Monday, May 13, 2013

How To Train Your Dragon! My favorite movie of all time...why? Entry 9


Alright, sadly we must now move away from the real "heart issues" of HTTYD. Those were tons of fun to write, but I think I have expressed all of them that I can think of to the best of my ability. Still, a great story needs a great medium to flow through. I scratched the surface of this in my fifth entry, but I am coming back to it now. One of the reasons HTTYD is such a great movie is the visuals. As if the story was not beautiful enough on its own, DreamWorks used their amazingly talented artists and technicians to make the look of the movie every bit as beautiful as the heart of the film itself.
First off, I already have mentioned that it was filmed like a live action movie. In entry five, though, I was mostly referring to the plot and physics. In these next entries, I am referring to gorgeous lighting, texturing, animation, voice acting, camera work, and soundtrack. All of these facets of the movie contributed highly, and they made the amazing plot into an incredibly beautiful, pleasant, and gripping experience. 
My first filmography based entry....the LIGHTING! Good grief this movie had the most splendid lighting! Roger Deakins intentionally made the lighting highly realistic. Each day, the light is slightly different. You have certain days where it is overcast and others where it is brilliantly sunny. The surfaces absorbed these different lights, and it gave the movie an incredibly realistic and pretty look! Some scenes are dark because they would realistically be dark. The scene where Stoick rejects Hiccup is a great example. Light comes only from the door. This leaves characters faces often in the dark, but man the realism and terror given off by just that simple minimalistic lighting is brilliant! The light in the movie bounced into the environments and brings them to life. The ocean, the cove, the dragon arena, the romantic flight, all these scenes are brought to life by the simple beauty of light. You have sunsets, you have moonlight, you even get the aurora borealis! The different lights used in different times really helped this movie feel like you could stand up and walk right in. This was a perfect mix of semi realistic shapes, astonishing texturing, and gorgeously convincing light. I will deal with those former two later, but for now, I would highly encourage any of you reading this to appreciate the simple beauty of the light in HTTYD. Look how it bounces off Toothless, watch the glint off of Astrid's axe, and appreciate the intense look of the dragon mound. The lighting in this movie was one of the many things that drew me in and made me love it! 

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