The Witness

The way the witness is animated and directed is hard to get your head around the films is trying to seem as if it is being filmed by real cameras and microphones when really it is just an animated camera and audio would be layered over the top of the video.

 Sometimes the characters will breathe onto the lens of the camera that we get our viewpoint from leaving fog on the glass as they do as well as having peaking audio when they are doing so. There are also several shots were a character will run past the camera and the “tripod” the camera is in will shake and dialogue from the characters will travel with them and the volume will adjust depending on how close they are to the animated camera. 

I believe the reason they decided to produce and animate the film like this is because the animation seems so real and the movement of the bodies and world seems so real that by having theses fake camera wobbles and fog in the lenses makes the animation seem even more realistic as if this really was shot with a crew and actors rather than being animated. 

The animation is one of few animations were I completely forgot I am watching something animated the animations aren't even motion captured which adds to how much effort the people who created this short put in to get the finished production they wanted. 

The colour pallet of the short includes some quite bright colours but the majority of the world is very dirty and grungy and any bright colours within the scenes will have some under tones of violent, dark or grungy themes such as when the girl has a really bright purple bag but inside is the gun she uses to kill the man chasing her. 

The story itself is rather strange from the beginning and left me quite confused but wanting to continue watching because of the fact the man witnesses the girl he just murdered watching him kill her from across the street. 

The whole films essentially becomes an endless cat and mouse chase with the cat and mouse swapping roles when one kills the other we aren’t told any clues as to why these pair are trapped within an endless loop of killing each other. I believe that this shirt is more of a project to show off how far animation can be pushed in this day in age everything from hair, cloth, light, screens and skin seems unimaginably real and the locations of the short seem to show off the advancements of animation almost as if the narrative was designed behind showing off the animation quality.