Term Paper 2- Outline

I. Introduction

A. Laws of gravity are often ignored to make a scene seem more comical, more dramatic, or more impressive.

B. I will demonstrate this with three scenes from various sources.

1. Cartoon- Loony Toons

2. 3D Animation- How to Train Your Dragon

3. Live Action- Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

II. Body

A. Loony Toons- High Diving Hare

1. Yosemite Sam tries to get Bugs Bunny to jump off a high dive and into a pool of water.

2. After being tricked once again of falling off the bridge himself, he actually comes back up to level height with Bugs (note there is no trampoline below), to tell Bugs “I hate you,” and then drops once again.

B. How to Train Your Dragon- Flight Scene

1. At one point in their maiden flight together Hiccup looses his hold on Toothless and they start falling towards the rocks.

2. These two constantly change position in the air back and fourth before leveling out again together. They began to fall from the same height, so they should have been traveling at the same rate downwards.

3. Air resistance in this case should not have been enough to warp this law of gravity to that degree. Gravity was manipulated to make the fall more dramatic and threatening.

C. Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon

1. Typical of a fight scene in Kung Fu movies the martial artists are able to do impressive things.

2. Gravity is manipulated almost too obviously. When martial artists jump in the air they glide as if they are weightless, almost as if they can choose when they are affected by gravity.

3. Jumping off of roof tops and off of walls one after the other, they glide along as much as they please, until it’s time for them to take a serious hit and suddenly hitting the ground hurts a lot.

III. Conclusion

A. Restate Thesis.

B. All types of media manipulate gravity to their advantage, whether it is a hand drawn, a computer animated, or a live action environment. The important thing to the director is manipulating the emotions of the audience.

Note to Self: Try to bring some pictures into the paper this time.