The value of traditional set designs and prosthetics

There is much to be said about CG when it comes to action and science fiction story telling but there is something lost by removing traditional set designs and prosthetics from the mix. Just as there's something lost when cartoons are computer generated rather than hand drawn.


What is lost is a type of story building, character for smoothness, the personal touch for the impersonal and often the humour that comes along with oddball designs and strange methods of conveying an event. CG is wonderful for making the flight of a hero believable to our eyes but there is nothing like the humour that comes of capes flapping incorrectly, visible strings and undies that get hiked a little too high in the flight simulating process.

Wallace and Gromit - A Grand Day Out by Ryuzaiki

The biggest thing CG has going for it is the ability to make events more believable, with less breaks in story continuity. It is big and loud and smooth and portrays the story seamlessly and so seems the best choice in almost every case. So much so that it is hard to find movies and TV shows without it nowadays. And some of the genres most affected by CG were those that used to revel in the world of puppetry, papier mache masks and real furry monsters with goggle eyes. Children's stories are often produced using CG. Even the classics like Big Bird have become CG for the most part.

And this is truly a pity. There is much value in the older methods of story telling that is often overlooked for smoothness and quick release. The worlds created through puppetry, prosthetics, traditional set designs and costuming are potent for their ability for convey self-contained worlds disconnected from our own, for their realism of action and movement despite our efforts otherwise and oddly for their dreaminess as they convey the imagination rather well and in a stylised manner that is a tad classy in its own way if properly realised.

My opinion of this, rarely asked for but I'll give it anyway so you can ignore me at you own will, is that each story told has a style its own, a world its own, and because of this each story has a storytelling method best suited to it. Some absolutely do require CG. Yet others would be best created on stage, through puppetry, using black and white cameras and jolting action, as a silent movie, with hand moved models and stop motion camera work, with shadow puppets or with full sets and gloriously awkward prosthetics painted brilliant colours.  Choosing the correct method for conveying a story is important and while CG seems to offer the most modern and easily consumable style CG does in fact ruin some stories completely simply by being the wrong method of telling the story.


Not all stories are best conveyed using the written word only. That's why there are comics and movies and cartoons and plays and songs. When it comes to the method of telling your story you choose carefully if you're a writer. Shall it be a short story? A poem? An article or a book? But strangely, this careful choice is not always made by those producing works for television or the movies. The choice is often made by fashions and fads, by those interested in the money behind the scenes and in guiding consumer consumption. The quick and smooth solution is often picked simply for the fact that it is quick and provides a smooth finish. But the essence of a story may not match and in such cases the story often loses its power. Luckily this is not always the case and there are plenty of space adventures and comic book adaptions that are coming out to prove it.

Still, you can't beat the old methods of making someone fly for laughter. Nor the traditionally made scientist's lab for spookiness. Or even old school spider webbing for that "oh, ick!" response. CG spiderwebs just don't cut it most of the time. On this note, there is nothing funnier than grown men dressing up in silly costumes only to prance about a set and utter the overly-serious "Muhahahaha" of the evil villain. All dignity is lost while at the same time a brilliant story is told. There is little to nothing lost through the breaks in continuity provided by more traditional methods of story telling. Rather, there is much humour to be gained and humour only adds to the delight of the audience when viewing the story.

Sign (or Sign Language) in fiction

American Sign Language

Sign is entirely visual to those using it to communicate which means that in fiction it translates not only best to visual mediums but to those that allow for movement. Stage plays, musical performances and movies are the best for Sign usage. Unfortunately, the further into the field of inert and non-visual arts you go the further away from Sign usage you get. Visual arts are static so one word could be displayed per panel, just as with comics. By doing such a thing it is easier to write the word out as writing is visual. This means that books seem to be the perfect format for imparting stories to the hearing impaired as they include more than one word and are entirely visual.


But the use of Sign in books is almost lost for the use of the written language, meaning that much of the language that is Sign, including jargon, humour and other cultural nuances, is lost. It is obscured by the written language that doesn't contain the same set of nuances. It is like swapping English for French, not even British English for American English.


As with the remaking of foreign movies, not just the subtitling, there are different ways of interpreting events, representing events and reacting to them. These differences are what is lost between the use of Sign to communicate and the use of the written language.


This means that while books seem like the perfect answer to conveying stories from one hearing impaired person to another it isn't always the case. Like many other forms of story telling there are some stories that fit certain modes of telling better than others. So too are there stories best told in Sign rather than in the written language. In which case the best method of conveying these stories shifts back to being the visual formats such as movies and stage performances.


Again though, there is an issue. Many stories need to be shortened to be performed and in most cases when made into movies they are reduced to dialogue and action as the main methods of conveying the story. Much of what needs to be imagined is portrayed in full colour and life sized displays. This means that the imagination isn't worked nearly as hard as when a person is presented with black and white scribbles that need converting into a full world. 


The upshot of all this is that there is no truly perfect medium for Sign stories other than in the story around the campfire format. Such stories pull on the imagination, can be long or short and are intensely visual. But such stories (not necessarily told around a campfire, obviously) are often unrecorded and unrecognised by the general public. So even this method of story telling is flawed.

British Sign Language

What the solution is, I'm not sure but I believe there needs to be a bit of a revolution in one or the other of the story telling mediums for Sign to truly be used on its own to convey stories. Possibly a recording of such campfire or round table stories is the way to go. Maybe a recording of white hands on a black screen or vise verse for an imitation of the black on white scribbles that make up books. This would leave much room for the imagination to take off. But then I'm sure many of the hearing impaired would also just find it easier to turn on the subtitles of a movie or show.


Which leads me to a very small point on subtitles: They really, really are bad in some cases. White on white or yellow on yellow. Incorrect interpretations of the spoken words leading to gobbledegook written on the bottom of the screen (don't get me started with YouTube's subtitles...). Subtitles that scroll past too fast or too slow or even take up more than a third of the screen. There really need to be better standards all round. These problems were especially highlighted to me when I was sitting beside my hearing impaired Pop watching the TV shows of his choice. I could hear and read so I could pick out just how many mistakes there were, how delayed the feed was and how confusing it was to have feeds running at the bottom of the screen on football news while the subtitles were reading economic news. Only I knew which the reporter was actually speaking on, leading my Pop to wonder at the Chinese economists being so interested in football.


So the visual formats aren't perfect and Sign is left almost entirely as a language for communicating person to person, directly.


You'd also think there is a possibility of conveying Sign decently in writing by describing all the movements made but such conversations would take a fair while to write, needing more than one word to represent one word. So Sign is little used in writing without the interpreter acting like a narrator and spelling the movements out to the reader, again almost defeating the purpose of Sign except in the much needed representation of the hearing impaired in our stories. You simply cannot ignore a whole section of the population just because it is hard to write Sign.

Numbers in Sign Language

Another away to approach the writing of sign is to use the actual hand symbols, complete with a translation underneath. This would likely work best in fantasy stories where there are likely to be many types of languages clashing, not all of which are for those who can hear. They may read a little like hieroglyphs to those who are unfamiliar with Sign but would probably read well to those who do know Sign and its variations (Sign often changes per country just as other languages do). But this gives those unfamiliar with Sign a chance to learn the basics and learning any language never hurt anyone.


Sign is still making headway into the world of visual media so there is likely lots of time for us all to witness how successfully it adapts and what new formats may arise. Sign isn't for every person who's hearing impaired but the vast majority of those who can learn it do. This means that Sign is here to stay and for any language that means constant change and adaptation. It will be exciting to see what happens next.




Note: I apologise for any rambling, I've a Doctor's certificate to prove I have an allowance for it but no, you can't see it. You'll just have to trust me.

Monsters: monstrous, sexy, appealing and cuddly

A question that has been rattling around in the back of my head is this: Why do we keep altering our traditional monsters to make them cuddly or sexy?

Weren't they good enough as monsters to terrify us? By changing them are we removing our fear? Or are we expanding upon the mythologies, warning on a greater scale not to trust the beautiful and the appealing just because they are beautiful and appealing?

It's a bit of each as far as I can tell Plus a dash of intentional altering of the product, thereby expanding the market, in order to make the monsters appeal to children and the squeamish. Well, maybe just the squeamish, the over-coddling mothers of children and the mothers of babies.

For centuries monsters were appealing as they discouraged and frightened and they could be physically classed as monsters as well as being monstrous by nature. Until the recent years. There was the occasional appealing monster though but not many. Appealing monsters generally included gods and devils who would act against humanity, either impulsively or with consideration. Dragons were in a way beautiful but that beauty was hidden by flame and fangs. Pixies and fairies came in both forms, beauty as a disguise for monstrous actions. Adoration and worship of an immoral entity or one anti-humanity was an accepted concept but one condemned in practice.

So where did the cuddly versions of monsters come from? Disney and the like. The feeding of the cute and cuddly to the parents and children. Fed to the parents so they can feed it to the children. Fed to the children so they can demand products of the parents and create peer pressure. Let's just say marketing and advertising is highly manipulative, and I'm thankful not to be working in the field anymore. 

Why monsters weren't good enough in their monstrous forms is because they wouldn't appeal to these two highly varied groups as such. Monsters would in soft, cuddly and gentle forms though, especially if they're presented as misunderstood, gaining sympathy.

Children themselves can be quite vicious and cruel and can appreciate a good frightening story full of monsters because they don't view the world through moral lenses. Morality is learnt, sometimes even through stories that include our traditional monsters, and isn't present in children until they've felt regret, remorse and that desire to turn back time. Usually after making a friend or family member cry.

Children have empathy at a much earlier stage than morality and it is through the use of this emotional connection that morality is learnt. Pre-empathy is around the "mine, mine, mine" stage of a toddler. It is then that they learn to give and take and that another person might respond well or not. Yes, they remain self serving for a while longer and sometimes never break out of such behavioural patterns.

But my point is that even from this early age an acceptance of monsters being monstrous is possible. It is the parents who choose not to reveal nasty monsters to them, instead choosing the cuddly versions, rather than the children having an aversion to monsters. Fear is a natural response. So is curiosity. Keeping the child's life monster-free because of these reactions is a mistake and, I think, a shame (re the degradation of cultural). I approve of children learning morals through a fear of potential repercussions rather than by finding out hurting someone hurts themselves after the damage is done.

The adult version of this type of learning is found in religion with its reward and punishment system, the teaching of religion acting as a warning system, and it is approved by the vast majority of people on the planet so why not use monsters to teach morals? We have before and many still do.

As for the appealing versions, the sexy monsters, there is much to be said about having an appealing monster acting monstrous. Not so much for one acting like a wilted flower, without might or strength or fear on its side, only soppy romance. Yes, I like my monsters to remain monsters. The glimpse into the dark side of humanity, into our fears, hatreds and desires reveals much more about us than the altruistic and moralistic sides. It is only through curbing the darker aspects of humanity that we become truly civilised. Whether we learn such control at an early stage or a later is the only question. Again, some never learn enough.

To keep monsters monstrous, whether only in nature and not appearance, helps us deal with occasions when humans act monstrous, especially beautiful, appealing, pitiful humans or ones who can be sympathised with. By being exposed to monsters acting monstrous the revelation that it is in the nature of the being not the appearance comes about. But only after the initial realisation that the being is a monster at all, such a realisation being difficult for a person to figure out without early exposure to traditional monsters.

The only potential side-effect to look out for is that this discovery is not made and that people come to be judge on appearance alone.