Mental health can be a difficult thing to show due to the nature of most mental illnesses being internal. This creates a challenge for TV, movies, and animation to accurately depict these kinds of things without being stereotypical. In this research blog, I am going to find out how using film analysis can help depict mental health with the movie “Puss in Boots: The Last Wish” as a reference point.
Puss in Boots got a lot of attention after its release for not only the stunning visuals of its hybrid animation but in the moment of how Puss in Boots deals with anxiety and panic attacks. While you can see Puss in Boots get visually more panicked with an elevated heart rate and the loss of his motor controls as we see him stumbling and running sporadically.
But by using camera work we can create a heightened mood for the story.
When Puss begins to have his panic attack there is a dolly zoom edit that is used, this effect in live action is done by moving away or towards the subject (also known as dolly in/out) while zooming in the opposite direction. This camera effect usually helps in indicating an emotional or tonal shift in the story, in this sense for Puss in Boots it alters the space around him as his mood changes.
Another camera work that helps visually depict his panic attack is the use of close-up shots as he is running in the forest. Using this type of shot can help for a more dramatic effect and elevate the specific mood, which in that scene does intensify the feeling of panic as the extreme close-up distorts Puss’s face and body. These shots too it also blur the surroundings around Puss which emphasises the panic state he is in the contrast to cleaner shots of Perrito the dog searching for Puss really helps externalise Puss’s internal emotions.
By also following the principles of animation we see everything exaggerated, most noticeably in the forest scene, where combined with the blurred focus and the close-up shots combined with his exaggerated movements help push the idea that he is not in the right mindset.
But when going back to the visual side of the scenes the colours that are used in the scenes help the change in mood, where before the colours consisted of warmer colours such as orange to evoke this feeling of warmth and humour, but as one the antagonist of the movies enter the scene, the colour change to a much colder colour palette of green, visualising a sense of fear and coldness.
When combining all these techniques together, what makes it more realistic is the moment after Puss’s shots of his panic attack where everything had been exaggerated. We go back as an outside viewer where the shot is much clearer and only see the physical reaction of Puss having a panic attack, and experiencing the aftermath of the panic attack. However, as the viewer we are satisfied with what has happened as we already know what is happening in Puss’s head, earning this kind of depiction of anxiety and of a panic attack.
From only a scene that shows Puss in Boots experiencing a panic attack a minute long, there were a lot of techniques that were used that helped us as the audience understand the feeling of what Puss is going through. Through the exaggerated movements, the camera shots, and to the colour scheme, I learned about how these things can further push the emotion of a scene/ story. This can be used in my own projects or in future university projects like the LIAF project and help push me as an animator to think about other ways that we can convey these types of emotions.