The Camera Movement in Relation to Narration in Animated Films: a Practice-Oriented Study

As a core element of film language, camera movement plays a crucial role in narrative explanation, character shaping, and theme development in cinema. Although camera movements in animation movies are often implemented to add excitement to shots, their best use is when new narrative is revealed. In this paper we have studied the aspects of narration that can be presented by camera movement in animation. We put our question on whether camera movement can have a role in narration or not; how narration theories can explain camera movement; what are the special and different abilities of camera movement in animation. We have analyzed case studies along with narration theories. The goal is to extract and categorize these usages of camera movement in by studying animation movies in a way that the result would be applicable and useful for animation directors. In order to reach this goal, first it is defined what is meant by the word narration in this paper and different theories of narration are used to reach our definition of narration. Afterward it is conveyed what is exactly meant here by camera movement and on the basis of the given definitions, the necessity of studying the relation between narration and camera movement is discussed. We use theories such as of MiekeBal and Bordwell. After defining Syuzhet, fabula and style, we argue about the membership of camera movement in those three parts of narration. Then the main part is discussed, which is explaining and discussing different applications of camera movement in animation considering many different aspects such as inducing feelings, defining genre of the animation and enriching the master shots. Applications of camera movement have been studied based on different aspects such as conscious absent mindedness camera; forming film genres such as comedy, surreal, documentary; making suspension and exaggeration in animation; application of still camera; and challenges between new technologies and art. During the main part of the discussion we study animations in a categorized approach to make the patterns being derived, we focus on useful applicable patterns.