Rhetoric of Space

Thursday, September 27, 2012

Stuart Little

The movie Stuart Little was released in 1999. It tells the story of a mouse, called Stuart who was adopted by a human family, called the Little’s. They adopted Stuart because they wanted their kid to have a brother. The Little family also had a cat called Snowbell who did not like the new member of the family.
Several people complain when there is an overuse of technology in a movie, arguing that it decreases the beauty of the movie in such a way that the movie becomes unreal, that way losing its credibility. However, in the book Understanding Movies, the author Louis Giannetti makes a good point by saying: “In short, film artists interested in F/X material need to be just as talented as artists in any other style or genre or technology. Is what they do with technology artistically that counts, not the technology per se”. (Giannetti, 35), the reason why I agree with the author is because even though anyone could learn how to use digital effects or a computer by taking lesson, to make a successful movie and make the image good enough  to seem real definitely requires talent. The person needs to have good eyes, have a good perception, a natural common sense or idea of what is good or what people will like to see. The same happens with acting, people can learn how to act and take lesson, however to be successful and recognized the person generally needs an extra personal talent.
            As mentioned in the article A Little Goes a Long Way by Barbara Robertson, Stuart Little was nominated to the Oscars competing against Star Wars and Matrix in 2000. That shows the great work made by the designer Bill Brzeski in the movie. That way, besides being just one more movie with animated features and relationship between a kid and a mouse, Stuart Little also provides good moral values about siblings rivalry, failure and family.

            Since the main character of the movie is a mouse, the use of technology and graphic designs are essential during the movie. Stuart Little’s image is entirely created through computer graphics. The movie was released in 1999, by that time the quality of images was not as advanced as it is nowadays, however the image of Stuart Little and Snowbell (the cat) are very outstanding and can be compared to any animation movie release more recently. Stuart images conveys very emotional scenes and sometimes very exiting action scenes, for example the boat race and chase sequences with Snowbell that are pretty exciting

Works Cited

Giannetti, Louis D. Understanding Movies 12th edition. NJ: Pearson, 2011. Print.
Robertson, Barbara. "Computer Graphics World - A Little Goes a Long Way." Computer Graphics World - A Little Goes a Long Way. William R. Rittwage, 11 Nov. 2002. Web. 28 Sept. 2012. http://www.cgw.com/Publications/CGW/2002/Volume-25-Issue-11-November-2002-/A-Little-Goes-a-Long-Way.aspx.


 







1 comment:

  1. As long as we are keeping it real, this Stuart Little movie wasn't the first Stuart Little movie. There was a Stuart Little movie on reel-to-reel in the 1970's, when Stuart was a felt character amd Marlboro was a real pigeon. They would play it for us at school. Can't find it anywhere, though.

    ReplyDelete