Dream Works Animated Films Narrative Research

Hollywood animated films play a pivotal role in the world’s animated film industry. Based their rich story themes, distinctive modeling symbols and classic narrative structures, DreamWorks animated films are popular among audience in various countries, especially in China. With its strong technical advantages, the studio leads the development trend of world’s 3D animation industry. In this paper, a longitudinal survey is conducted on 32 animated feature films released by DreamWorks from its establishment to 2016, and a detailed analysis is conducted on part of the most representative animated films. By adopting relative theories like film narrative and semiotics, the narrative characteristics of DreamWorks animated films are summarized systematically, aiming to uncover the successful reasons of DreamWorks animated films.The first chapter is the introduction, mainly discussing the paper’s research background, purpose, significance, current status and methods. DreamWorks animated films have made great achievements in the market, so it is necessary to analyze the reasons of its success. The author finds that research on DreamWorks narration is relatively rare, and it has academic value and application significance.The second chapter discusses the development overview and overall control of the DreamWorks animated films. After early success, DreamWorks is in trouble at present. The author attempts to divide its development process into three stages according to the film characteristics and achievements.The third chapter is the main body of the paper, summing up the DreamWorks animated films’ narration features from five aspects. First, the narrative themes are diversified. Though mostly are cliché themes, DreamWorks describes them with great eloquence. The spoof and parody of classic fairy tales has been the most representative characteristic of DreamWorks animated films from the beginning. Secondly, relevant knowledge of semiotics is used to analyze its role modeling symbols, which has a unique style different from other animated films. It also has outstanding performance in the sound symbols represented by the music. Moreover, in terms of the narrative space, it makes good use of extra long short and sequence shots to enhance the expression effect of the film narration. Finally, on the timeliness and narrative structure, it has not big difference from general animated films. The narrative structure is given priority to typical dramatic linear structure.The fourth chapter discusses the present excessive spoof and childish storytelling problems of Dream Works animated films on the basis of the above two chapters. Then, the author observes and thinks the shortages and current conditions of domestic animated films in terms of narrative and marketing at present. It is aimed to actively learn from experience from DreamWorks animated films’ advantages, hope to "select the essence and abandon dross" and explore the successful development path of domestic animated films in this process. The author discusses the application signification of research on DreamWorks animated films from the realistic perspective.To sum up, the main content of this paper is research on the narrative characteristics of DreamWorks animated film narrative. Nevertheless, the purpose is to provide reference for domestic animated films in improving box office especially, which is also the value of the paper.