Friday, 15 January 2010

"One Man Band" - Textual Analysis

Pixar Animation Studios is an American based CGI animation production company that has been creating animated feature length films since 1995 with 'Toy Story.' They are a critically acclaimed studios and have since gone on to make 9 more feature length films including 'A Bug's Life,' 'Cars' & 'WALL-E.'
However, before creating feature length animated films, Pixar Studios started out making short animations starting with 'Luxo Jr.' (which later became Pixar's famous logo) in 1986. It was then released in cinemas with the release of 'Toy Story 2' in 1999.
The short film 'One Man Band' was created in 2006 and had an initial theatrical release with the feature length film 'Cars.'

The first thing you experience before the short starts, besides the ident for Pixar, which has transformed a short film itself called "Luxo Jr.", is the sounds you would hear before a concert starts of the Orchestra warming up their instruments. Although the title tells you that it is about a One Man Band, this sets the viewer up to believe that the title could be ambiguous. This short film has quite a comedic element to it where the music and the sound effects builds you up to the opening of a curtain, behind which stands a single man.

There is no dialogue in this film, much like that of the other Pixar shorts. Unlike "Luxo Jr." this short film is made up of many different shots including a number of WS and CU. It has a sense of 'Cowboy/Western Duel' with the constant battling between the two musicians to get the money off the little girl, where the huge use of shots is used.
The comedic element is displayed throughout the short, despite short films not conforming to a genre. The little girl provides much of this with her taunting of the two men and the way she drops the violin as soon as she sees the bag of money.


This video has been removed from Youtube and cannot be linked to somewhere else.

This film has a strong ideology of conforming to the feature length film style of equilibrium-disequilibrium-equilibrium. Starting with the first man playing for the little girl, turning into disequilibrium all the way from the Violin Jester to the point where the big bag of money gets dropped and the girl is happy because the short has reached its equilibrium again.

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