Researching the 50's

As of late I've been spending a lot of my time researching the 50's and bits of the early 60's for my animated piece next year. It's a really interesting way time period and i've found that I like it more and more the further into the research I get. The main feeling that I wanted to get across was the innocent times of the fifties before people became much more loose and out there in the sixties.
I've found some great sources of information on the time and I'm using it to get a solid foundation in my knowledge of the decade.

Firstly I decided that I'd watch almost exclusively movies/tv shows set in the 50's to get a myself accustomed to how they speak, dress, have their hair, interact with each other, their mannerisms etc. I started by watching some of the more colourful films set in this time such as West Side Story and Grease. West side story was great as it showed a different side to the perfect suburbia often shown in American media and Grease showed high school/teenage life well which fits into the characters I'm thinking of including in my animated short. The music is very distinct at this time with doo-wop and rock and roll being prevalent and the films of this time also have a very distinct style with some great acting talent.



I then decided to look at some more modern interpretations on the time as generally they have a lot of research done already, so I chose the TV series Mad Men. I've been meaning to watch this for a while, and only three episodes in I've already got a nice idea of how people spoke and not high fashion but general fashion is presented really well in this series.



As well as getting my hands on some more movies (Pleasantville, American Graffiti) I have been looking for some classic fifties/sixties television. Some that I was already aware of and have even watched are Bewitched, I Dream of Jeannie, I Love Lucy, The Ed Sullivan Show, Alfred Hitchcock Presents to name a few. These all had distinct styles so I am going to watch some of these noting down expressions and movement.

I also got a few (well 8) books out of the library, one on facial animation, one on after effects and the rest on writing and acting for animation and some books on 1950's fashion and architecture. They're all helping me figure out what to do with my characters and story and so I had to do some concept art of one of the locations. The one I chose was the gypsy's shop and this is basically what I have so far. I'm pretty damn proud of it too :)