Saturday, July 4, 2015

A Tale of Momentum & Inertia

This is a fun little video from an animation studio called HouseSpecial that I like to show my physics students. Yes, it's about momentum, a physics concept, but it's also a dramatic and humorous story about gratitude, small-mindedness, and revenge. The story (spoiler alert) is that at the top of a mountain lives a giant rock-man who maintains the mountain. One day he makes a mistake, and the mistake threatens a village of humans down on the coast. The rock-man goes to great lengths to save the village, but his final move collapses the village church. The villagers attack mindlessly, annoying the rock-man, who responds by allowing the village to be destroyed. I am still amazed that such a powerful story can be told in so short a time (1:10 min).


The computer-graphics animation has the look and feel of a video game. Video games have to employ the laws of physics to render physical interactions and motion believable. Yet video games find sly ways to break the laws of physics if needed for the sake of drama, or for the sake of the story. In addition, human perception does not always "see" in accordance with the laws of physics. For instance, how big is the full moon? If you hold your thumb up at arm's length to compare, you'll see that the moon is no larger than half your thumbnail. But in a video, if you render the full moon that actual size, it looks ridiculously small to your eye. Videos and photos using the image of the full moon end up making the moon quite large so it will be believable.

I will show the video three or four times to my students. The first time is just to "see" it. The second time is to point out the obvious displays of momentum and inertia, and the use of physics in the animation. The third time is to review the story. Finally, I like to have them spot places where the laws of physics have been violated.

I referred to Lankshear & Knobel's appendix to Chapter 4 in New Literacies about remix practices to examine this story.

Though not a remix in the classic sense, this video animation uses the grammar of both movie and video game storytelling, so it is a remix in the expanded sense advocated by Lessig (2008). The animation studio is clearly using this video to promote their work, so it could be thought of as a projective configuration by an affinity of animators/programmers/storytellers, ultimately for proprietary gain. The quality is quite professional, and the humor is a little dark (no happy ending). The intention is probably to create a video that could "go viral," or at least gather a fan base that could go on to further remixing. In this way the studio could expand its reputation among fans as well as potential customers.

5 comments:

  1. I can image they love the flawless animation coupled with a fun physics lesson. What I am curious about is if there is some folk tale out there that was remixed into A Tale of Momentum and Inertia. It seems like a lot of Grimm's fairytales took unexpected turns. Thanks for sharing William!

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    1. Thanks, that's a good point about Grimm's. I'll look and see if I find something . . .

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  2. This story has reminds me of Grimm, Gulliver's Travels, and the rock biter from the Neverending Story. The story is very relatable. I think we've all experienced the type of "no good deed goes unpunished" situation this rock creature went through. How do your student's react to this type of story? Great video!

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    1. My students don't find it quite as funny as I find it. One reason I go over the story with them (and not just the physics) is that they often miss the meaning of some of the story details. It's a literacy issue!

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  3. Hello!

    Glad you liked our video. If you'd like to know more about the creation of the short, visit us here: http://www.housespecial.com/all/#momentum. Thanks for sharing it. Please let us know if you have questions about the process, tools used or anything else.

    - HouseSpecial - Portland, Oregon

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