The Life Size Zeotrope

 

 The Life Size Zeotrope

By Mark Simon Hewis

 'The Life size Zoetrope' is a 7 minute story telling the life of on man, through 30 peoples hands. The overall aim of the film is to show the stereotypical lifestyle in which people are perceived to have and how structured someones life can be without people being aware to it. The build up of the persons life, starts off from new born, adolescence, adulthood, and elderly creating a clever anology of clips that can relate to everyone, making it a thought provoking short film.

The story is portrayed through a spinning zeotrope, that could be  defines as the circle of life, or the journey of life through the constant movement of the people inside the Zeotrope, and there is a gradual build up into the shots getting closer to the animated photos each person is holding. The film is successful due to its different imagery and visual way of perceiving a story. The animated shots have been created to look like moving water colour images, occasionally being repetitive at times, and not thoroughly clear to see and understand which could have been created due to the constant movement of the people holding the animations. There is a lot of sound throughout the film, with the narration and the background music. Overall the film is effective with grabbing a viewers attention with the suspense of the first shots, making the viewer want to know more, and understand how a zeotrope can be used when describing life, and the visuals being remarkable and unique.