Law of Physics in Animation Outline - Satoshi Kon's Paprika

Satoshi Kon's Paprika - Essay Outline

Introduction

• Satoshi Kon Film, 2-d Animation
• The film takes place in a world similar to ours, where a device called the DC mini allows someone to join in on another's dream, with one person is asleep and dreaming. The dream can also be recorded and rewatched, and it is used to treat trauma and psychological disorders/distress.
• Paprika contrasts a realistic world, with the broken and imaginative physics of a dream world.

3 Hypotheses

Gravity

• Gravity is distorted in the dream world, Paprika's character can seem as light as a feather, to as a normally weighted human female if she decides to choose so.
• Objects and characters move in distorted arcs. The two bartenders are able to leap the distance of a wide street just by sprinting a short distance.
• The suspect of the Detective's drean film, when shot in the back, collapses into a rag doll, and floats slowly to the ground as if he is actually a piece of paper

Time

• Time is severely distorted in the dream world. Time is allowed to run both forward and backward in the dream of the Detective's. In his dream, he repeatedly shoots the same same suspect, over and over again in the same hallway.
• Events do not run in a straight line, even though the Detective's movie dream happens at the very beginning of the film, it repeats itself and is even watched by the Detective himself in a later part of the film.
• When the Detective confronts his fear, and finally shoots the suspect in his dream, the dream immediately cuts to the end of the “film” and does not show time passing.
  
  

Squash and Stretch and Inconsistent Mass

• When the dream world collides with the real world, objects that are normally solid/structured squash and stretch with distorted mass. Ex. The Dream Parade, refrigerators bend and squish in distorted shapes to walk down the street.
• People distort their bodies, and either gain or lose mass to turn into objects.
• Objects that are normally solid, bend and squish like worms to fly through the air in the Dream Parade.

Conclusion

• Kon purposely designed the dream world to be abstract and devoid of realistic physics to contrast it with the real world the film is half set in. It makes the film interesting, because it shows the viewer how abstract their dreams are, but when they are asleep and dreaming they buy into it without realizing.

Film Trailer