Clay animation

We watched a short 7 minute film of a clay human making itself. The film was called "darkness light darkness" by Jan Svankmajer. The director used step by step animation to achieve this, it was shot inside what looked like a dollhouse and replicates a very strong allegory of the suffocating life in Eastern Europe. The human body often constructs itself using water based clay (which is the easiest to use for animations like this). Often it had to create weird and distorted shapes in order to work with the body parts it has until it is complete. At the very end of the film you see the clay body switch off the light in the room which to me symbolises that it is switching off the life inside it. What baffles me is that the audience never sees a heart be part of the process of making the body, sure we see the very realistic human brain being planted inside the head of the clay human and an extreme close up of the male genitalia but never the heart. I feel like this portrays how deeply neurotic the director (Svankmajer) is about life itself and has a more real perception on reality then an emotional perception.
 Moving on to how the director left such a vivid and disturbing impression on the audience. Svankmajer hired Miloslav Spala to be the cinematographer. Spala's films tend to lean towards the darker side of cinematography. They have collaborated with each other multiple times as Svankmajer had him in mind for almost every short film he made. The colour scheme kind of leant towards neutral tones such as army green and black yet Spala manages to include such colours as baby pink and white to create a homely yet dangerous atmosphere. 

 The camera angles include:

  • extreme close ups 
  • close ups 
  • mid shots 
  • birds eye view
  • worms eye view
The director uses zooming shots also when the different body parts come knocking on the door to create tension for the audience. Svankmajer has been very clever to include camera angles which look up upon the clay human to make the audience feel intimidated by what they see






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