 Welcome back to our acting analysis and tips for animators and today I'm gonna take a look at the Dark Knight And I want to cover character mechanics character relationships with the sets pantomime weight There's a lot to cover in what is probably going to be a part one of the dark knight That's right part one because I'm only covering the first five minutes and I have a bunch of stuff I want to talk about it's usually part of my Camera lecture actually but there's so many acting bits and just mechanic bits and pantomime stuff I want to talk about but again, this is there's a lot and this movie I love this movie. There's a lot of other stuff I want to talk about So it probably will have to be a part two or three in the future But before I start, you know the intro and if you don't know the intro This is why I'm having this intro. Hi, my name is JD and I do acting analysis tips like these I do animation analysis tips. I do animation lectures. I do rib reviews product reviews feedback clips I do all kinds of stuff and if you're interested feel free to browse around the channel And if you like it subscribe But if you don't like it, you don't have to subscribe You just kind of check it out and kind of keep watching until maybe you like and then subscribe I don't know but that is it. That is the pitch and let's get to the sequences first up I know the awesomeness is Bonnie mechanics. So I want to look at this section through here as they land This is to be interesting and often in my classes the students ask what should I do for mechanics clip and I like This here the aspect of being in the air And the surface that's actually lower So you got the combination of people hanging and you got that awesome asymmetry because it's going to be fairly tricky To stay balanced and you got two different people for contrast, right? You already got a post contrast there But it's also they're in the air and they're landing on something That is somewhat uneven and slippery with all the little stones You can see this here as they land this person here landing in an offset pose Has a bit of a struggle and you can see how he's probably going to fall forward Are they struggling then the other person is leaning so far back that slips here And potentially breaks the wrist here Oh, but it's hard. It's a hard impact. You can see it here. You can add some more heavier drastic impact on the head But this is to me is very interesting because again, you have air So you're hanging onto something and then you have a drop So that's another type of weight and then you have impact on the ground But the ground is not solid. It's kind of slippery So there's a bunch of stuff in terms of bottom mechanics that you can do with this type of environment and surface And again, something to think about what is your character standing on landing on The property of the surface can give you a bunch of cool ideas for your animation Second one is this as those guys those shady people come in here. They shoot everybody's alarmed You got the cop here in the back. He gets taken out But the main thing I want to focus on is him. So if you watch him, he is Deep in his thoughts somehow right looking at something is writing. He's working and that's his office And he hears this and goes back and what I love about that part is that As he goes back, he immediately pushes himself back on the rolling chair against the wall So he also looks over kind of guides the audience to the rest of this But I like that he uses his environment to protect himself to shield himself If he would stay here and look around There would be a higher chance for other people to see him because he's kind of exposed But as he goes back, especially hearing that the noise behind him He goes against the wall And stays there to stay protected. So as always if you watch my clips, you know, I love Props and sets and that the relationship that characters can have and in his case He uses that to his advantage. So if you do put a character in a set, it's not just well I have a set I got to put him in there. What else could you do with the set? How can the set drive the performance? How can the actor in your case you take advantage of the set? Then as you progress here, it's all about weight and actually a bunch of weight clips This is clip number one So the weight doesn't have to be like the classic thing that actually I did Where you have a box and your character, you know, squats down and lifts up the box as your classic box assignment But in this case you have weight with this character here pulling this character Towards him. Now, it's so heavy. There's such a pull that you can see this leg is actually getting off the ground He uses this leg to stabilize to push this way and then pull this guy over That's already an interesting sense of weight and showing this is a little bit of push-off through here But he can't do it too much because he's holding the gun So it's a lot of pulling and see here lifting of the leg And then the other side of the the weight equation is this character So you have the struggle and the lift off here by being pulled That's already a sense of weight Then the interaction and the contact with this surface the way he goes down here Slides on the surface and then drops because at this point the character is done Leg goes back down Let's go of the character and this is now your bouncing ball in a way or your flower sack or like Your second me here Hitting this and once again Oh, this is just painful to watch your wrists But then you got the impact here. You got the drag in the legs. This is to hear the impact Bam legs go down. So this is really cool in terms of just ideas for a weight assignment It doesn't have to be just lifting your box. You have all of this Bam and actually this finishes in something cool that I always kind of add in my lectures where it's neat to see this reaction Goes over there and then she's in this reaction And I like that just as a general idea where you can use this for all kinds of ways I think I've covered that before in a previous movie or previous tv show where you could have someone You know, I think the example was a like a retail store. Maybe a customer comes in And the person working there like the customer hasn't exposed the face yet and the person working there hates their job So they're super grumpy or sees the customer and maybe the customer's facing us And then as the customer turns around to face the employee The wipe now reveals a very happy employee kind of like hi I'm pretending to you know to like you and to like my job even though I really hate it I just like the idea of a wipe and what you could do in terms of just the character reveals Well, like I said, there are more weight examples This one Is the swinging of a really heavy bag and what I like about that part is the end of it So you have this swing Pivoting off of here He puts that on his shoulder. So now the pivot is like this But he's kind of done with the swing and I know that he turns and he takes a step But I like the idea of there's so much weight in this That the momentum continues even though the body is now stopping Well, this bag whatever weight you have here is continuing because you can't just stop And that weights the turn of this pivoting off of here is going to now make the body turn At least the upper body because this is kind of connected and to some degree also the root and the rest So if you ignore that the character here is actually turning and taking a step Just think of if you are holding a really heavy bag and you swing it around And all you're doing mechanics wise is this you're pointing this way And you turn towards camera But then your body stops and the bag continues You're going to continue to turn because at one point the bag is going to overshoot You kind of drag turn your body around just kind of think of those mechanics when you have something like this Interacting with the character and actually again part of this whole sequence is this So here's the second part again Not as heavy both legs are there. It takes a couple steps here It's the same idea of pulling And the character will fall but the difference here is that she Holds on to him. Ah and it's this it's the other Interesting part of weight is that she falls and now that weight Is dragging him down. So the sudden pull you can see the reaction in the hand and the body And how he goes down. She kind of he doesn't kind of let go. She's kind of dragging down They both hold on hold on to each other. I think this is an interesting display of weight as well Right. So you got the pull you got the slide over you got the fall Interesting. So this time my dog opened the door or then decided to come in. Okay. Merci I'm a little one helping me closing the door anyway. So going back to this you have multiple Examples of weight you have a pull weight of him pulling her You have the weight of her falling and then the weight of her then pulling this character down Again, it's an interesting combination of weight display And then I'm going to go back to this character with just this action here And you might think of really just this putting the glasses down. Yes. I love it. So Why do I love this? This Is his office. Yes, of course, but this goes back to having your character be environment and is this environment familiar or not So because this is all his stuff. He's worked here probably a couple years. I'm going to assume. Anyway, he's familiar He's very familiar with this. So in a normal situation, he would grab the glasses And just put them down anywhere if you would talk to someone a person is here. That's a great drawing here Anyway, he would talk to this person He could easily grab those glasses and just put them down without looking because he knows where things are He's very familiar. You can blindly do things in the environment because you have muscle memory What he does though, he's like grabs the glasses And then looks why does he look because he doesn't want to make a sound He doesn't want to accidentally put it somewhere because maybe he's nervous And then the glasses fold out and they make a noise and then people know he's here So he looks and decides i'm going to put them here but he still Turns away to look at what is going on over there, but but look at this Turns the glasses. What does he do? He puts down this side of his hand first Then puts down the glasses. I know I am massively reading into this and as with all of these analysis clips I'm probably talking out of my ass my whatever behinds And I'm probably looking into things and seeing things that are either not there or the actor did not intend I don't care because I like this moment and I like my interpretation of it selfishly And that's what I'm going to talk about because that's what I'm going to use in you know potential future clips on my own So I love that he puts down the glasses with this first because skin Contact to this is not going to be as loud if he looks away and then puts down the glasses There could be a situation where this connecting with this is going to make a noise. He doesn't want to have so Putting this down first is the most quiet way And then he puts down the glasses because he knows the hand is now on the table It's safe for me to put down the glasses Mind blown. I know this is an insane interpretation of all of this But I'll like it and I'm going to stick to it and actually staying with this character is this moment, right? So you got this guy going crazy here shooting shooting shooting Turns around we got this moment here and then into that So there are a bunch of stuff here. I want to talk about something in here I want to talk about something there's so much to do here. So why do I like this moment is because of the blink Just this So the couple awesome things of him grabbing something off-screen. You don't quite know what is going on and you have a Specific look and blink again. I'm going to go back to this. Well as he does this you're wondering What is he doing? Then you have a cool reveal of one Bam goes down to the breaking of the glasses Reveal he has this weapon here and then as we continue here This is a cool not in the way a weight assignment But a cool body mechanics thing of him pushing himself with a nice extended pose here Into a slippery environment, which again is not seen too often in student shots where a character has More of an interaction with the environment. So this could be something slippery something sticky something slippery Onto a carpet you can feel that bump So just think of thinking about that as you start a shot and you want to do mechanics and you You are putting a character in the environment again surface property How will your character interact with that and is this something cool? You could use it in your shop But it's going back to this Why do I like this because he closes his eyes here one two? It's already kind of closed. So that's one two three Four it starts to open but still four frames and then we can see an opening and then he opens his eyes Slowly when he's in so why is this at least to me important? Four frames instead of a quick blink of one frame. It's because with this To me he sounds or sounds he looks relaxed. He looks confident He doesn't look stressed and this is only because I am annoying my students all the time about every Frame counts. So if you're blinking if I'm turning around and there's something crazy happening and I'm going like this That's fairly alert. You can go like this and you might be really nervous and Processing a bunch of stuff. But if there's crazy action, you're going like this That's either you don't care You're not bothered by it. You're fairly confident about what you're going to do So even down to blinks as an animator, you have to think about every single frame Do I blink for one frame two frames three or four? What does that mean? How will my character come across and how will the audience interpret that and the conclusion of the sequence is this here? So as he continues to shoot this guy the couple things a I like because of the mask He has really exaggerated looks you watch this here looks around Then you have this morning we get back to it. Let's go back to the mask And you have this here. He asked him something and look at how he looks at him Looks up to think this sides and says yes Like it's very exaggerated because of the mask and this is kind of cool. I like this It's very animated in a way and you can also use this maybe as a shot This character does not have a mask You can do profile lip sync and now you have a character with a mask and just think about that How would you really communicate without the help of eyes? There are no darts there's nothing in the mouth the static face And it's all about body language in terms of what the head is doing. I think that's kind of cool Going back though Is the beginning here so as he shoots him and he misses there's this moment Ah, he does this This goes to me in the category of pantomime A lot of times when animators do pantomime They basically have a character and it's kind of like a closed mouth situation all the time Where there's you know, whatever ground the character does something pantomime is around and that's it Definitely some movement in here and some facial expressions, but you rarely see Yeah, a character doing this actually having Not saying words, but it could be grunting it could be yelling it could be something in terms of frustration going Doesn't have to have sound you can still go big with your emotion Including a yell for something that has no sound or You do add sound so your lip sync doesn't always have to be Words it could also be and again this wouldn't be exactly lip sync But it would be using sounds and you can use yells and grunts and coughs and all kind of stuff I think you can expand kind of the horizon of a pantomime shop And a lip sync shop and I love this. I love this idea of him going Just being frustrated because he can't hit him Then as we go forward you looked at this here. This is just a quick moment because of contrast He's leaning this way and then he goes. Yeah, you know what you're dealing with your friends are dead That's what he says here and I love that he goes from this angle To this angle so a last little contrast moment And he doesn't do it exactly on the beat of him saying the word it's kind of in between I know it's a small little thing, but to me this is very Animator-friendly of just movement using depth of the scene. It's cool in terms of mechanics, right? You can see full body mechanics and ending up closer for more facial acting To me this is a really cool shot in terms of structuring in terms of what you can show off mechanics And a lip sync And a nice little contrast moment at the end. It's really really cool. Anyway, we got to this here And then we have this moment here shoots He's out and then he shoots him here and I'm going to show you this It's the moment of when he falls and the Joker does this Why because it's such a simple thing in terms of animation So imagine your character did this or did this to another character, right? And this is your character So imagine it was something good or bad in this case. Let's go with something bad This guy shot this guy. This is a horrible act Now if he just does this that's already bad enough. He looks at him Basically watching him die. But then if you do this It's almost like he's studying like oh, I'm curious. That's interesting This person is in pain this person is suffering how cruel and depending on you know How vicious this is and to whom this is done to could be you know old person a kid This would be even more cruel to watch in terms of animation It's just a rotation. It's just a rotate over. Yes, of course You're gonna have influence on the neck and the chest and blah blah blah blah, but technically it's just a head tilt But in terms of the character what the character does here in terms of oh interesting I'm interested in your suffering That's just a crazy thing then to watch and then to see The personality and the character of this character Just because of a head tilt just like with the blink to me It's a simple thing in animation But it can have a huge impact on the audience or a huge revelation of how we get to know it care So to summarize everything is important Of course it is but every single move the timing the repetition of a move or not the lack of it The eye line the blinking the head tilt just everything as an animator You're so in charge of everything clearly over every frame. Just be mindful of that I know when you start animating you are concerned about the mechanics and the timing the way in the space You know that stuff But once you're kind of done with this you never really done But you may like you have a good understanding of it really think about it now. Okay. Okay. I can put the mechanics to rest I'm now in stage two where I'm really thinking about what does that mean? I'm successful in having a character stand up or sit down or have I get arm gesture Maybe not this one or this one or a head turn cool I can do this and it's animated well smoothly or whatever whatever style that you're animating to or with or whatever But now it's the next step of okay I I have this arm move but what's the difference between quick and slow and like this or not or staring or looking All of those combinations will tell us something about the character. It's just that extra new step as an animator That's just really exciting And I hope that you are in that stage or close to that stage because to me This is kind of where the me is of I'm done with kind of you know fretting about the mechanics and the difficulties of that now can really look at Intent and the specificity of a character's movement and how that impacts the audience and how we see a character I've got to be really excited and speaking of excitement if this is exciting to you And uh, you would like me to help you with your exciting shots You know the drill I have workshops you can sign up at any time link description with all information I can try to help you as best as I can it'd be really cool. So let me know that is something you're Um considering and speaking of considering it's very considered of you of spending all this time I don't know those segways are getting kind of crazy. But anyway, this is the end meaning time Meaning thank you. Thank you for putting in the time into this clip. You're still watching Thank you so much and that is that and if you like this and you haven't subscribed yet after my first pitch It's my second pitch you feel like this. You don't want to miss any of my uploads hit subscribe and hit that bell button You know it. It's youtube. It's the pitch. It's what people say. I say it But it helps my channel grow so I'm going to keep saying it and that is that thank you for watching And I'll see you in my next upload