The Classical Elements: For The Birds

For The Birds is an excellent animation short by Pixar. I first saw it when I was a young child, and it still amuses me today, but I have chose to look at in now because of the camera angles it uses.

For The Birds by Pixar

This animation short uses the same sort of camera angles that I am wanting to use in my own animation. Other than the one exception when the small birds turn to look at the bigger bird, the entire animation is shot facing the same direction, and just uses a variety of different shots. I was a bit cautious about not using a variety of angles, as this can help portray a sense of space and the scene that the characters are acting/living in, but after seeing this short again, it has made me realise that you don't necessarily need to do this to make the animation interesting. I think that because I'm not doing using a variety, I will need to focus on using a range of different shots however like what Pixar have done here. I really like how they have used close ups to show the emotion of the birds, and how they have used medium shots to show how many of them there are on the line. I think the type of shot has been carefully considered, which is something I shall do with my own animation to make it more visually pleasing. 

The way the camera pans out to reveal more birds sitting on the line, is more or less what I wanted to try and achieve with my line candles, so if needs be I could use For The Birds as a guide to try and make the camera pan in the same way. 

I also like the way how the camera quickly zooms out to show how close to the ground the birds are because of the big bird weighing them down. It makes the scene feel more dramatic and this is something I would like to incorporate into my own short. I want the camera to quickly zoom out to reveal that they are sat on a cake in front of a human character, to help represent the shock that the candles are in. Hopefully I will be able to create a similar kind of effect to what Pixar have, as I think it has worked really well for them.