Wait, it means what?

We discussed some fairly confusing subjects this week regarding semiotics, a term particularly hard to define mainly because it encompasses so much. I find the subject of linguistics and meaning especially very interesting. After digging through Daniel Chandler's website Semiotics for Beginners, it reminded me a lot of all the reading on Linguistics I did in the past.

A man of particular interest to me is Paul Grice and his maxims. His general theory is known as the cooperative principle and describes how people interact with each other through a few maxims. Paul Grice himself defines the Cooperative Principle as follows: "Make your contribution such as it is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which you are engaged." His maxims describe how people should speak to communicate succesfully, such as be truthful, clear, relevant and offer enough information. However, this is of course not how people speak. There is of course a lot more to say on this subject, but since this is a blog post and not a book, I'll skip the maxims for now.

What's more interesting is his theory on what is implied, which he calls implicature. What a person says and what he means can be two different things, and more importantly; nobody will ever say something for no reason at all. Even things that might seem irrelevant and unimportant are said for a reason, may it be simple social bonding (nearly all weather-related conversation) or an implication towards something else.

Now how does this all relate to animation? A lot, I think. The Cooperative Principle can be applied to animation too. Animation is something we create from the ground up, which means that everything in an animation is there for a reason. In live action this is not the case, something might be caught in the film accidentally, the object itself won't have any meaning at all. I'll illustrate with an example from UP. In the movie clip below is the scene at the beginning of UP, where the old man's life with his wife Ellie is summarized. In these scenes, Ellie is represented by the colour magenta. Many of the lighting around her is magenta, seen most prominently in the church where they get married. After she dies and Carl returns to his home, the last shred of magenta fades away from the house, showing that she is well and truly gone. This is no coincidence. The light didn't happen to be purple that day. Because everything in an animation is orchestrated, some amazing things can be done, as clearly proven by this amazing film.

Editing can of course achieve some measure of this effect in live action films. But creating an animation forces us to think about it. In a live action film, such effects MAY be considered. In an animation, they will always be considered, there is no choice.