A Law of Physics in Enchanted World
In the world of Animation, laws of physics are often exaggerated. However, there is a line if the movement looks wrong or exaggerated. Even though the action itself is not realistic, such as flying sky with a broom or destroying building with a magical power, the movements have to based on reality to convince the audience. In many motion pictures, they create their own laws of the physics that can work within the world of its movie.
In a recent Disney film, Enchanted(2007), directed by Kevin Lima, the movie provides interesting contrast within two worlds, the real world and the world of fairy tale. You can observe that most of the actions happen in real world is almost similar to our own in contrast to the physical action that happens in the magical world.
The story of Enchanted takes place in the two worlds, New York as the our own real world, and Andalasia as the magical world of Disney's typical fairy tale movies. As the movie goes along, the two worlds collide by the magical power. In terms of laws of physics, this situation gives an interesting examples that show how different the two worlds are, and establish believable events when the two worlds become intertwined. From observation, the combination of two worlds compromises the laws of physics depends on the situation.
First example that shows the difference between two worlds are the basics of physics, falling. The main character, Gizelle (Amy Adams), experiences fall both in Andalasia and in New York. And, in both cases, other character catches her at the end of falling. In the beginning of the movie Gizelle, falls from the top of the tree while she is trying to escape from a troll. In this fall, she keeps falling about 3 seconds, which is almost 70 frames based on 24 frames per second.
Using a formula
(Distance in inches) = (1/3 inch) x (Number of Frames) x (Number of Frames)
She should fall about 135 feet in duration of 3seconds. Based on the relation ship between Gizelle and the background, I can assume that she falls about 120 feet in the movie. It shows that the falling rate and distance are almost similar to our own world. However, there is an aspects that is not similar to our laws of physics. Prince Edward (James Marsden ) catches her without any problem to save her from falling. But, if any human falls from that high apex, it should build up enough momentum to injure the person somehow in the fall of our real world.
Now, we can see the difference between the Andalasia and real world's laws of physics from another falling scene in the city of New York. Even though overall time of her falling after she released her hand was almost close to three seconds again, the Editor inserted a cut of Morgan (Rachel Covey ) saying “Catch her, daddy! ” to make it more dramatic. While Morgan's line, Giselle stays at the almost same place for about a second or two. So, actual time that took her to fall is about a second. And the height of the fall this time is about 11 to 15 feet.
Again, using the formula.
(Distance in inches) = (1/3 inch) x (Number of Frames) x (Number of Frames)
We can find out the fall of 15 feet takes about 23 frames, that is almost one second. So, we can say the fall is believable. However, even in the fall from 15 feet high, the impact of the Giselle's fall is pretty big. And we can see Robert (Patrick Dempsey ), who catches her this time, gets injured his arm a little from catching Giselle.
In Andalasia, Both Gizelle and Prince Edward do not get hart from this falling despite the high apex about 120 feet. But in reality, it would be like the fall happens in New York. This tells that either they have different gravity in Andalasia, or some magical power of exaggeration from animated world is helping them succeed the princess catch from high up. Thinking about the theme of the movie, the exaggerated contrast in this two falling is an absolutely clever choice.
Another fall that shows that even a magical creature follows the formula of falling is observed at the almost end of the movie. As the climax of the movie, a villain Narissa (Susan Sarandon ) turns into a dragon and falls from the top of Woolworth Building in New York. The height of Woolworth building is 792ft. If we put this height in the formula again, we get the duration of roughly 169 frames, which is about seven seconds for actual falling. In the movie, Narissa stays in the air about seven seconds. This tells us that the falling of Narissa is highly similar to real falling. This fall makes the magical creature in the New York a believable weight and timing. Since the character is now in the live action world, following the physics is important for the audience to believe the character actually exists in the screen.
As we can see, even though there is a magical arrangement to exaggerate the laws of physics, the three examples of falling shows that they follow the basic laws of physics to make the magical movement and action believable.
Second interesting example is that the abilities of characters stay sometimes and do not in other cases. For example, Giselle has an ability to call creatures by singing. If this ability is only by a magic power of the world of fairy tale, she cannot call animals in the real world. However, she manages to call animals and other creatures in New York City too. I assume that her ability is something that can only be heard by creatures other than human. I presume that Giselle's voice somehow contains the similar attribute to the dolphins voice. Usually human ear cannot hear them because the frequency of the vibration is out of the range that can be heard. Giselle might have an ability to include some sound wave with frequencies that cannot be heard by human but animals. The fact that her voice is not heard human being in far distance is shown in the scene when rats, cockroaches, and pigeons run into Robert's apartment, since all the humans are confused about what is going on with these creatures. Again, this hypothesis only works if the real world and Andalasia shares some common attributes, such as having similar air that delivers certain type of vibration. The laws of falling itself have similarities in both world. And, the laws of delivering sound have similarities since Giselle's voice works in both world.
Now, we have learned that Gizelle's ability of her voice works in both worlds presuming it is due to composition of air. It is strange that Pip (a chipmunk)'s ability of talking does not stay. Even though the animals ability to talk depends on the neuron density in the brain. Pip does not seem to go through biological transition during travel from Andalasia to New York. My hypothesis here is that the composition of the air in the Andalasia and our own world is similar but different enough to change Pip's ability to talk. Even after Pip comes to New York, he does not lose his intelligence. In fact, he starts speaking, and soon realizes that his words coming from his mouth is not making any sound he intended to. From this scene, it is possible that Pip's ability has not changed but the environment has. It is possible that Pip's way of pronouncing words is different to the one human does. And, it is also possible that the environment of real world does not deliver the sound like Andalasia. If so, the certain sound wave that pip produce does not travel the same way in the Andalasia.
In conclusion, I think that this film tries to follow the basic laws of physics as much as possible to emphasize the unreality of the characters and the land of Andalasia. As we have seen in the example of fallings, such as falling from high with no damage and falling from lower position with some damage . The movie uses a lot of contrasts to establish the realness of the real world and the exaggeration in the animated world. This relationship of two worlds cannot be done without good understanding of reality, which includes physics.
When they break the laws of physics in animated movie, it has to follow the laws of physics in their own world though it does not follow the laws of real physics. In other words, it has to be exaggerated but not broken. If someone try to exaggerate the laws of physics without understanding real physics, the result can be unconvincing. Without having laws of physics in the animated movie, the actions and movements look unconvincing, however, exaggerating laws of physics attracts the audiences even more. The principles of animation says exaggeration is important. And, we can even exaggerate the laws of physics to make it more interesting to watch. We have to understand a great deal about this real world to create believable world of animation.
