Logo_hovers_2024
Title
World Festival of Animated Film /
7 to 12 June 2021
World Festival of Animated Film / 7 to 12 June 2021
hr | en
Pooja_pottenkulam

ANIMAFEST PRO | ANIMAFEST SCANNER VIII | SYMPOSIUM FOR CONTEMPORARY ANIMATION STUDIES | Panel 4 - SCRIPTWRITING IN ANIMATION

What Will You Do Now, John? (2020): Illustrating Social Reality through Animated Fiction - Pooja Pottenkulam (University of East London, UK)

Panel 4 - SCRIPTWRITING IN ANIMATION
09/06, WED 15:10 – 15:40, Kino Tuškanac

In the animated film What Will You Do Now, John? (2020), the protagonist John’s wife leaves him. He is more concerned about his routine being disrupted and so he pretends that she still lives with him. The film illustrates an aspect of individualism and social isolation that is particular to a western demographic. This film is part of a wider collection of animated fiction films that present social realism through traditional narratives. Historically, the majority of these sort of films have been produced at the National Film Board of Canada (Why Me, 1978; Getting Started, 1979), or commissioned by Channel 4 in the UK (Bob’s Birthday, 1993; Crapston Villas, 1995; Pond Life, 1996). While there have been no theoretical or practice-based studies to define them as a discernible body of work, one of the common threads running through these animated fiction shorts is that they all present universal social phenomena. The film What Will You Do Now, John? (2020) will be used as a case study to examine the ways in which narrative structure, visual treatment and composition, pace and sound are used to present an aspect of social realism through animated fiction.

Pooja Pottenkulam is an animation filmmaker and illustrator. She was trained in Animation at the National Institute of Design in India and at the Royal College of Art in London. Her animation films have been broadcast on MTV, Channel 4 and Nickelodeon and at various international film festivals. She is a regular illustrator for Scholastic and has illustrated over 40 books and covers. She lives in London and is a Senior Lecturer in Animation and Illustration at the University of East London.