Aeon Flux pilot analysis part 1

Today I'm doing something a little different, I'm going to breakdown the flow and story of the pilot episode of Aeon Flux in order to understand visual storytelling better for my own projects. I recently bought the animated collection of Aeon Flux, it had been years since I had seen anything from this show and when I started watching the shorts I was completely blown away. The subtly told story done through visuals is to me so captivating and interesting, I wanted to break it down a little bit.

Opening shot

One of the most iconic shots in any animation, this cold opening tells us everything we need to know about Aeon Flux to begin with. We start with a shot of a curl of the hair that almost looks like it is positioned in a golden ratio like position and we see the fly land on her cheek and move up to her eye, it walks across her eye and her eyelashes snap down on the fly, her eye turning towards it. To me this opening sequence refers to her constantly being killed and resurrected each episode without an explanation. Is there any one Aeon Flux, or is each one a android? In nearly every episode we see Aeon fall to her death, get shot..etc. and this is a reference to that. As if she has been dead many times before this episode and is coming back to life now.

We then get a cut to Aeon flux herself in a wide shot of just her holding the gun firing at an enemy we cant see yet off screen. We then get a smashcut as the screen is full of black and this black becomes the back of a soldier who is shot and falls over revealing other soldiers around him being shot by Aeon flux now. Aeon sits on the top left of the image with the cloud shape swooping into her and the pilar beside her both contrasting with her silhouette. Several goons run towards her dying and we get another cut scrolling past her eyes as the gun fire flickers in her eyes.

She quickly exterminates the rest of the goons almost simultaneously and then glances up at a light coming from a building in the distance. We do not know the significance of this but we assume she knows where she is going since she immediately runs in that direction. Next we get a shot of her running into a nearby building and as she passes by a foreground element of a wall we see the camera continue this foreward progression and we notice goons in the foreground and midground prepare for an assault.

We then get two of the coolest shots in the whole pilot episode both of her taking out two lone soldiers. The first we see as if we are zooming into a scene as the foreground elements of the wall ro ceiling recede in each direction to reveal a downward angled shot of a guard running towards aeon who she immediately takes out. Another one comes as we again come out from behind a foreground element and see Aeon shot a guard and jump to the right. We follow his body as it flys back and to the left.

A similar third scene takes place as she kills two guards and jumps down in a heroic stance before running off. The way this scene is shot feels as if the foreground element is moving independently on its own, as if the building is shifting around the characters it just looks insanely cool. All of this feels very much like a mc escher drawing, and I would imagine he definitely served a sinspiration in the next scene when we see Aeon heading up the flight of stairs and see her continued travel through the stairs from different positions as she moves through the scene. As she gets to the top of the stairs she stops and looks out the window and we again get a clue as to what it is that Aeon wants, there is something in that building that she needs to get to. 

She immediately pulls out a map and we see her finger lead up the page to where a picture of a man sits. To me this seems like they want to mentally associate the feeling of going up with this figure, the upward motion makes us associate him with the building she is looking at and with the idea that this guy is a boss that needs to be taken out. The status of his royalty in this society is reinforced by the clothing he wears. Another mental association might be the blue background in this photo and the blue in the sky. 

Anyway as we are given this new tidbit of information we then see a bullet whiz buy the guys neck, again keeping in line with the theme of what she is doing. At this point we have established that she is some sort of assassin out to kill this guy. As she runs away from the guys shooting her we see another cleverly edited transition of her moving through the scene with her disappearing behind a foreground element only to reappear closer to us  and what first appears to be a wall turns into a floor we are looking down at that she runs along, looking back at the men who were chasing her before running off screen.

The next shot is her running towards a door, this door has significance as an exit and this is emphasized by the lines radiating outwards towards us. We get a close up of her pushing it open and then walking into a very large room. This large room is shown to us in the largest shot available, we are given a good idea of how much space there is between her and the only other thing in the room which is some type of wall contraption. 

Right as we pan back to her we see the men turning the corner  after her, she sprints for the contraption and we get an awesome shot here. Nearly every shot in this show has to be unique in some way, it feels like we are on her hip as she runs towards the door, as she gets closer she runs off the screen. There is a pause here as we zoom into the blank space she is no longer in. Which is quite interesting because it gives you a second to linger before she comes backwards into the picture. 

We then see her squint towards the door, and we get a closeup of her ear and then a closeup of the inside of her ear as it reacts to some sound that can be found behind the door. She decides there will need to be some other way to get through. I noticed at this point that the guards chasing her before are....nowhere to be found! So she trys getting ones attention by shooting a platofmr above her and then using him as a pulley to pull herself up as goons run in from both doors.

We see her take the cord up and then the cord gets shot, she immediately rebounds by placing her foot between the metal railing to pull herself up. The next two shots show a shadow shot of her as we look down on her from above and then a shot of her running down a symmetrical halwaay killing dozens of men as they fall around her. Here is when the liquid TV show calls it "to be continued" So tomorrow I will carry on my analysis in part 2.