Color Analysis: The Stag Fight

When Christian Renaut (author of „Les héroïnes Disney“) asked me for a comment on color in the stag fight scene in BAMBI (Hand, 1942), I felt the need to illustrate it with screenshots. Hence, my first color analysis post in years... 

Although Walt Disney was predominantly striving for dimensionally believable, naturalistic settings (in the vein of 19^th century illustrations) when it came to animated features, during the golden age (1937-1942) his overall emotional approach to storytelling allowed for expressionistic use of shape and color during tense/subjective moments.

 

The resulting, less detailed backgrounds are easily integrated, however, since the characters (the focus of audience attention) keep their dimensionality, shape and proportions at all time. No flat shapes, no graphical abstraction. In addition, the Disney „dogma“ of value separation (i.e. either light character colors against dark background colors or vice versa) is closely followed, no matter how stylized the lighting gets. 

Left: light character on dark BG / right: dark character against light BG.

Concept art by Tyrus Wong (left via michaelbarrier.com, right via colossal.com)

 

Visible brushstrokes and less details in more impressionistic approach.

Thanks to Tyrus Wong's suggestive concept art, BAMBI generally feels much more impressionistic than the other films of that era. Besides atmospheric color choices, this impression mainly stems from a very selective degree of detail resulting in suggestive shapes of color and visible brush strokes. This is closely maintained throughout the two fantasy sequences when Bambi follows Faline through the clouds and during their stroll through the night.

 

[Side note: the fantasy sequence immediately before the stag fight has the deer float among more or less realistically painted clouds that resemble the snow only with pink instead of yellow highlights.]

Snow: light blue with yellow highlights / love clouds: with pink highlights

Right between these two love scenes, however, Bambi has to fight his rival Ronno who suddenly appears behind a cloud and brings Bambi back down to earth.

The actual stag fight takes only one minute, it leaves a strong impression not least because of its bold color design. In the backgrounds, there are a lot of expressionistic color transitions with a general arc from green and blue towards red and golden orange. But although the „story meeting commentary“ on the blu-ray insinuates that those color choices were guided by „symbolism throughout“, I believe that what made it to the screen works primarily on an emotional level without too much rationalizing. So in this analysis of the latest blu-ray transfer (which may differ from what the film looked like in Technicolor), I primarily look at how these color combinations work and how they affect me.

The transition

When the cloud setting transitions back to the forest, the familiar brown vs green contrast makes the deer stand out quite naturally. Furthermore, the shades of brown adhere to the well-established Hollywood convention of value-coding: the skin of the female love interest is paler (less saturated) than the hero's skin and in this scene leaning more towards violet. The villain Ronno is deliberately darker than Bambi, especially around the eyes, looking almost like a shadow version of Bambi with more dangerous antlers.

Ronno the Rival

different skin tones according to convention.

Faline paler, Bambi "default", Ronno darker...

While the scene starts out in a naturalistic way, the transition happens step by step. First, a brisk change in lighting after a cut indicates a subjectively heightened perception of the situation. The story notes mention a sunset, what we actually see is heightened contrast and saturation in the green background and glowing golden rim light on Faline and Ronno. This may not look natural but makes for a bold color contrast. The sunset impression also comes from the fact that during the whole stag fight, Bambi and Ronno are always dark against light (except for one short shot). Even in less extreme backlighting, this effect is supported by the rim light that is brighter than the white of the deers' eyes.

During Bambi's attack from the right, the transition is taken further within a shot over the course of which Bambi's body becomes a dark silhouette against a backdrop of broad brush strokes and blue and green shapes devoid of detail (54:19:13).

Bambi from the right, smooth lighting change against broad shapes.

Ronno from the left.

We then see Ronno's counter-attack from the left with hard lighting from the right (aka the expressionist sunset). Contrast is now so high that parts of the image remain pitch black. 

What is more, although perspective and dimensionality are maintained, in the following long shot the level of detail is extremely low. A sketchy brown branch on the left and a silhouetted branch on the right provide the necessary depth cues with dramatic lighting setting the stage for the action.

Cut from high contrast, high saturation to similar, more stylized background.

This setup (right) resembles the style of the first hunting scare (left).

And since Ronno's half of the background is a lot darker (above), this is the one shot where he is much lighter than Bambi and everything else in the shot. Thus, it looks like two contrasting forces (bright orange Ronno and pitch black Bambi) are about to collide.

Ignoring color continuity

However, when the actual collision happens in the next shot, both deer are equally dark against an abstract dark blue background. 

In this elaborately animated shot, Ronno takes Bambi on his antlers and throws him to the left setting up the basic left-right-orientation for the remainder of the fight. At the same time, three basic concepts of the sequence are established:

1. since the editing adheres to meticulous action continuity, the artists applied colors freely without paying attention from shot to shot. No matter how much the colors change from one shot to the next, there is always at least one element that remains stable across cuts.

2. While the characters appear in „expensive Disney silhouettes“ (my own expression) – almost black but still with slight differences in color for lighter body parts and eyes – often against dark backgrounds, the movement is suggested a layer of fierce rim lights, sometimes containing additional highlights in an even brighter color.

3. The degree of detail in the background varies greatly from just a direction of brushstrokes and gradient to some sketchily defined piece of vegetation or even fully rendered leaves and blades of grass. This way, we don't really see these color flashes as abstract backgrounds because like with the rim light on the characters, there are always enough representational elements in the frame to suggest a full setting.

 

Stage-managing emotional color changes

During Bambi and Ronno's initial clash, both are defined by the harsh orange sidelight (and fierce white highlights) of a heated confrontation. But during Bambi's fall to the left, his rim light turns cold as he enters a zone of fictitious blue light from above. Like in most of Disney's more expressionist sequences, this is much more reminiscent of elaborate stage lighting rather than abstract painting.

This notion seems to be confirmed by the fact that when Ronno approaches Bambi he is also bathed in blue overhead lighting and only re-enters the hot orange zone when the action moves to the right (a prime example of the old orange vs teal contrast, if ever there was one).

So rather than separating the two deer by colors, the lighting evokes the emotional involvement in the fight, sometimes using a hard cut to flip from hot to cold as Bambi goes down again (54:28:14).

Then we get the first brief shot from Bambi's point of view: Ronno's orange/white rimmed silhouette runs straight at the camera against a non-representational gradient made of broad diagonal brush strokes.

Now the darker rim light on both characters is green, somewhere inbetween the blue and green of the background. This overall green look is extended to a shot of Faline watching the action in an almost unicolored setup.

Bambi's next attack begins with orange top light but only adds the white highlight in the spot where the two stags meet. Again, the background colors flip across an axial continuity cut from green to orange vs blue (54:37:07) with Ronno on the orange side and Bambi against a dark blue background looking up at Ronno attacking him yet again from a bright background (maybe looking up at a cloud or light source?) that emphasizes the darkness of Ronno's silhouette.

BG colors change with hard cuts

BG colors change with hard cuts

BG colors change with hard cuts

During the next wrestling match (54:45.10), by way of a pan, the green background turns to blue while the blue rimlight gradually transitions to red and orange, which is again reflected in a unicolored shot of Faline watching the action (now staged as shadows over her face and the rock behind her)

continuous color change of rim light.

The sunset justification

Taking into account that all this was supposedly happening while the sun was setting on the right (the typical narrative pretense for colored lighting in Hollywood films at the time), we have now entered the final stage: the lower half of the backgrounds are already in the dark, devoid of warm sunlight.

As we cut from a wide shot to a close-up of the wedged heads, the background snaps to a fully saturated diagonal gradient from dark blue over magenta to red reminiscent of the fierce red glow that occurs shortly after the sun has set (and foreshadows the forest fire). 

The sky is now burning...

Emotionally, the fully saturated red seems to tell us that we have reached the apex of the stag fight.

With red fury on his side, Bambi is getting the upperhand

Indeed, the two clash one last time. Only this time around, Bambi is strong enough to through Ronno off the cliff into the cold violet water (down below, so technically not in the warm part of the background any more). Remarkably, those last few shots have been defined by just enough representational detail that the fully dimensional background during Ronno's fall doesn't attract our attention.

Again entering the striking highlight zone...

Suggestive, leaving much to the imagination, but still representational.

BG colors change with a hard cut.

the final POV shot of Ronno attacking.

The same BG in different colors, early expertise or later tampering?

[Side note: BAMBI has been heavily "restored" for DVD and again for Blu-ray. Without getting into all the things that don't feel right to me, I am very curious about the original colors of this POV background (55:01:16, above). It is certainly the same painting. And although there were indeed procedures that allowed for these kinds of color changes, I am not sure if it really fit the sunset part as well on Technicolor or if it was "fixed" in order to smoothly match the original vision as opposed to what ended up on screen.]

It's interesting how the same BG works for two different size relations!

Generally, the diagonal left-to-right dynamics (Bambi's direction) are adhered to in abstraction as well.

The iconic shot

After this predominantly red climax, for the aftermath – and real payoff – the sky turns gold as Bambi towers over his rival in a simple but strong composition. By this saving-a-damsel-in-distress-and-proving-himself moment, Bambi seems to have earned the „prince of the forest“ staging. He may not yet be ready to succeed the old prince in all aspects, but it is certainly the first time, he is seen in this iconic pose that is backlit so the characters appear as clear silhouettes against a lighter backdrop.

What is interesting about this shot is the direction: here, Bambi still looks to the right (i.e. "ahead" as the convention goes), while the adult Great Prince of the Forest always looks to left ("back" over his subjects, so to speak).

The Great Prince of the Forest (Bambi's father?)

And yes, in the end, Bambi himself becomes the Great Prince (or so it is visually suggested) taking over not only the pose and direction but the very spot of his predecessor (who is never verbally alluded to as his father).

Bambi succeeds the Great Prince and looks back over "his" realm.

All screenshots taken from the European blu-ray edition (time code based on 23.976fps).
Click on the images for larger versions.

Moving POV in TOY STORY

Now with English subtitles at last!


Moving Point-of-View in TOY STORY (english subtitles) from Oswald Iten on Vimeo.

This is a video essay I did in celebration of the 20th anniversary of TOY STORY last year for Swiss German language magazine filmbulletin.ch.

For this version, I have added English subtitles to make it more widely available.

Full text and information can be found here.

Moving point-of-view shots in TOY STORY

In celebration of the 20th anniversary of the TOY STORY premiere (Nov 19, 1995) I have put together my very first video essay. A lot has been written about how the success of this first fully computer animated feature film was based on the great storytelling and how plastic toys were an ideal subject for computer animation. But the Pixarians also played to the strengths of computer animation in the way they organically incorporated three-dimensional compositions and camera movements hardly possible in hand drawn animation. Thus, in my essay I focus on the crucial functions of the moving point-of-view shot in TOY STORY. Here, the narrative perspective is more restricted than in all of Pixar's subsequent films. 

Since the video essay was done for the Swiss magazine filmbulletin, the commentary is in German only. Therefore, I provide you with an English translation of my running commentary and the German intertitles. filmbulletin is not an animation specific publication so there might be some explanations in the video that are second nature to anyone working in animation.

Please find the video essay here.

Translation:

0:16
In computer animation, the virtual camera is theoretically able to move completely freely. TOY STORY is consistently told through the eyes of toys. In order to communicate this perspective, the filmmakers resort to a popular storytelling device of adventure and horror films that is especially suited for computer animation: the moving point-of-view (POV) shot.

0:54
I. An unusual perspective
Many Pixar films show us a well-known setting from an unusual perspective. In TIN TOY for instance, we see a playing baby through the eyes of maltreated toys. In order to visualize this narrative perspective the camera is lowered to the tin toy's eye level. From this angle the baby becomes a monster.

The toys' strong facial expressions suggest that these toys are consciously acting beings.

Compare them with the mechanical doll in CHILD'S PLAY: Here, the mechanical expressions do not hint at any real consciousness. However, the film tells us that Chucky is indeed a living being in a different way: the camera lets us see through his eyes and shows us his subjective view in a so-called point-of-view (=POV) shot, which I will henceforth mark with a yellow frame.

2:11
Likewise in TOY STORY the toys do not seem to have a life of their own as long as humans are present. However in the opening scene John Lasseter shows us by means of interspersed POV shots that the cowboy Woody is perceptive and therefore has a consciousness of his own even though his eyes look lifeless from outside.

Without these POV shots the exterior action would still be completely comprehensible. WITH the POV shots the audience gets the additional information that Woody is perceiving these actions consciously.

        Point-of-view     vs     blank reaction shot

Yet, the POV shots do not reveal any of Woody's emotions. Characters are emotionally charged not by POV but by reaction shots of the viewing character's face. In the company of humans Woody's face remains blank, though. Therefore, his reaction to gazing at the birthday garland is only revealed after Andy has left the bedroom.

From then on, we do not need any POV shots any more to be reminded that the toys are alive.

3:35
II. Visual rollercoaster
In adventure films moving POV shots are often used to convey a physical experience to the audience. For technical reasons, such forward movement (trucking in) is very rare in hand drawn animation.

Visual depth can be suggested in horizontal und vertical movement by moving several painted (multiplane) layers in relative speed to one another. If the camera is trucking in through these layers, the two-dimensionality of the painted objects becomes visible because they lack perspective distortion. Real trucking POV shots are mostly so short that this is not showing.

If the truck-in-movement is the focus of a shot, the background has to be redrawn for every single frame (24 times per second) in hand drawn animation. In western commercial animation, such a painstaking technique is hardly used for anything else than cartoon settings without too many details.

Since this kind of POV shot is often conveying the experience of a rollercoaster I like to call it the "rollercoaster perspective".

4:48
In computer animation the virtual camera is indeed able to move freely within the three-dimensional space. Ever since the late 1980s computer animated POV shots are integrated into hand drawn features as well.

In the completely computer animated TOY STORY the rollercoaster perspective shows us the psychologically distorted perception of Buzz Lightyear.

Buzz does not know that he is a toy. He believes he can really fly. From Buzz's first person perspective it may look like he is flying. In reality, the alleged "flight" is the result of gravity and coincidence.

Buzz also believes that his toy weapons are really working. We see them like in a first-person-shooter (complete with gun in the middle perspective of vintage arcade games). When Buzz realizes he cannot fly after all, we get two POV shots again.

After Buzz has accepted his existence as a toy we learn from Woody's perspective that flying is not a question of capability but of perception.

6:30
III. Creating suspense
Since we cannot control the characters' subjective perspective in films the restricted field of vision is creating tension because danger in films is mostly lurking off screen. This can come as a surprise (Woody: "hello?"). It is much more suspenseful when we expect a potential threat.

In SILENCE OF THE LAMBS we know that the heroine is in the house of serial killer. By alternating POV and reaction shots of Jody Foster's face the filmmakers let us read her emotional state.

7:21
In TOY STORY Buzz and Woody know that the neighbor Sid is fond of destroying toys. Like the audience, Buzz and Woody cannot control their restricted view because they are trapped in Sid's bag while entering his home.

Only later on the run they are controlling their own perspective again. In addition to Sid, this house (which alludes to the hotel in THE SHINING) holds many more threats.

One of them is a pit bull called Scud. Since Scud is able to see the secret life of toys we can assume his POV as well. However, knowing his emotions and seeing through his eyes does not automatically lead to emotional identification with the gruesome dog (although we may be fascinated by his villainous behavior). Our emotional commitment to a character is much more dependent on his behavior towards other characters. Thus, Scud remains a threat even though we see share his perspective.

POV dog

8:25
IV. Insight into the toy world
The moving POV shot is fulfilling three basic functions in TOY STORY:
1. we see that supposedly lifeless toys are conscious beings.
2. it conveys physical experience from the perspective of toys.
3. the restricted field of vision is creating suspense.

Since TOY STORY is consistently told through the perspective of toys (and animals), we share their visual POV exclusively - for the most part that is. Towards the end, however, we surprisingly see through the eyes of Sid (unlike the many overshoulder shots we get before).

Although the restricted narrative perspective only allows for scenes in which toys are present we can - as we have seen with the dog before - share the visual perspective of all those characters who can see the secret life of the toys. After all, the toys reveal their parallel reality to Sid for a short moment (technically, this still does not explain the first Sid POV, but better break a rule than minimize impact).

Andy's baby sister Molly catches a glimpse of the living toys as well. However, she will not be able to tell someone and no one will believe Sid, anyway. That way, Andy will never find out that his toys are really alive.

Note: In subsequent Pixar films, point-of-view shots assume may different, sometimes really original functions like a "second person flash forward" in FINDING NEMO or a view through the mindless eyes of Emperor Zurg in TOY STORY 2.