and in a way the Mother desires to do similarly with her time with her daughter. ________________________________________________________________________ The first noticeable visual element is Eadweard Muybridge’s story was animated in black and white while the Mother’s story was in warm color. The primary purpose is to separate the past from modern day. The secondary purpose is to create a mood that befits their situation. The black and white palette fits Muybridge’s dark and tumultuous life. The warm color reinforces the feeling of love and affection between mother and daughter.

In the first episode of Death Parade a husband’s suspicion about his wife’s infidelity comes to light during a painful game of darts. For these types of scenarios the natural inclination for the audience is to ask the question, “Who do I believe?” However, this episode’s camera work actually leads the audience to an answer to that question by presenting one character as more believable than the other. Of course, this was done as misdirection. When the husband finally revealed his suspicion, he was shot with a high angle and low angles. In the visual language, the common use for high angle is to portray one as weak and inferior and the low angle to portray one as strong and superior. For this scene the high angle and low angles were used to give the audience an unleveled view of the character. The audience could easily associate these unleveled shots with emotionally instability. These shots magnify his suspicion and turn it to baseless paranoia. As a result, he’s po...

De_Riria_Subasutaimu is a surreal and abstract short film about grief. It shows a husband and wife dealing with it in different ways. Just in case you haven’t watched it yet, here’s the short film: The film is specifically about the grief of pregnancy/child loss. This grief is presented in both a surreal state and a more grounded manner through parallel storylines of a husband and wife. The surreal is portrayed through the dreamlike journey of the husband, which is a mix of escapism, depression and resilience. Much of the husband’s visual storytelling is consisted of repetitive and rhythmic imagery. Even the though the journey is abstract, the strong use of rhythm and repetition organizes the composition. This organized composition is a visual progression that leads the audience along this dreamlike journey. The wife’s story is more grounded but not without strong composition. Since she stays in her hospital room, much of her emotions are expressed by adding, subtractin...

This episode of Mushishi told a story of a man whose memories and physical being merged with a supernatural tree. The visual narrative sets up the fusion between man and tree with the use of color, tone and space. These wide shots of Kanta blend him with the color and tone of the woods as if he’s almost part of it. Kanta’s clothing share the same brown color and moderately grey tone that dominate his surroundings. The limited color and tonal separation between Kanta and the woods served as visual foreshadowing of his eventual transformation. Another thing to note is the use of shafts of light as leading lines. Even though Kanta blends with the environment the leading lines keep the audience’s attention on him In the scene leading up to Kanta’s fusion with the tree, regression in spatial depth were used in the wide shots to reflect his transformation. The first two wide shots use deep space composition to emulate a three dimensional world. The first acco...

The temptation of Jeanne d'Arc was strongly told through visual storytelling. The use of light, shadow and other compositional elements painted a picture of a character whose core beliefs are about to be shaken. In Episode 9 Jeanne was accused of being a witch and imprisoned. In her prison cell she prays to a carving of an angel. The scene then cuts to a canted angle of the angel carving (image above). The canted angle was not only used to produce a sense of unease befitting the scene but also to visually portray Martinet’s attempt to shake her beliefs. The shot above is the strongest compositional representation of Jeanne’s predicament. In a show about demons and gods, a ray of light can be strongly associated with heavenly beings and a way to portray one as holy and ethereal. Jeanne praying in the dark, separated from the ray of light, conveys the lost of her saintly image and a sense of abandonment by the gods. Of course this imagery reinforces the belief Martinet wan...

The cold intro was my favorite moment of this episode. As beautiful as the aesthetics of this show can be a times with its vivid imagery and stylistic close-ups, the constant usage can dilute their effect. Low key moments like this cold intro function as a breather from both a visual and pacing standpoint. It’s just a plain scene of two friends having a conversation while walking home from school. This simplicity allows the characters’ actions and dialogue to speak for themselves, such moments can even provide a purer sense of sincerity. The scene starts with a tracking shot of electric lines as Watari laments his delayed journey to stardom. Then it cuts to panning cutaways of the street. Without even showing the characters the scene establishes what’s happening. We know they’re walking due to the tracking shot and we know their surroundings due to the cutaways. Also, by not showing the characters it slows the scene down for the intended subdued effect. The c...

The camera work used for Takeshi’s and Emi’s performances differed from each other in order to present their differing play style and motives. Even though both share a similar desire to overcome Kousei, their approach was different and the camera work reflected that. Takeshi’s performance was an exhibition of technical excellence and skill; facets where he’s trying to surpass Kousei. The performance had a confrontational and competitive feel to it. To convey Takeshi’s competitive spirit, much of the camera work were zoom in/push in shots that put more focus and attention on his intense performance. While Emi’s is also trying to surpass Kousei, her performance was less about competing but more about reaching out to Kousei. She wants the old Kousei back, the one who played with emotions and inspired her to become a performer. Emi is a performer that wears her heart on her sleeves and through this she uses music to send an emotional message to Kousei. This is reflected by the...