Visual Analysis: Compare and Contrast

This essay will consist of an analysis of two short films, the first film is Jiri Trnka, The Hand, 1965 and the second one is Dusa Vukotic and Zagreb film, Surogat, 1961. There will be many aspects of these films that will be looked at such as the target audiences and how it communicates with them, the differences in lighting and colour used in each, comparisons of the story etc.

The Hand is quite a weird and dark film that is about a sculpture who is an artist trying to save his flower from being destroyed by a big human hand, in a white glove. The hand is there to make him create a sculpture for him, but the man doesn’t want to. Although he doesn’t want to, he is enslaved by the hand to do it. This story is completely told with no dialogue, though there is no dialogue and only  one expression the mannequin can make you still get the emotions of the man throughout. ‘The Hand’ is mainly aimed towards adults with the more deeper meanings within this video.

However with ‘Surogat’ it is clearly aimed more towards children. This film is about a weirdly shaped man taking a trip to the beach, every flat object he has brought with is inflatable to make what ever he desires. The use of bright colours catches the audience's attention especially with all the odd things incorporated into the film such as the man makes a shark out of a shape by blowing it up.

However in The Hand the colours are quite dull and boring which aims to the more mature audience. The stories are very different as The Hand is very serious and has underlying meanings to it, whereas Surogat is going down the more humor route with plenty of thing going wrong to the main character. So Surogat connects to the audience with the comedy use with in it, whereas The Hand connects to the audience though relating to problems that are happening at that moment in time. the lightings are completely different to go with the very different themes of the films and to go with each story. It is the same for the sounds used in them as it is quite an upbeat tune that is played throughout Surogat, although in The Hand it starts off quite happy and cheerful noises and then it is more serious and slow tune that helps to go with the theme of something bad happening. There are also really loud sound effects of footsteps etc. This is probably to add more suspense and drama.

Overall these two are completely different, the animation styles are different with one being puppet animation and the other being 2D animation. The only similarity that is seen is when the music begins in The Hand it is quite similar to the happy music played in Surogat, but even then that changes to it being more serious in The Hand. These two films are like the opposites of each other.


Videos are subject to copyright.