Darkmatters

TV that's better than movies

2011-07-05T20:26:00.043-05:00

Breaking Bad s3 e12 opening

The new season of Breaking bad is about to break, and AMC has been showing all the previous seasons to get everyone hyped up for it. Man, what a fantastic show!! The incredible music video style montage above is just one example.

Below are a few screenshots showing a taste of the innovative cinematography. I've rarely seen interiors shot so dark, with just pools of light and layering used to separate elements.

In the shot below, bear in mind that green (the color of money) in this show represents a dream of a better life - generally through money obtained via illegal and self-destructive means. Wendy's vertical blinds are a brilliant representation of jail bars too. I also noticed in the montage above that her headboard resembles the Breaking Bad title screen.

Here's a series of over-the-shoulder shots that I find amazing...

... Ending with Walt looking tiny and helpless behind his baby's crib in one of those empty dark rooms. Brilliant I tell ya!

And a sequence shot in a large room using two windows covered by opaque yellow shades. The glowing yellow rectangles are used perfectly here as framing devices and abstract shapes to create beautiful compositions.

At home with the Whites - a tranquil domestic dinnertime scene.

... You know what this kind of lighting really is? It's Chiaroscuro - figures emerging from darkness into light. Like the stuff Caravaggio used to paint. Look it up if you don't believe me!

And here's the closing few moments of the same episode. Powerful television my friends...

I've been hard at work on my film... and I don't want to show too much just before it gets released, so I'm not posting about it. Soon though, you'll be able to watch it. I'm not doing the festival thing, so as soon as I get it done I'm posting it here for the world to see.

Cinematic side-trip

2011-05-30T21:12:00.001-05:00

Black Swan by Darren Aronofsky

I guess everybody knows what the above is. This movie really hit me out of left field. I had only ever seen his debut Pi; Faith in Chaos and didn't care for it, but the trailers for this one caught my attention. And when I saw it, I was blown away. Ok, there are some pats I don't care for, in fact I now understand Aronofsky is known for including some rather jarring moments of lowbrow pop culture in his films, which for the most part are actually quite elegant - almost more like European films than American.

It made me decide to watch his other films, and I was quite impressed with them all.

Requiem for a Dream

If you're interested, you can also look up trailers and clips from The Wrestler and The Fountain. I enjoyed all of these movies. Such a nice break from all the Hollywood slickness and homogenized formula. Heh... sounds like something from a baby's bottle, which seems appropriate for most Hollywood movies.

Anyway, the real reason I wanted to make this post was because my interest in Black Swan also led me deeper into cinematic excellence. I discovered it was influenced by several films I had not seen, so I sought them out and was again blown away by all of them. I hit some kind of Motherlode when I started digging into the fertile soil under Black Swan!

So here I include trailers or clips from those movies. Get ready for a sweet blast of mostly black and white cinematic excellence! But understand... these movies unlike today's blockbusters are not simple escapist fare or feelgood romantic comedies... they're powerful artistic statements that at times are harsh or terrifying or brutal. Reminders of what art can be when its not subsumed by wishy-washy Disneyfied sentimentality.

Roman Polanski's 1965 psychological thriller Repulsion

Catherine Deneuve is having a bad day.

The Double Life of Veronique

I was lucky enough to find somebody had uploaded the puppet sequence.

andrzej wajda's Kanal

These two are in Polish with subtitles. No serious cinephile would let that stop them from enjoying amazing cinematography like this!! These are not directly related to Black Swan, but gems I've discovered recently that I wanted to share. Above is Kanal, based on a real event; the Polish army, armed only with pistols and grenades, were getting hammered by Nazi tanks and bombers, and the remnants of one unit took refuge in the sewer for a very surreal and beautiful sequence I know I'll never forget.

Roman Polanski's Knife in the Water

Need I say anything about this one? Amazing.

Book reviews - Cinematic Storytelling, A Shot in the Dark

2011-03-10T23:47:00.008-06:00

Here are my thoughts on a few books I've recently read. Starting with one I've had in my Amazon shopping cart for a long time and almost bought several times...

Cinematic Storytelling: The 100 Most Powerful Film Conventions Every Filmmaker Must Know

by Jennifer Van Sijll
***
I can't say I completely recommend it, at least not until after reading more informative books about directing and cinematic composition such as Film Directing Shot by Shot: Visualizing from Concept to Screen
and Film Directing: Cinematic Motion, both by Steven D Katz and The Filmmaker's Eye: Learning (and Breaking) the Rules of Cinematic Composition by Gustavo Mercado.

It seems to be part of a series of books published by Michael Wiese Productions all made in the "widescreen" format, I think trying to cash in on the HD craze. The layout of these books is similar to the 16:9 HD aspect ratio, and the books are designed to be visually appealing, but seem to be very sparse on information. There's a lot of blank white space, and what few words there are suffer from a stiffly formulaic presentation loaded with pointless repetition. Each page only features a few brief paragraphs and feels like it could have been developed a lot more. And then to waste more space, each chapter pointlessly lists the credits for each movie mentioned in that chapter - what's the point of that? I wouldn't mind it if it seemed the actual descriptions of the cinematic conventions themselves -- the meat and potatoes of the book - were more fully presented first, but it seems the credits listing eats up valuable space that should have been devoted to more fully developed discussion of those conventions.

I'm not completely panning the book... it IS a good brief introduction to "100 cinematic conventions every filmmaker should know". But that's all it is. To make an analogy, it's like a book that lists 100 great ingredients with very brief notes as to how each tastes and what kind of dish it can be used in, but has no recipes in it. The books mentioned above have those recipes... they go into great detail about staging and blocking and how to arrange actors and scene elements for various effects. The information in those books is presented in such a way that you come out with coherent understanding of how to set up certain types of scenes.

Once you have a grounding in that kind of detailed info, then a book like Cinematic Storytelling is a good addition... some additional ingredients to add to your dishes once you know how to cook them. But that listing of ingredients does no good until you know some recipes.

A Shot in the Dark: A Creative DIY Guide to Digital Video Lighting on (Almost) No Budget

by Jay Holben

*****
I recently learned that one of my highest recommended books about lighting -

Matters of Light & Depth by Ross Lowell - has been chosen as a textbook and as a result the price has skyrocketed. In a recent review, I panned Motion Picture and Video Lighting, Second Edition by Blain Brown as being pretty useless for anyone setting up a stopmotion studio. So in an effort to find another book I can recommend in lieu of Matters of Light and Depth, I ordered a newly-published (jan of this year) book that sounded good. And it does not disappoint one bit!! Like Matters, it goes into the properties of light - both hard and soft light, and how they're created and what kind of effects can be achieved with each. Lots of great example pics, and also a great bonus - a section on do-it-yourself electrical wiring, I especially like this, as I've dine some bodgering of light fixtures myself, guided only by Nick Hilligoss' advice, and now thanks to Jay Holben's excellent electrical teaching, I have a pretty decent understanding of the relevant considerations when doing this sort of thing. It's all about the AMPS... he'll tell you why and give you simple conversions to figure out just how much amperage you need when selecting cords and other electrical components.

In fact, his coverage of lighting in general is very thorough... but there were still a couple of ideas covered in the Lowell book that aren't here... namely off the top of my head Lowell mentioned an important concept from old Hollywood techniques calling for the separation of subject and background so that you have complete control over each without it affecting the other. Ah, but what can you do? This is an excellent book and gets my highest recommendation!! And in fact I'm just about to be the first to review it on Amazon.

NW Animation Festival - run by Sven!!

2011-03-10T20:52:00.003-06:00

My friend and fellow stopmotion animator Sven Bonnichsen has created an animation festival in the NorthWest (hence the name). It's not only for stopmo, but for all animation techniques. Sven is a great guy and a tireless creator and worker behind the scenes in all sorts of artistic endeavors... the kind of people it takes to run festivals like this. Here's the info --

NW ANIMATION FESTIVAL 2011: Call For Submissions

The NW Animation Festival is now accepting entries for 2011. Films from anywhere in the world are welcome. Deadline is May 1, with discounts for students and films received by April 1. The festival will be held on June 3-4-5, in the heart of downtown Portland Oregon at the historic 5th Avenue Cinema. See website for details and submission form: nwanimationfest.com

ABOUT

This is a festival created by animators, for animators, and all lovers of animation.

We are people who hunger to see MORE. Not just the year's top 10 shorts... We want to feast on the year's top 100!

We've thrown the door wide open for submissions. Films may come from anywhere in the world. You may submit films made at any time during your life. And you are free to simultaneously show your work online or at other festivals.

We know that great animation comes from all levels. Contributions from students, independent artists, and professional studios are all valued equally.

All types of animation are encouraged: hand-drawn, computer-generated, stop-motion... We attempt to program shorts blocks focusing on each method separately—both to educate, and to satisfy each methods' enthusiasts.

We strive to pack the weekend with as much animation as possible. But the festival is still bigger than just this. Select films go on to become part of our "Best of the NW Animation Fest" traveling show, which will tour the region during the following year.

For more, visit: nwanimationfest.com

(contact: director@nwanimationfest.com)

Enabling live view out on the G1!!

2011-02-26T05:20:00.003-06:00

Well well.... Lookie what I got here!! It LOOKS like a honest-to-goodness Live Video Feed from my G1. But -- it can't be. No such thing is possible, right?

Wrong!!

There's a little trick - a hack of sorts, in Panasonic cameras (some anyway - I'm assuming the ones with an LCD viewscreen attached)). All you have to do is hold down the trashcan button for about 30 seconds in record mode (regular picture-taking mode, not review mode). Suddenly the image on the viewscreen of the camera will go dark for just an instant. Was there a tiny click or sound of some sort from the camera? I thought so, but it might have just been something in my head busting wide open from the sudden release of tension, and the inrushing of excitement to replace it.

I can't even tell you what a rollercoaster these last few days have been for me... deciding to buy the G1, discovering the live feed doesn't work, the anger and frustration and the decision to sell it and start researching for a micro four thirds camera that would work... then the sudden green light when I remembered reading that this trick works with some cameras.

I was sitting down at the time eating some stir fry chicken and watching the trailer for the upcoming Harryhausen Tribute when it happened. I leaped from my seat in a rush of excitement to try it, but decided to wait till I was done eating so my rather excellent dinner wouldn't go cold. I could hardly contain myself... and ate way too fast. With a bit of a tummyache, I then levered myself up and began to set things up for the test. Imagine my consternation and frustration when before I could even finish opening Framethief the camera shut itself down with an audible electronic groan due to expended battery life!!

I put it on the charger and chewed my nails for 2 and a half agonizing hours waiting as electricity slowly trickled into that faceless, mocking little cube of plastic. But at last it was full as I was, and the test commenced. Now I'm full and satisfied. What a day!!

Oh, and yes, I can easily make all the screen icons go away with the click of a button.

Oh oh!! And I almost forgot to add.... you have to reset the Resolution settings in Framethief to 3:2, which is the native resolution of the Micro Four Thirds camera system (strange as that may sound... part of the reason for the very name is because the default resolution they provide is 4:3). Another discovery made in my exhaustive research recently to save the day. I kept trying various resolution presets provided in Framethief to no avail, Buster always looked either too Laurel or too Hardy, if you get my drift. But of course, the presets were configured for VIDEO cameras, not still cameras! So recalling a strange bit of trivia I dug up the other day (which incidentally explains why the MFT cameras truly use full resolution in all aspect ratios, 16:9 as well as 4:3 etc) I manually punched in 3:2 and it worked!

Heh... actually this explains the weird setup with Skulkin leaning on Buster above.... I was beginning to doubt my eyes and think that maybe Buster was really either thicker or thinner than I believed. I propped Skulkin up against him so I could see another face... Buster's is rather strangely proportioned.

It didn't help... Skulkin is rather weirdly put together too...

The Lumix Smackdown Challenge - putting the G1 and the FZ50 through their paces

2011-02-25T05:07:00.003-06:00

XtremeCloseupG1full

I won't write a lot about this here... just click the image above and view the group of pictures uploaded to my Lumix Smackdown Challenge set. Yes, I finally decided it was time to buy the much-lauded G1 and give it a whirl.

~~A warning right up front though - DO NOT BUY THE G1 FOR STOPMO!!! It does NOT have a true full-time live feed that works with a framegrabber!!!~~ (Actually it DOES have live view out - see next post for details on how to enable it) In many other respects it remains similar to it's larger but less refined cousin the FZ50, but for some reason Panny decided to disable the full-time live view out.

In fact my research revealed that NO Micro Four Thirds camera yet made has live view out that actually functions in another device (like a framegrabber for instance)... until the newly-released GH2. I might be selling my shiny sexy new G1 to get one and test it out. Keep watching this space.

Ok, for more info check THIS THREAD at the stopmotion message board.

Enough typing for tonight... Im wiped out from massive research and camera testing.

Modding a mic stand for swing-arm action -- Shelley, this one's for you!

2011-02-12T06:35:00.008-06:00

Shelley really got me thinking about this the other day.

Well, I finally unpacked enough stuff in my new house that I can begin animating! I set up a shot (I want to get a little more practice in with Skulkin before I start in on the actual film itself) and discovered that even with my upgraded lighting grid, I just can't get lights to all the places I really want them. I had already built a pair of extensions I can clamp to the ceiling joists to clamp lights to, because I wanted some lights lower than my original grid would allow. But still I was too limited... I needed some way to attach a swing arm boom to them. I spent the evening cogitatin' on this problem, and slowly but surely ground out a solution using a couple of mic stands I already had on hand.

They're just cheap stands from Musician's Friend, similar to this one.

Mine aren't that tall though... I got some kind of shorties. I'm sure either will work just fine... a longer one might reach down lower than mine.

One problem I had to overcome - the tubing used for the mic stands is too small in diameter... the C-clamps I have won't close down small enough to get a grip on it. I solved that with two pieces of wood and a little electrician's tape (I haven't unpacked far enough to find my gaffer's tape, or I'd use that instead).

This kind of C-clamp can be bought from a music store or a lighting supplier who handles disco type lights. If you walk into a hardware store and ask for a C clamp, they won't have this kind.

Here you see it all taped up. Now it can get a tight grip on the mic stand.

I had to use 2 C-clamps... one to attach it to the ceiling joist and one to attach the lighting unit. Notice I removed the bolt from the clamp that will attach to the ceiling.

Here's the whole assembly. Oh, I didn't get pics of this, but I had to cut off the bottom of the stand to remove the tripod legs. A hacksaw is essential equipment!

Here's the ceiling attachment. Now you can see why I had to remove the bolt... though I suppose you could substitute a big wood screw and mount it permanently, or drill through the joist and use a coach bolt. I like the ability to move it wherever I want though.

Another shot of the mount... plus the big knob that tightens the swing arm boom.

It can swing from here too.

The business end, bearing one of my modded Blackbird PAR 16's. Oh, I finally managed to find a US site that sells barndoors for them! Here it is: Stage Spot.

I wanted to post this one to show how I attached the tracklight unit into the snout of a PAR 16. The older PAR units I bought from Musician's Friend were made a little differently, and you could just jam them together for a perfect pressure fit, but the newer models have thicker rivets inside that prevent that, so I just busted out the FastSteel epoxy putty and packed a ring of it inside. First I coated the end of the tracklight unit itself with dishwashing liquid as a release, and before the putty fully cured I gently rotated it to break the bond... now the putty will stay inside the PAR snout and I can remove the track light if I want.

Getting along with YouTube a lot better now

2011-02-04T00:32:00.000-06:00

A few posts back I badmouthed the most popular video sharing site on the net. Turns out my problem was I didn't understand the special requirements for Mac users. I was following advice aimed at PC users... normally I pay close attention to the distinction, but for some reason I didn't even think about it in this case. Well today I dug deep in the hidden bowels of YouTube and found a post on their user help forum delineating the procedure for Mac users.

Here's the post itself, copied here for your convenience:

Level 9
12/14/10
Some of the recommendations in YouTube's "Help articles" for Apple users creating .MOV files contradict guidance given elsewhere or use terms only software developers would be familiar with. I believe the instructions below cover the major do's and don'ts for creating .MOV files that are "YouTube Friendly".

Instructions for advanced Mac users creating .MOV files for YouTube

YouTube doesn't support or improperly decodes some of the more advanced features and data types that may be used in .MOV files. When creating .MOV files that will be uploaded to YouTube you can increase the chances your movie will playback properly by conforming your .MOV file to the following specifications:

Video Track (required)
- must contain 1 and only 1 Video Track
- do not use "Frame Reordering"
- H.264 encoded
- 23.98, 24, 25, 29.97, 30 are acceptable Frame Rates

Sound Track (optional)
- may contain 1 and only 1 Sound Track
- Sound Track [if present] must be of equal length as Video Track
- AAC encoded

"Prepare for Internet Streaming" (required)
- must be "Fast Start"

Do not include any other type of "Tracks" other than the 1 required Video Track and 1 optional Sound Track. Do not embed XML, XMP, or EDL data.

If you are creating a .MOV for a client that may upload the file to YouTube you should explain the importance of not editing the movie in any way since that invalidates the "Fast Start" option. Make sure clients understand that adding or deleting bumpers, bugs, color-bars, credits, black, slates, etc. is considered "editing".

---
Update:
Sound Track specs addendum:
- "AAC" encoded with "Constant Bit Rate" option
12/16/10

Found on this web page.

Additionally, a YouTube staffer posted this helpful info:

File format and editing tips for Apple users
Share Comment Print
If you're a Quicktime Pro, Finalcut Pro, or iMovies user, check out the following tips on how to export your video files and get the best results out of uploading to YouTube and the transcoding of your files.

How to enter Options for:
iMovie: File > Export > Compress movie for: Expert Settings > Share > Export: Movie to QuickTime Movie > Options
Finalcut Pro: File > Export > Using Quicktime Conversion > Options
QuickTime Pro: File > Export > Export: Movie to QuickTime Movie > Options

From Options:

In the Video section select the following:
Compression Type: H264
Frame Rate: 30
Data Rate: Automatic
(if you choose to restrict the Data Rate, make sure to choose the highest value acceptable to you — more bits means better quality)
Key Frames: Automatic
Frame Reording: Unchecked
In the Video section click Size and set Dimensions to the original size of your video (Note: HD resolutions - 1280x720 or 1920x1080 - preferred).
Select Prepare for internet Streaming and choose Fast Start from the drop-down menu.
In the Audio section, make sure that the audio codec is AAC. Always use AAC as the preferred audio codec.
Once you've made all of these selections, click the OK button to save your preferences.
Add a title to the video file and click the Save button to save your edited version of your movie. Your project will then be exported and be ready to upload to YouTube.

On This page.

And to test it, I finally dug out the original file of Terror in the Pumpkin Patch, formerly only viewable as a tiny QT movie via my site, encoded and uploaded it according to the instructions. And the results are excellent. So I tried re-encoding One Good Yank and the clip I call DrunkStagger and uploaded them as well. That stuttery motion I complained about earlier in One Good Yank... completely gone!! I'll post those two below as well.

A Forest Grows

2011-02-01T22:19:00.000-06:00

I've been honing my photography skills, getting ready to start shooting soon on the bar flick. A lot has happened lately around here that all contributes to why my images are looking better... I'll summarize in this post what the main factors are.

First, I've installed some boom arms, one type of which I detailed in my last post. I got pretty frustrated with the flimsy mic stands though, so I went looking for something better that wouldn't cost as much as a professional C stand and grip equipment.

Man - I'll tell ya what... I love all the posters surrounding me here in the Darkstudio, but it sure does make it hard to take pictures of the studio itself or anything in it! All that busy, colorful imagery tends to overwhelm the pics. I hope you can see the forest of rods and extensions coming down from the ceiling. Click on the image to see it at Flickr, then click Actions > View All Sizes to see it larger. Or actually, once you get there, just click on the pic itself to see it enlarged against a grey background... looks much better to me.

Hope you can make it out against Kong's flank here, but I found these awesome little extension rods made for mic stands that clamp onto any rod up to maybe 2" diameter. They're pretty short, only 7 inches long, but they're sturdy and have a big toothed clamp wheel, very much like an actual grip clamp. It seems quite strong... a heck of a lot more secure than any joint on those mic stands I put up the other day! And as you can see in the pic, you can link them together if you want to get lights exactly where you need them. These are clamped onto one of the simple wood dowel extensions I made some time go (I painted all the wooden parts black... makes everything look all shiny and professional). These are called OnStage Stands Mini Boom Arms and will only set you back $12.99 each. Mmmm... you know what... they were $11.99 when I bought mine about a week ago...

Next, the really BIG addition to the studio, which just came in today...

The Cowboy Studio Pro Light Stand and Boom. Looking at the pics on Amazon, I thought it was about the same size as the little lightweight camera tripods I'm used to, but NO!!!! This thing is HUGE!! As you can see, I've got it practically up against the ceiling, and it could go a bit higher. The tubing is thick and sturdy... the fittings are plastic, but solid and made very much like the fittings on real pro grip gear. It's basically a lightweight budget version of a professional C stand. The extending boom arm is so long, it can reach all the way across my set table, and can be height adjusted to anywhere from table height to ceiling. This thing is so beefy and sturdy compared to any other lightbearing arm here in the studio, I think I might just get another one and retire the frustrating mic stands. It cost about $60... just about twice what one of the mic stand rigs costs if you include the price of the 3 clamps needed to make them work.

Ok, but enough about grip equipment or cheap knockoffs thereof.

The other main factor in improving my shots is three books I bought. I'll give my thoughts on each below...

The Filmmaker's Eye: learning (and breaking) the rules of cinematic composition Gustavo Mercado

THE best book I've encountered about cinematic composition.

Buy it.

No, really... what are you waiting for? BUY IT!!!

DSLR Cinema: Crafting the Film Look with Video Kurt Lancaster

I can't rate this one nearly as high as the last - large parts of it feel more like infommercials for specific products and glowing praise for a small group of people associated with the early advent of DSLR Cinema that hatched with the release of the Canon 5D Mk2 (1st DSLR with full HD video).

However, that said, I was immensely inspired by it, and by the videos I sought out on youtube such as Vincent LaForet's seminal DSLR video tour-de-force Reverie:

... And the Making-of for it:

Also, loads of good info about how to get the best image quality from a DSLR camera that I was unaware of (and most of which also works with a DSLR-like camera such as my Lumix DMC-FZ50).

and finally, there's

Motion Picture and Video Lighting, Second Edition Blaine Brown

I bought this one hoping to find another good book about general lighting techniques that I can recommend, because my former choice, Matters of Light and Depth by Ross Lowell is now a textbook and has increased significantly in price. I was rather disappointed though... this book isn't nearly as good as far as I'm concerned. The main emphasis seems to be on lighting equipment and on the breakdown of jobs on a professional lighting crew, with very little useful information about how to actually create good lighting. There is some such info, but not as much as I'd like. I'd say pass on this one and just shell out for Matters of Light and Depth. Or pick another highly recommended lighting book on Amazon... it'll probably be just as good if not better.

Whew! This has turned into a massive post! I'll close out with another of my recent pics inspired by these books and made thanks to the newfound ability to place lights wherever I want:

Decorating the Darkstudio

2011-01-30T20:46:00.000-06:00

Here's what one wall of my new studio looks like now. Got room for a few more 8 x 10s behind the TV.

I HAD to do something... this is a great big space, but it was essentially a big empty white box... felt like a sterile environment. My choices were to paint it or wallpaper it... so I chose to paper it, though not in the conventional way. Instead I'm filling all that blank white space with inspiring images.

Pan left a bit and here's what you'll see.

Same corner, from a low angle, and including the left wall. And the mess on the floor.

And a better angle on the left wall itself. There will be a HUGE King Kong poster in the space where the Bride is now, and all the white spaces will be filled in. I also have a door to cover the circuit breaker box, which will soon be decorated as well.

And now spotlight on my little friend from last post - he's essentially finished now though I'll probably finesse the paintjob a bit more. Here are a few in=progress painting pics...

... And finished:

Here you see him in his little niche nestled between the Harryhausen/ O'Brien section and the General Stopmotion section of my DVD shelf.

Say Hello to my Little Friend!

2011-01-19T16:33:00.001-06:00

This is the GEOmetric Cyclops vinyl model kit, produced some time in the 90's I believe and long unavailable. Man I love eBay!! A vinyl kit is hollow and kind of squishy/ flexible, and the way the parts pop together it can be re-posed like an action figure. Some people keep that articulation, but I'm going to pose it the way I want and putty the seams and paint it up, after filling with resin to make it heavy and solid like a sculpture rather than a toy.

There have been several Cyclops kits made, both resin and vinyl, but most of them didn't really look much like the real deal. This one is spot on! It comes with two right hands... one for holding the club and one for... um... NOT holding the club, and there are two heads. The other head is the two-horned Cyclops. Pretty cool, but that one was just a bit player in 7th Voyage... I wanted to build the REAL Cyclops!

After moving into my new house, one of the first things I got was the amazing book Ray Harryhausen: Master of the Majicks vol 3, which has been incredibly inspiring. That chance purchase has seriously influenced my decorating choices! I'm setting my animation studio up in the basement in this cool big room that has a narrow shelf running all the way around it.

Aw geeze... now I guess I need to get some pictures... much easier than trying to explain it. I'll post those soon, but let me finish my story...

Anywho, I have groupings of DVDs and VHS tapes displayed on the shelf in places, and I've bought a lot of posters to hang beneath the shelf. I decided since this is my animation studio I wanted the entire room to be a shrine to movie images from the films I love, so the posters are all from classic monster movies and stopmotion flicks, plus I've been going crazy buying up 8 x 10 photos and lobby cards from King Kong and several Harryhausen films.

And I decided the spaces in between groupings of DVDs/ tapes needed statues and models.

I also have an Ymir and Gwangi on the way. More pics when they arrive!

Let there be (more) Light!!!

2011-01-18T20:11:00.009-06:00

This, my friends, is what I call the Lightcannon.

It's a further refinement/ modification to the Solux Framing Art Light. I detailed my first round of mods to it in these posts. It worked, but with some issues - namely, due to its rather rickety construction and pressure-fit components, it had a tendency to sag and droop like a Dr. Seuss Spyglass, making it very hard to get precise accuracy, plus once you did get it aimed where you wanted, it could slowly droop... impercieptibe except when played back in your animation, when it becomes VERY noticeable. In fact, I have an example posted. Check out the background lighting in One Good Yank. This is unacceptable... in stopmotion everything must stay exactly where you put it until you move it yourself.

I partially solved the problems with this makeshift brace made from a turkey skewer:

It did snug up the assembly nicely, countering all that cartoonish sagging, but it's bulky and dangerous -- those chromed points sticking out right at eye level. Also, the yoke attaching it to my lighting grid was weak and couldn't be secured very well. I tried using a piece of folded-up paper jammed behind it, which helped somewhat but not enough.

So today I set about to improve it.

I started with one of my tinkered-together Blackbirds:

... based on the discovery that the snout/ yoke assembly from a cheap PAR16 (known as a Birdie) pressure-fits perfectly onto an ordinary track lighting unit. As so:

Here's one of my Blackbirds, with the Framing Optic Assembly of a Solux Framing Art Light laying next to it:

I tried fitting the Adapter Ring into the snout:

Success!! It fits, nice and tight!!

So I fitted the rest of the Solux assembly in place...

So far, so good... but when I plugged it in to test it, a problem:

A LOT of light leaks out as you can see. All this spill light sprays out onto the set where you don't want it. Wish I would have got a picture of that. But then, this tut is already ridiculously long and filled with too many pictures. Anyway, my first attempted solution was to jam some Blackwrap in there:

It's designed for use with lights to block out unwanted spill. But it was impossible to arrange it right in there, too many compound curves to deal with. I could have just wrapped it around the outside of the fixure, but I wanted a clean permanent solution, not an ugly blob of black foil hanging from my grid!

It didn't get rid of all the spill:

So I decided to try some Epoxy Putty:

... And Voila!! No more spill!! And not only is it fully functional now, but it looks a heck of a lot like a high-tech Ellipsoidal fixture...

... Which is exactly what it is really.

I've also ordered another 3-unit Tracklight kit from Lamps Plus, a couple pairs of the cheap PAR 16's from Musician's Friend, and another Solux Framing Optic Assembly. I'm glad I detailed out exactly how I did all that modding, because I'll need to go back and check my notes for specifics. But when I'm done, I'll have two more Blackbirdies (for a total of 4) and another Lightcannon (to make a pair) to add to my lighting grid... that should be enough for just about any lighting situation.

*** EDIT***

I came up with a better name than Lightcannon. I'm calling it the Ellipsis. An ellipsis is those three little dots that represent missing text...

Yeah. THOSE three little dots. Essentially it's an edit used to shorten something. It's also used in filmmaking, with the same meaning. It's an edit used to cut out unnecessary action or time... example you see someone go to bed, then cut to them waking up in the morning. It edits out the 8 hours of them sleeping. So, an Ellipsis is an abbreviation. In this case, MY ellipsis is an abbreviation of an Ellipsoidal spotlight!

Heh... I tried a lot of names for it... Mini Ellipsoidal, Micro-Ellipsoidal etc... too much of a mouthful!! But now that I've ABBREVIATED it, it works! so...

ellipsis it is!!

t(h)INKeRING....

2011-01-16T02:22:00.002-06:00

Well, as you probably already guessed, I'm in the process of tinkering around with my blog... thinking out loud as it were. Changes will be coming fast and furious for a while as I zone it in (yes, I finally broke down and decided to switch over to the new blogger templates... which aren't all that new anymore!) The reason I waited so long to do this... it means adding back in all the links in my sidebar one by one. A massive chore, that I was dreading. But I'll do it little by little, mercilessly pruning out old ones that don't belong anymore, until it's back up to snuff.

Recent clips - because the YouTube versions SUCK!!!

2010-12-31T18:54:00.011-06:00

I just went in and watched some of my clips on YouTube. Ouch!!! The Tube uniformly destroyed all of them!!! Smooth animation looks extremely jerky, the clips look dark and grainy. Geeze!!

Let me apologize in advance for the size of these clips... and also for the way they'll automatically open and start playing full-screen and looping over and over. I had them set up to do that on my computer and forgot they'd do the same for anyone who downloads them. But all you have to do is hit the ESCAPE key on your keyboard to stop them.

So, since I have nothing actually NEW to post, here are a few clips you may have already seen crappy versions of:

One Good Yank

Processed Yet Again

Shrug Tests + fast run

Don't just click on the links... for some reason they'll show in bad aspect ratio. You need to download them - that's right click on a PC, control click on a Mac, then select the Download option (might be called something else, but you know what I mean...).

Finally, you get to see these clips the way I see them!

* Restoring the clips to normal:

To shut off the looping and "open in fullscreen" options -

First, if the clip is still playing fullscreen, tap the ESC key to reduce it to normal size. Now, while it's still playing or at least selected, go to the Quicktime menu bar that's showing across the top of your monitor and click on the Edit pulldown menu. Where it says LOOP there should be a little checkmark, meaning it's currently activated. Click on it and the checkmark should disappear. You've now disabled looping. You can re-enable it at any time by again clicking LOOP.

To disable "open in fullscreen" and "automatically play when opened", keep the clip playing and go to the WINDOW pulldown menu of Quicktime. Click on "Show Movie Properties". This opens the Properties window. Across the center of it is a row of buttons: Annotations, Resources, Audio Settings, and Presentation. Click on Presentation. The check boxes for "Automatically play movie when opened" and "Enter fullscreen mode when opened" should be checked. Uncheck them and close the box by clicking on the red button in the upper far left corner. Now when you close the movie itself a dialogue box will open asking if you want to save the changes you made. If so, click SAVE, or if you want it to open fullscreen and start playing next time, click DON'T SAVE.

Armed with this info, you can now set any of your own clips to play fullscreen when opened, and to loop automatically if you want. I do that for clips I want to study, or ones I just want to watch a lot.

Where I've been

2010-11-22T23:14:00.002-06:00

OK...

*Takes deep breath, lets it out slowly*

Here's how it happened. It was May 13 - 2 days till tax deadline. I decided to go online and do my taxes as soon as I got home from work, but when I tried to log on, nothing. The internet was GONE!! :o :o

My modem was broken.

I went to my sister's house and used her internet to order a replacement modem, and had no trouble hooking it up, but it wouldn't let me get online... it needed to know my modem password. I tried every password I had ever used for anything, but none of them worked... I suspect my password was some string of random numbers and letters generated by a computer and I had never changed it or written it down anywhere.

I can't tell you how hard it was to do anything about it... normally when I have a problem I go online and find a way to fix it... but I couldn't go online!! I tried calling AT&T (my ISP), but could never get ahold of anything but a machine. I called dozens of times, and stayed on as long as 45 minutes a few times, but was utterly unable to talk to a human being... just got shunted around to different departments inside the vast machine. Skynet was in control.

Finally I decided it must be time for me to be offline for a while. I have a very Zen attitude - when my life takes a sudden turn like that I go with the flow and try to find the bright side. And I was feeling like I spent way too much time online, and needed a break. So I settled in and gritted my teeth. But still I kept thinking "soon I'll be back... another week or so".

Around this same time my mom started suffering from really poor health. She had already been on oxygen for 4 years and could hardly walk, so I was helping take care of her and her house. She went to the hospital several times in a few days, and it became clear her time was drawing near. Her passing was quick and painless... Hospice had her on a morphine patch, and honestly I think she was feeling better than she had in many years. She felt she had lived a long and fulfilled life, and had always felt that death was a natural part of the life process... she died a very exemplary death. I hope I'm as brave when my time comes.

Anyway, I inherited some money from her, as well as her car and a duplex she had been the landlady of, where my sister had been living. We had decided some years ago that I would move into the duplex and my sister would get Mom's house, so here I am. I got cable, internet and phone hooked up, and this time no problem getting online... I just booted up after the cable guy left, opened Safari, and here I was!

The White Gazelle

2010-03-10T21:31:00.003-06:00

Some of you may know the legend of the long lost film The White Gazelle, made by Tony Laudati in I believe 1981 (?). It was featured in Cinemagic magazine long long ago, but until now the movie itself was unavailable for viewing to anyone who didn't know Tony personally. Well, thanks to today's digital culture, it's now available - for 99 cents no less (!!) on a site called Filmginder.

White Gazelle on Filmgrinder

This is an amateur production... shot in 16mm, but featuring some incredible sculpting and in-camera compositing effects. The compositing isn't as flawless as it would be if shot on 35mm film with a pin-registered camera... the 16mm models are known to suffer from what's called "film weave", making compositing effects tricky.

All that said, as soon as I found out the film was available I went ahead and downloaded it. I was able to pay through my PayPal account, simple as pie, and no problems whatsoever with joining the site or getting the download.

I really love the atmosphere of this movie. There's something primal about it... watching this caveman and his woman I get a real sense of how tough life was in paleolithic times, and what's more I get a strong sense of shamanism. Magic and mojo... the basis of all art and performance, leading right up to and including of course stopmotion itself.

Needless to say, I highly recommend this... ESPECIALLY for the price!!

Life begins to stir...

2010-03-10T03:00:00.002-06:00

Yes!!! Life stirs once again in the Darkstudio!!! My winter vacation is over and Im back to work on the film!!!

... And what's more, I'm just about ready to start shooting. Hopefully in a few days.

For today's update, I got the bar stools all painted up looking nice and grungy.

Sorry for no post

2010-01-22T03:59:00.003-06:00

Hey people... sorry I haven't updated in so long!!! It's been insanely cold around here... hovering around 5 degrees F and ranging up to about 15 for a few weeks now. Too cold in the basement for glue or paint to set right... and for human habitation too!! I haven't been down here for more than about ten minutes at a stretch and even then I wrapped my lower half up in a sleeping bag and wore lots of layers!!!

So no work on the set recently, but now the cold front has passed, so work should resume. Actually I already got a few small things done, but nothing worth posting pics yet.

See ya soon.....

A taste of things to come plus mini lighting tut

2009-12-24T03:30:00.004-06:00

Last night I decided to put the new wall onto the set even though I have more work to do on it... I wanted to see it all together for a preview and mess around with lighting to try to find an approach to use for this film. This link should take you to Photobucket and from there you can download the full size image... it looks SO MUCH better than this little rinky-dink version!! (scroll over the picture to see the download option).

This is what the shot was looking like at first. Download this one here. Note the problems with the lighting.... very hard glaring light on the foreheads, and the faces in shadow. This is a result of the way they're sculpted. Note... I am NOT dissing Scott Radke's sculpting!!! I LOVE these heads... but because of the way they're done... eyes set so wide and facing different directions, bare foreheads with no hair covering them that face directly into the light plane, and somewhat glossy paint - it makes them very hard to light. It's a challenge (like everything about this project). And it's forcing me to dig deep and find a different way to work. Here's the solution that's working best so far...

These are my lights. I'm only using 2 for this shot, and note... they're both facing FORWARD.... rather than the more normal option of being aimed directly at the set. See the next image to understand WHY.

See the big white sheets of paper fastened to the front of the set? They're reflectors. The lights are both aimed at them, and then only reflected light is bounced back onto the set to light the puppets. {for this pic I actually had a light aimed directly at the set just to make things show up better} Reflected light has some very nice properties... it's very diffused, doesn't cast a clear shadow, and it has a lot less glare than direct light does. And because this is all fill light coming from the front, it fills in details like the eye sockets that were in deep shadow before. This kind of reflected lighting seems to be the only solution to the lighting problems posed by these heads.

But... if you compare the two shots above, even though the direct lighting causes glare and shadow problems, it has a much more dramatic look to it... creating great shadows that define the form of the heads... the fully reflected light doesn't do this. In fact, reflected light like this is often called cartoon lighting, because of the lack of drama and overall illuminated feel. I want to try to find a halfway solution... I think if I can aim a light or two directly at the set with plenty of neutral density gels (grey color filters) to dim them down while still keeping the reflected lighting I currently have, I should be able to get the best of both worlds. Time will tell.

The end is in sight

2009-12-22T02:53:00.007-06:00

Making yet another brick wall.... why do I torture myself like this? This is the last major set piece, after this it's just a matter of putting it all together, finishing up a few loose ends, and doing final set dressing before launching into actual animation. Hard to believe... after 3 long years, this film is actually going to happen!!

It took a lot of work to turn a pice of foamcore into a brick wall... here it was at one point:

So much cutting and the hardest part was peeling off both paper facings from each brick individually (too hard to peel a large piece). But it's done now, aside from a little more painting and detailing. Soon I'll show some of the props I've been making.

I've made several brick walls before... Buster's hat tip test, Race the Wind, and my first, for the Ahab tests. when I look at that bucket of peeled bricks just above I clearly remember the History Channel show about Einstein that was on as I laboriously peeled each one. And for Race the Wind... it was a Victoria's secret Runway Show (that one was a bit distracting). I don't recall the other ones, but it's funny how certain kinds of work lend themselves to that kind of memory retention... possibly it's the tedious repetitive jobs that allow us to pay attention to something else as we work.

Motion test

2009-11-29T06:20:00.003-06:00

Here's a motion test I shot some time ago... actually it was before I had the Lumix camera, done with my Hitachi. I think I used a big zoom lens, which probably accounts for why out-of-focus things look so weird here. I was trying to develop a certain kind of motion that I could see in my head for this film... the characters and the camera all moving in unison like an orchestrated dance.

Oh and yeah, I know... he has some kind of neck spasm there. Rotational movement is hard to keep under control... so I learned something valuable from this test! I've learned how to use a framegrabber a lot better since then, though I really haven't tried another head turn like this - something I ought to do soon.

Omega

2009-11-16T07:42:00.003-06:00

This is amazing!! Just posted on the message board, and in production for some time already over at the Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design in Germany... stopmotion puppets placed in a CG environment that was created (and framegrabbing done) using Blender open source 3D software. I must say, this definitely looks like one of the coolest films I've seen being made recently... for a long time actually. I wish I had come up with this idea!!!

Check out their blog: http://www.artificial3d.com/omega/

Apollo to the left of me, Dionysus to the right....

2009-11-16T06:42:00.008-06:00

IN a pair of recent posts - Analyze this and the followup Analysister -I brought up the idea of some aspects of a movie (surface story) being readily discernible to the left (logical) brain and some, more subtle parts, to the right (intuitive) brain. I had never thought about this until making the Analyze this post and discussing the way Kubrick's films seem to work on a viewer. For convenience's sake I've included a table below listing the well-known attributes of these two hemispheres of the brain.

Right Brain vs. Left Brain

Definition

This theory of the structure and functions of the mind suggests that the two different sides of the brain control two different “modes” of thinking. It also suggests that each of us prefers one mode over the other.

Discussion

Experimentation has shown that the two different sides, or hemispheres, of the brain are responsible for different manners of thinking. The following table illustrates the differences between left-brain and right-brain thinking:

Left Brain

Right Brain

Logical

Sequential

Rational

Analytical

Objective

Looks at parts

Random

Intuitive

Holistic

Synthesizing

Subjective

Looks at wholes

Article

It suddenly occurred to me that this division between two different ways of thinking sounds very familiar... in fact I've encountered very nearly the same division between ways of thinking - one logical and focused, the other intuitive and 'fuzzy', but in a non-scientific context:

The Apollonian/ Dionysian dichotomy

Apollonian and Dionysian are terms used by Nietzsche in The Birth of Tragedy to designate the two central principles in Greek culture. The Apollonian, which corresponds to Schopenhauer's principium individuationis ("principle of individuation"), is the basis of all analytic distinctions. Everything that is part of the unique individuality of man or thing is Apollonian in character; all types of form or structure are Apollonian, since form serves to define or individualize that which is formed; thus, sculpture is the most Apollonian of the arts, since it relies entirely on form for its effect. Rational thought is also Apollonian since it is structured and makes distinctions.

The Dionysian, which corresponds roughly to Schopenhauer's conception of Will, is directly opposed to the Apollonian. Drunkenness and madness are Dionysian because they break down a man's individual character; all forms of enthusiasm and ecstasy are Dionysian, for in such states man gives up his individuality and submerges himself in a greater whole: music is the most Dionysian of the arts, since it appeals directly to man's instinctive, chaotic emotions and not to his formally reasoning mind.

Nietzsche believed that both forces were present in Greek tragedy, and that the true tragedy could only be produced by the tension between them. He used the names Apollonian and Dionysian for the two forces because Apollo, as the sun-god, represents light, clarity, and form, whereas Dionysus, as the wine-god, represents drunkenness and ecstasy.

Article

I discussed this in an old post on my original blog: http://www.darkstrider.net/july8_2005.html

Sorry, I can't link directly to it... I used to hand-code that blog and didn't know how to separate posts, so I can only link to the entire page, but it's the second post. Just scroll down a little bit. I was profoundly taken by this idea when I first encountered it in Camille Paglia's book Sexual Personae, and she really made me aware of these two different modes of perception/cognition. These little tables I posted here and similar ones you see on the web are very brief and only cover the basics, but Paglia dissects it quite deeply. She also relates these modes of thinking to what she terms the Male principle and the Female principle... left brain/ Apollonian being the male and right brain/ Dionysian being the female. Don't oversimplify and think she's making a general division between men and women... people have some of each tendency in their makeup, just as we all use both left and right brain. Many women exhibit strong male tendencies while many men have female tendencies.

Well, when I connected these various ideas together, it became clear to me that they are very real tendencies that exist in all of us. Modern sbrain science, as it often does, is merely re-inforcing ancient wisdom. The Greeks were aware of this dichotomy centuries ago, and now it's been discovered in the very structure of the brain itself... so science has only shown us figuratively where Apollo and Dionysus live. It makes me wonder... how many of the other Olympian gods could be said to embody some part of human nature... god of war... goddess of the hunt, goddess of love.... interesting. And doubtless not new! Only something that hadn't occurred to me before.

So.... taking all this into account... the idea of a dichotomy in modes of thinking that's existed in human nature for a long time and that it's cropped up in various ways, both scientific and mythical/artistic, I began to wonder if it's reared its head in any other ways. And sure enough, a couple similar dichotomies presented themselves to my questing mind.

Dichotomy in politics

Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work.

In a simple experiment reported today in the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information.

Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.

This is just a section of an article posted here.

To condense these tendencies down to their most basic (for purposes of simplicity) we could call one Focused and the other Vague or Fuzzy. Which then led me to my next (and so far last) revelation...

Rods and Cones

Article

Two different kinds of 'photoreceptors', or neurons, in the eye. Rods are responsible for night vision and peripheral vision... they're not as 'focused' as the cones, which see detail and color. Therefore the vision of the rods could be characterized as 'fuzzy' or vague, but in some way superior to the rod-vision. Have you ever noticed that , if you're looking up into the night sky, very dim stars or very distant galaxies (which at first look like dim stars) can't be seen by looking directly at them (cones) but only by looking a little bit away, activating the rods.

To me all these various dichotomies sound very similar. In fact I'd venture to say taken as a whole they point out the same basic division in the human being... a divergence between different modes of... is it perception, cognition, or interpretation? Hard to say. And I won't make any statements here, aside from bringing up what I think is a very interesting conundrum revealing itself to us in various ways - Mythical (a way of giving meaning to things we don't understand) Scientific (a way of studying nature) and Political -- and that might have a profound meaning as far as what it means to be human.

... And with this post, hopefully I conclude this little obsession that began just before Halloween when I happened to catch The Shining on cable TV (little realizing the bizarre series of ideas it would lead me through!) and can now get back to work on my film!!

Analysister

2009-11-08T01:15:00.000-06:00

Ok, after making that last post I still feel the need to go deeper into the subject. That post somehow turned into a general primer about film analysis. All well and good, but I never even got to what I originally wanted to say!!! Oh, and about the name for this post.... it's based on a great album title- Nemesister by Babes in Toyland. Thought it was appropriate since this is a sister post to my last one...

Ok class... last time we covered hidden narratives buried in films by Kubrick and Lynch. One thing I'd like to point out that they both have in common - besides liking to hide secret narratives in their films - is they both make very dreamlike films. Actually that's related to the fact that they like the hidden narratives.... see, a film that reveals secret messages when analyzed is quite a bit like a dream. One major difference though.... to understand the meaning of a dream you need to know the dreamer's personal meanings for all the symbols... a very deeply individual matter fit only for a psychoanalyst (the dreamer himself probably doesn't WANT to know what all his dreams mean!)

I think it's time for me to talk a bit about dreams. I've always loved dreams (try to have them every night). I've also always loved stories and movies that are LIKE dreams... but there are definitely things that work in dreams that WON'T work in movies, and vice verse. Probably the most important difference is that dreams don't need to make sense... you're ASLEEP, so your conscious mind isn't trying to make sense of things. But a movie does need to make sense, at least to some extent. The plot can be all mixed up... as long as the movie makes sense on some level... possibly there's an EMOTIONAL throughline the viewer can follow.

Once you've established that throughline (whatever it might be) you can work in underlying hidden narratives like Kubrick or Lynch do. But unlike the completely personal language of symbols in a real dream, they use universal symbols that will be understood by everyone (everyone who notices them that is... most won't see it if it's beneath the surface). And here's what I love about this.... let's say you notice something fishy in a Kubrick film and start to research a little... or maybe you've read an analysis and decided to look deeper on your own. His messages lead you to mysteries that exist in the real world!! That's not to say that I believe all his conspiracy theories are valid... but the threads he weaves into the tapestry of his films does lead you on to theories that can be found all over the internet... googling names from his films will point out all kinds of weird things... most of which he probably intended. That fascinates me, that a mystery embedded in a fictional movie can lead to a mystery in the real world. It's as if the movie opens up a whole vista...

Also on the subject of the dreamlike nature of their films... my longtime readers (those who manage to wade all the way through these lengthy and text-dense Cinemastudies posts) might recall an article I posted some time ago about Josef Von Sternberg (click his name in Labels below if you're interested). There are several posts on my blog about him actually... I'm referring to one I didn't write but just blatantly ripped off and posted here. Sorry, too lazy at the moment to look up who did write it! But the gist of the article was that while Sternberg was working in Talkies (he did start off in silents) the dialogue was merely a smokescreen to deflect viewers from the REAL story, which was always told VISUALLY. Unlike the vast majority of modern movies, where the story is told almost exclusively through dialogue with visuals just serving as moving illustrations, Sternberg, Kubrick and Lynch tell their stories visually. They of course use dialogue and sound, but as artistic counterpoint to the visuals, to enhance them and provide subtext rather than to illustrate them. There are many people (myself among them, though I wasn't there at the time) who feel that something beautiful was lost when sound came to the movies - or rather I should say when the human voice came to the movies (When MOVIES became TALKIES).

Think of it this way... visuals are processed by the right brain - the intuitive brain, while verbal language is processed in the logical and detail-oriented left brain. The right brain is the realm of dream imagery... free association and metaphor. Spoken language doesn't enter into this realm. Music does (instrumental music). Well ok, to be more accurate, some kinds of singing and spoken poetry DO access the right brain, but not general dialogue the way its spoken in movies these days. In a film by the likes of Kubrick or David Lynch, we watch the STORYLINE with the left brain while the right brain silently absorbs the symbols and metaphors underlying the surface. This means their films ARE structured like dreams... there's a Manifest content (surface story) and a Latent content (subtext). This thought really boggles my mind... I think it explains how the subliminal messages can leak through into the right brain (dreaming mind... the ancient, animal mind... the artist mind) while the left brain (logical, modern) remains unaware of them. The left brain is detail-oriented and can only concentrate on one thing at a time (works "in serial") while the right brain sees patterns and works holistically (works "in parallel). But we usually don't notice what the right brain is doing... it's very quiet while the left brian talks constantly and loud. I've heard them compared like this... think of the left brain as the sun and the right brain as the stars.... there are still stars in the sky in the daytime, but you cant see them because the sun is too bright. If you could filter it out then you could see them.

Very interesting to think of making movies that really affect us like dreams...

Analyze this

2009-11-07T02:12:00.000-06:00

"A real film maker, when formulating a new project, will start out with a series of conceptual messages and ideas that he/she wishes to communicate to an audience. These will be fleshed out into a fictional storyline scenario and, layer by layer, a workable script and aesthetic / technical style will be developed in accordance with those concepts. That is the artist’s approach to film.

Modern film making in Britain and America, even at the level of short film making, almost universally starts with the desire to make money … NOT ART!"

This quote comes from an essay written by Rob Ager called The great disaster of modern British/ American film. I discovered Rob's excellent website in a rather roundabout way recently... essentially because just before Halloween I happened to catch Stanley Kubrick's The Shining on cable TV, which reignited my interest in the movie and in Kubrick's films in general. I suddenly realized that, in spite of my tendency toward study and analysis I had never looked at an analysis of any of Kubrick's films. Well, this was a colossal oversight that needed to be remedied immediately! So a little Googling landed me on his website; CollativeLearning.com, where he has analyses of a lot of great films including all of Kubrick's important ones. I also discovered very cogent and insightful analyses of some of my other favorites like Alien, Bladerunner, The Exorcist, and the best and most comprehensive and clear-headed analysis I've ever found on David Lynch's enigmatic Mulholland Drive - a film that's led me on a merry chase through a lot of online analyses, some of which I felt came close to the mark but all of which left big holes. Ager has filled in almost all of the holes!

The unfortunate part of this is that, since discovering Ager's incredible site, I haven't done anything on my film. But now I've waded through almost all of his articles and soon will be free of this obsession... at least until the next one pops up.

I most highly recommend reading these analyses for anyone interested in being a filmmaker of any sort, or even just to anyone who loves movies and wants to maximize their enjoyment of them. Let me begin by defining just what a film analysis is, and how it differs from a film review or film criticism.

A film review... also sometimes referred to as film criticism, is done by a film critic... someone like Roger Ebert of any of his cohorts throughout the years on his various shows. Essentially it's just a brief synopsis of whether a movie is good or not according to that reviewer's or critic's system of judgement. Usually a reviewer or critic will watch a movie twice or sometimes 3 or more times... the first time they just watch as anyone would, just to absorb the experience the movie provides. Then they'll jot down some notes and start watching it again, this time dissecting as they go and taking notes as they watch. Generally twice is enough, then they assemble their notes and tidy them up for publication. What they're basically interested in is whether the movie is enjoyable and how it stacks up against the standards in its genre.

But film analysis on the other hand is much more comprehensive and less judgmental. An analyst isn't concerned with telling a general audience what to go see this weekend -- instead an analyst is an investigator... delving deep into a film to extract what the filmmaker might have buried in it. Most films don't stand up to analysis of this sort... most Hollywood movies are simply formulaic clones (as suggested in the quote above) with little or no substance under the flashy exterior. But some directors do approach the craft of filmmaking as an art... for instance Kubrick, Lynch, and several others. Their films are made with great attention to detail and they take great care in creating meaning. Often there's a hidden subtext or even several of them. Identifying and decoding these subtexts takes time and effort and a lot of thinking. Usually a film won't be analyzed when it's first released.... it takes time to determine whether a given film might have anything under the surface worthy of the demanding process of analysis. So it's often older films which have shown themselves to have some substance beneath the surface that are candidates for this treatment.

A film analyst will begin like a critic... the first time they watch a film they're just watching it, like any audience member. But their keen moviegoing eye will notice subtle clues to the presence of hidden depth. Strange things characters might say, or weird occurrences... maybe a sign that's shown with strange wording on it. Especially important are things that are repeated. Visuals or sounds or statements... these are called motifs when they're repeated, and such repetition usually means the director put them there on purpose. Or that he just wasn't paying attention, which usually isn't the case with a director the caliber of Kubrick.

So... with the clues noted, an analyst will then watch the movie many times, and might watch certain parts of it over and over... using freeze frame and slow motion. Now certain things are more evident thanks to Blu-Ray and its greater visual clarity over regular DVDs... things can be seen much more clearly, and sometimes a particular release will have a better sound track that allows things to be heard more clearly than in other versions. Other things an analyst will pay attention to are the director's other films, anything that's known about the director such as any personal obsessions or interests he might have, news items about him, his biography... on and on. Sometimes clues can be found in advertising for the film, or in earlier versions of the screenplay or the book on which it was based.

Wow... I'm really whaffling on, aren't I? I didn't mean to go on for so long about this. My point in explaining what film analysis is all about was to educate my more 'general audience' readers about the level of depth and complexity that often exists without most people suspecting it in certain films. Most of us are only aware of the surface story in movies... and in most movies that's all there is. But in films by the likes of Kubrick or Lynch there's a lot more, and to me it's very gratifying to puzzle it out. One reason I love this process is because it gives a movie a vastly longer 'shelf life'... you can keep coming back and watching it and gain new insight into it for many years. Most decent movies are only good for 2 or 3 viewings and that's it, and even then they don't reveal anything new after the first viewing (unless you missed something). But to experience a Kubrick film with the help of good analysis like Rob Ager provides is to peel away layer after layer and reveal levels of meaning you never suspected were there... it's literally like an excavation... think of a movie as a building, and most anywhere you dig there's nothing but dirt underneath... but Kubrick builds over sites that are rich in subsurface detail. Quite literally in the case of The Shining.. the Overlook Hotel was built on top of a Native American burial ground (and so was the hidden narrative... quite to my surprise!)

Take for example The Shining. I hadn't seen it since shortly after the movie came out in 1980. Even then, much younger and uneducated about filmmaking, I was aware that something weird was going on in that movie that I wasn't understanding. Everyone was... and that's why even though the surface story itself is pretty messed up, it's always been considered one of the masterpieces of cinema. If you watch the movie, there's some really awful acting, and from great actors like Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall! Really hammy amateurish stuff... which is even weirder when you take into account the known fact of Kubrick's perfectionism and the fact that he'd often demand as many as 140 takes on even simple shots!!

Well I won't write any more. I could easily go on and on... but I'll just leave it at that. Anyone whose interest has been piqued by this blog entry please visit Rob's incredible site and read some of the analyses. Rent the films in question and watch them, with his findings in mind, and see if it doesn't enhance the experience. For me it most definitely does, though I know some people prefer to just see a movie as entertainment and leave it at that.

Ager has more on his site than just film analyses... the quote at the top of this entry actually comes from an article he wrote. Here's a page from his site collecting several of his articles, and I've enjoyed almost every one.

Happy reading!

Krysar

2009-11-02T22:35:00.000-06:00

Amazing!!!! The same guy who posted Fimfarum has now also posted Krysar in its entirety!!! I know, The Motion Brigades has all these films plus many many more posted, but unfortunately his are in low quality.... Subbedfilms has them in much higher quality. I hope he doesn't mind me posting them on my blog like this. To see his channel double-click on the video itself.

Enjoy!!

Proppin' it up

2009-10-31T23:57:00.000-05:00

Well, apparently for some reason my blog has made it to Blogs of Note, and now my traffic has increased many times over! Kind of frustrating that it happened while the top post wasn't even my own work, but Fimfarum! So I thought I'd post my latest prop work to get it seen before the wave is over. And the price of this sudden and short-lived fame? Photobucket just emailed me to let me know I'm about to exceed my bandwidth for the month and all my photos will disappear until next month (unless I buy a Pro account, of course). Oh, plus I'm getting loads of spam now. But it's also brining lots of new viewers to my humble little stopmo blog, so it's all good. hopefully some of them will like what they see and when all the publicity blows over I'll have increased my readership.

So welcome to all new readers!!! To see examples of some of my practice animation, check my YouTube channel.

Spammers beware though... I mercilessly delete spam.

The glasses are all made from acrylic. I've learned that extruded acrylic is a lot nicer to work with than cast acrylic... less likely to break and easier to shape. Usually sites that sell acrylic tubing etc will state which type it is. I used a miter box with a hack saw to cut it as straight as possible, and I used a propane torch to heat and bend some parts and to round off the cut edges after sanding. You have to be careful though... if you heat it slightly too much it starts to bubble. I got some bubbles here and there... hopefully they won't show too much in the film. A heat gun (for paint stripping) heats it more gently and is good for heating up large areas that you want to bend or distort... but the torch was what I needed for pinpoint accuracy to bend those little handles. Then I used this excellent adhesive made for acrylic called Weld-on 16. Nothing else works anywhere near this well for acrylic. It's nice and thick, so you can use it to fill gaps and pieces don't need to fit perfectly. Oh, an for the bottoms of the mugs I poured clear resin... something called Easy Cast made by Castin' Craft. Pretty easy to use.. one-to-one mix ratio.

Fimfarum - now including The Making of

2009-10-28T08:32:00.001-05:00

Here is the Czech puppetfilm Fimfarum collected in its entirety, and with English subtitles even!!! Amazing!!! What a world we live in! I've assembled it all into a nifty playlist so it will play through uninterrupted for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy.

As an added bonus, here's The Making of Fimfarum 1 & 2... in English!! Sorry the quality doesn't match the quality of the videos above.

For lots more of this Eastern European Puppetfilm goodness, hit up the Video Clips page on my website or visit The Motion Brigades on YouTube. My site has brief teasers from a lot of Czech and Eastern European puppetfilms, the Motion Brigades has the full length films.

Care for a frosty beverage?

2009-10-16T03:31:00.000-05:00

I've been playing with a lot of clear plastic lately... mainly acrylic tubing and rod (plus some 3mm glass balls embedded in lumps of microcrystaline wax for foam). I remember dreading doing a film set in a bar mostly for this reason... I didn't know how in the world I was going to make little bottles of all different descriptions, much less glasses and mugs, and then on top of all that animate liquids and foam! But little by little, it's all been coming together.

I still need to replace the hotglue bases of the glasses with cast clear resin duplicates to get rid of that milky white look. And add handles to the mugs. Then I MIGHT even tackle making some wine glasses... but I'm not too sure of that one!

Mummified monsters in a frosted web

2009-10-07T08:26:00.000-05:00

Thought this was pretty appropriate for the beginning of Monster Month! This is what a spider web looks like after being hit with a good dose of spray adhesive. I generally don't feel the need to kill every spider in the house - I know they keep the other insect under control and all, but this time there were extenuating circumstances.... not only was there a pretty big mamma spider at the center of this web, but a cluster of about a thousand little tiny dots, all of which would have become strapping little warrior spiders soon and gone tramping all over the house.

I've heard spray adhesive is the best way to kill them, because it glues shut the breathing spiracles located on their legs (I think?) and suffocates them quick. Seems to work pretty well... she twitched for about a minute and then stopped moving, and I haven't seen any of the babies move at all.

Click on the image to see it on Flickr and you can scroll over it for notes pointing out exactly where all the still-life is located in this tangled web. Plus of course then you can click on "All Sizes" above it to see the large version in all its gory Haloweeny glory!

Dressing the set

2009-10-06T06:00:00.001-05:00

The puppets are all dressed now and I'm starting on the set. Note the front of the bar.

Costume dept. has been working overtime

2009-09-25T05:48:00.000-05:00

They're all dressed now, aside from a few accessories here and there (plus hands and feet for the littlest one Cindy Lou). As I went they just kept getting brighter and more colorful. Shelley, you might recognize some of the fabric I used on the last 2 puppets... you sent it to me.

I'm developing puppet personalities for them, and complex relationships/dysfunctions, as well as working on a lighting technique that minimizes the slight shininess of the heads and makes the faces fully visible in spite of the extremes of light and dark on them all. Looks like my best bet will be a pretty diffused "cartoon" lighting setup, mostly reflected light.

... Here's a pictorial tutorial on how I've been making the clothes lately....

First I cut the cloth to size and tape it to something for spray adhesive treatment. Note the blue Nitrile glove. Give it a pretty heavy coat of spray adhesive. I do this part outside.

Here I'm pressing Cindy Lou against the back part of her costume.

And pressing the front part into place. Care is essential. I press tightly all around the puppet, trying to get the seam line as tight as possible. I do this for a while, hoping the adhesive will do its work well. If anything comes apart later I can always fix it up with some Fabri-Tac though.

Here she is well into the trimming process. I found this velvet stuff very hard to cut. It also doesn't stretch, so it's pretty unforgiving stuff to work with. Note how I handled the collar... I made sure to put a wrinkle in the right place so it ended up looking like a mock turtleneck. It still needs more trimming though, and I'm not sure I can get as close as I want to. Maybe the dremel with a sanding drum.... ?

Cindy Lou is a little older than in her former star turn (in How the Grinch Stole Christmas)... she's turned in her pink sleeper for a red jumper and gone Goth.

What I'm learning is that puppet clothes don't need to look realistic... in fact it's best if they're not. Stylization suits them well.

5 of 8

2009-09-21T08:37:00.000-05:00

5 of my 8 actors now dressed to kill.

Getting ready for his pants.

Tom is a rocker. He still just needs his wristbands. I've coated all the formerly sticky rubber arms with a clear coat of the new No-Tac Acrylic Adhesive from Monstermakers (well... new to me, not new to Monstermakers). It'll be nice when they no longer stick to each other and pull chunks of paint off when I pry them apart.

Oh, I should mention... one little trick I figured out... when you get gobs of glue spreading out all over a jacket or something you can scrape it off after it's dried with an X-Acto knife. If you kind of try scraping in different directions you'll suddenly find the right one and it will almost magically lift off. The scraping can also put some nice wear on the cloth... I don't like that bright, too-clean kind of thing - I want some clothes that look like old favorites.

Hemmed, Cuffed and Drawstrung

2009-09-20T06:08:00.000-05:00

It's kind of weird how this is working out... I now have a buildup puppet with visible seams down the sides like a foam latex puppet!

Happily, Hoppy Has His Hoodie

2009-09-18T07:08:00.000-05:00

Trying something new. I just hit one side of the fabric sheet with some spray adhesive and let it tack up for a while, then wrapped it around Hoppy all nice and snug. Made sure to pinch it tight in the space between his legs so it gets good adhesion along the seam lines.

Trimmed away the excess fabric.

This worked extremely well!! It's great for cartoonish puppets. Just make sure to use STREEEEETCH fabric!

Made his hoodie the same way as the pants. I screwed up and got weird wrinkles in the sleeves, but then decided it looks good. Too bad I didn't think to do it on purpose... next time I'll allow for it from the get-go.

Puppet clothes were never simpler to make!

Tonic finished!!!

2009-09-14T06:57:00.000-05:00

Another puppet dressed and DONE!!!!

I've found there's no need to fill a tall jar with latex and dip hands/arms or whatever.... I bought this Latex Paint Base from www.MonsterMakers.com with handy dandy applicator tip... turns out Latex Paint Base is actually just very thin liquid latex with no added filler... same as Balloon Rubber. Just the stuff for putting 6 or 7 coats on for puppetskin. Also, doing it this way you don't get as much of the webbing between the fingers that needs to be constantly poked away. Just gotta watch those fingertip drips and shake them off or touch them with something to make the drips fall away before they dry.

Sorry this is a bit out of focus. But you can see I've added drops of latex for knuckles. I only have very thin runny latex (Latex Paint Base from Monstermakers) and really thick latex (Foam Latex base), and neither was suitable for this - so I mixed them together. The mellow blend worked beautifully!!

I've added more detailing.... tiny knuckles on the fingers, plus tendons drawn over the backs of the handses.

PAX painted using Monstermaker's No-Tac acrylic adhesive (hey Monstermakers, when does my check get here?) mixed with acrylic paint. An undercoat of raw umber followed by a mix of raw umber and white stippled on with a bit of paper towel, finally followed by a thin glaze of more raw umber. Then powdered with some corn starch to kill the (supposedly non-existant) tack and shine. It comes pretty close to matching the paint job on the head I think.

Looking at it now, most of the knuckles are too subtle... only the pinky knuckle on his right hand is big enough (and I thought that one was too big!). Those nasty gnarly arms will luckily be hidden under the sleeves.

*****EDIT*****

Just wanted to add a note here for future reference.... after a day or so the No-Tac adhesive dried with NO TAC!!! My other puppets' arms have a tendency to stick to anything they touch... ESPECIALLY each other!!! With the result that, when I detach them, sometimes big chunks of painted skin come off... not good!!! Plus dirt likes to stick to them. But the hands I made for Tonic (first time I've used the no-tac adhesive) don't feel AT ALL sticky! I wonder if that means I don't even need to powder the anymore? Need to do a test....

Getting dressed for the show

2009-09-07T06:56:00.000-05:00

Click the pic to get to Flickr, then click on All Sizes above it to see it bigger

Finally Tonic has some clothes!!! I know it's been a long time... you might have forgotten who Tonic is... or my newer readers probably have never even seen him naked! To refresh the memory, the name is short for his full name Catatonic Drunk (working name only... not the character's actual name in the film). This is one of the heads Scott Radke sculpted for me long ago, that I promised to grow little homunculus bodies under and bring to life... the stuff we animators do, right? I made the bodes some time ago but hadn't made clothes for most of them yet. Now it's time.

So far everything is just cut and wrapped around Tonic and held in place using Fabri-Tac glue. It's working quite nicely I must say. I always try to use stretch fabric for puppet clothes when I can... it can help them stretch into those awkward poses they otherwise couldn't reach. Where edges of cut fabric will show, like the tie, I strengthened it first with some Elmer's glue so it wouldn't fray. Also, having recently learned on the message board that it's common practice to never use white I washed over anything white or close to it with a brown acrylic wash - same thing I did for the bottle labels and the posters recently. I think I need to find some kind of dye for fabric though, or something that doesn't stiffen it as much as acrylic paint does. There are times when you want to stiffen the cloth, but for a shirt or something you want it flexible. And stretchy.

Don't make me repeat what I wrote under the other pic!

Here's a closeup of one of his hands. This time I decided to wrap the fingers all the way to the wrist before creating the palm part. I used Fabri-Tac again, wrapped two layers of cotton string on each finger, and then made little tiny epoxy putty wedges for in between the fingers... then I covered the palm section with fabri-tac and wrapped more string around it all to hold everything together. Over it all I wrapped a little of the infamous athletic underwrap. After dipping several times in latex and painting the hands up I'll just have to make him a jacket and he'll be done. But geeze Louise!!! This is taking so freaking LOOOONG!!!! Mostly waiting for things to dry. I think for the rest of the puppets I need to get an assembly line method going.

More to come.

Working on the wrong movie - and drawing random caves

2009-08-27T06:29:00.000-05:00

Click the image to see it bigger on Flickr, then click on "All Sizes" above it

I am getting some work done on my film, but I've actually been spending a lot more time working up the scenario for my next one. I'll have some images to post soon for the bar flick though, promise! (And no, the image above is NOT from that other film, it's just a random drawing I did to play round with my new charcoal and carbon drawing kit!)

Meanwhile, I've also been drawing! I recently read The Art of Ray Harryhausen and discovered he did his key drawings using charcoal powder, compressed charcoal and carbon pencils with highlights pulled with various types of erasers, and decided I had to try it. Hard to believe, but this is actually the first time I've rendered a complete environment with full-on lighting/shading effects. Feels like the beginning of a new era.

This began as just random marks on paper... when my new materials came in as usual I was too excited to actually plan out a drawing, I just started smearing things around on a piece of paper... but what I've discovered (as I had hoped) was that this method allows almost unlimited redos... if you don't like something just erase it and rework. It doesn't feel quite finished yet, but I decided it was time to scan it in case I completely screw it up after this.

Here are a few fun links to tutorials on drawing with charcoal and carbon pencils... this is some awesome stuff:

Carbon dust drawing tutorial for medical illustration

"The Clubs" by Marsha Robinette

The Extraordinary Pencil blog

Quakehold! Museum Gel for animating water, and a fix for the Solux Framing Art Light

2009-08-06T02:34:00.000-05:00

(Click image to see it at Flickr, then click on All Sizes above the pic to see a bigger version)

Hmm... wow that pic is UGLY!!! Amazing how using the flash makes every speck of dust glare impossibly bright! And I didn't even know I had a little arachnid friend living on the set till I saw him larger than life in closeup. Egad!! Try to ignore the nastiness and concentrate instead on the beerspill effect (even though it's clear rather than beer colored). Hey, this whole shot would look a lot better through beer goggles!!

Anyway, the (1st) point of this post is to tout my discovery for water (or any liquid) animation... Quakehold! Museum Gel. Crystal clear, non-toxic, and easy to form into spills or drips that hold their shape for a long time. It will sag over time, but it takes a few hours for a ball to revert to a puddle. Easily enough time for animation. It can also be tinted by adding probably any kind of transparent tint. I tried it with some of the resin tints I used for the bottles and it works great.

Quakehold! also makes a Museum Wax that's just microcrystalline wax... a very sticky yellowish translucent wax that's perfect for sticking props to sets or even to puppets hands. It's a good deal stickier than the so-called Stikky-Wax I bought some time ago. I consider it an essential for any stopmoe to have on hand.

One thing I discovered quite by accident that needs further testing.... I had a blob of the gel sitting on a paper envelope for a long time.... probably a week and a half or so, and noticed a big clear stain spreading around it... like an oil stain. I peeled the gel off the paper and it seemed like it was a good deal stiffer than it normally is... to the point that you could maybe sculpt forms from it and they'd hold their shape long enough for animation. Not sure on that one... I decided to put it to the test and placed a larger glob on a piece of paper last night, but so far it hasn't leached very much, just the beginning of a spreading stain. It must take longer than overnight. But Im not sure if it was really much stiffer than the regular stuff.... more experimentation is needed. I'm also not sure why you'd need it any stiffer.... this stuff is perfect for animating spills or drips or pours just as it is. Seemed kinda neat is all.

Also, at just about the same time as I made that accidental discovery last night, I made another one.

This is my Solux Framing Art Light, a great little device that casts a very controllable spotlight effect. The only problem I had with it is that it was rather... well - droopy. In fact I used to say it was built like a Dr Seuss telescope. Kind of tricky to get it aimed exactly where you want. I was looking at it last night thinking I ought to find some way to secure it better, and I had an idea about bending a couple of strips of metal to use as clips. I started looking around the basement to find some suitable metal, when I ran across the rotisserie attachment from my convection oven... basically a useless chunk of metal that I had kept around in case I ever found a use for it! Hah! In a few minutes I had bent the pointy tines (prongs... whatever they are) into suitable positions and found that it's just what the doctor ordered!!! The steel has just the right amount of spring to it too... by tightening it a little too much I get some good tension on it. Now the Dr Seuss telescope is more like an arrow-straight ramrod!! And just incidentally, I found the steel rod is also a great handle for adjusting the light... I used to burn my hands on it all the time!!

Coming along

2009-07-23T04:42:00.000-05:00

Just a quick teaser pic to show how the bar is looking these days. Printed up loads of tiny little labels and pasted them onto bottles, made posters, even put together a miniature magazine.

Click here to see it much larger on Flickr. Once there, click on ALL SIZES above the pic.

Back in (pre)production....

2009-07-08T03:23:00.000-05:00

Yes, once again, I'm printing out tiny little labels, all stolen shamelessly from the intrawub---- well, some with extensive modification.

Can't really do much with them though till Im done animating my current scene... it wouldn't do to have bottles disappearing and jumping around randomly! I actually did grab one bottle on the set before I realized what I was doing... need to try to get it back in place via Framethief. And I even had it hotglued down... my heart sank when I felt that glue bond snap suddenly! But at least it was only ONE bottle... and I ended up taking a few from the far end that are off camera for measuring.

Just wanted to post this to show I am back to work on my film now... Prammaven, call off the claydogs!!

This film has seen me through a lot of growth so far, and some serious upgrades of studio equipment and animation skillz. But it's time I get it done. Long-term goal is by the end of the year, but I hope to finish it before winter sets in and free myself up to start in on something else.

Push comes to Shove - my entry for StopMotionMagic's June contest

2009-07-01T05:38:00.000-05:00

Unfinished, but the deadline crept up on me so I posted what I have. This is actually just the live feed from the Lumix, complete with Antishake icon up in the left corner and low res artifacts galore. After I get the scene finished I'll post the high res version, now locked firmly in the innards of the camera until I can wrestle it out. This is my first time animating 2 puppets interacting, and it's a lot of fun. Oh and on deadline night after hours of animating and encoding and uploading, I forgot to edit out my false starts on the beginning, so just ignore the first 2 blips. Heh.. yeah, I was gonna have bartender Ahab in there, but took him out when the deadline loomed too close and I decided to go with 2 characters rather than 3.

Marc and John provided the prompt "Puppet Needs a Drink" - and I wanted to also get in some more Physical Theatre exercises along the way, so I came up with a scenario to explore the idea that physical interaction between 2 characters can be broken down into variations of pushing and pulling.

There was quite a flurry of activity on the contest this month, including an incredible entry by Nick Hilligoss. Check the thread if you're interested. The link goes right to the top of page 11, where John compiled all the links... that's the place to check unless you want to read a long and rambling thread with clips interspersed randomly throughout.

2 fixes for the Lumix FZ50

2009-06-26T22:07:00.001-05:00

2 problems have come up that can affect the FZ50, and there are simple solutions for both. I just wanna get these posted in one place so I can always find it when I need it. The blog makes a great interactive notebook for that kind of info.

Live View only in Preview Mode

The fix -

Hold down the delete key for 5 seconds in record mode

Can't shut off Burst Mode

The fix -

Reset the record settings in the main menu

Dream a little dream with me.... The fantasy element in late 80s and 90s stopmotion/gomotion

2009-06-20T04:05:00.000-05:00

"Fantasy is essentially the dream world; an imaginative world, and I don't think you want it quite real. You want an interpretation, and stopmotion to me gives that added value of a dream world that you can't catch if you try to make it too real"

.... Harryhausen from the documentary Ray Harryhausen Chronicles.

This will be the subject of today's blog, and take notes, there may be a pop quiz on Friday!

Lately I've been buying a lot of stopmotion on DVD, with an emphasis on the movies from the 80s and 90s, such as Dragonslayer, The Gate (and its sequel), I Madman, Howard the Duck etc. Phil Tippett, Randall William Cook, and their contemporaries... these are the progeny of Harryhausen -- his offspring in the world of stop motion animation. Generally speaking, the animation looked smoother than most of Uncle Ray's work, and the designs were more wildly creative - sometimes to good effect, sometimes not so much.

As the animation itself got smoother, and especially with the advent of Tippett's Go-Motion process, which eliminated the strobing effect that gave stopmotion its characteristic hard-edged, slightly stuttery feel, things began to look increasingly real. The compositing work improved greatly as well, so that now the creatures actually seem to occupy the same world as the people, and to actually be there right next to them. For my money, the most realistically animated go-motion creature (that I'm aware of) is the whimsical Ebersisk from the movie Willow. I believe this was a refinement of the already awe-inspiring technique as used in Dragonslayer. I've posted a clip above. Watch it now class, I'll wait.

It might not be apparent on a first viewing, as you're doubtless busy drooling over the beauty of it all, but there is just the tiniest bit of flutter in that animation. Now compare with the Ebersisk (two-headed dragonthing named for Siskel and Ebert):

It looks absolutely real, in spite of its somewhat ludicrous design and comical aspect. It seems to actually be right there... as if the actors could reach out and touch its horny hide. But it completely lacks the sense of fantasy Vermithrax has. I believe it's because of the complete smoothness of the animation, the absolute lack of any slight flutter (well ok, the near lack... there is a little bit, but just the teensiest little bit.... ). In this sense, toward the 90's stopmotion (and go-motion) were moving closer to the sensibilities now associated with high-end, hyperrealistic CGI. People love to throw around the line from Jurrassic Park (actually originally said by Tippet when told that his go-motion dinosaurs would be replaced with computer generated ones) "I've become extinct!" -- but there was another line, spoken by Jeff Goldblum in the movie, that fits equally well for late-period stop/go motion animation as well as CGI.... "You were so busy trying to find out if you could... you never stopped to ask if you should" (paraphrasing here... not sure I've got it completely right).

I'm not sure this applies equally to pure puppet animation, with no live action component.... haven't really studied the effect in that realm. There was something a bit offputting about Corpse Bride that many people attributed to too much smoothness in the animation, but I suspect it had a lot to do with the slick silicone puppets and the painting of them that accentuated their smoothness. Coraline's animation is incredibly smooth (the bodies anyway, the faces don't move as smoothy because they aren't animated on ones... it would have required entirely too many replacement face parts to be made)... and when I concentrate on the bodies (anything but the faces really) it doesn't feel too smooth or slick to me. The fantasy element seems to be there. But looking at the machine-made faces, so smoothly finished and slickly painted, I can see why some people feel it's sterile and doesn't have the handmade look of something like Nightmare Before Christmas.

Obviously that elusive "sense of fantasy" Uncle Ray was talking about comes from many factors combined - production design and cinematography being key, but I feel the slight stutter is an important one, especially when stopmotion creatures are combined with live action. I think you have a somewhat different sensibility when the world of the film is a normal human one and the fantasy comes strictly from the creatures - their design and the way they move. Also - and this is one factor that makes Dragonslayer a close counterpart to its earlier Harryhausen ancestry -- Vermithrax is the true center of the film. Everything builds up to her appearance, which does not disappoint, and her death is the resolution of the tension in the film. So often in the 80s and 90s flicks the creatures are basically little throwaway parts that aren't essential to the movie.

Ok class, today's lesson is complete... now go outside and play!

New additions to the lighting grid -- fine tuning the Movie Making Machine

2009-06-02T03:16:00.000-05:00

I've been running into some frustrating limitations in my lighting grid.... lights can only be directly over the table or a couple of feet in front of it. I wanted to be able to get lights lower, and to position them farther from the table in any direction. So I got a few accessories from the hardware store and rigged up a pair of these nifty ceiling-mounted light posts.

A 4 foot length of hardwood dowel, a couple of pipe clips, and some big hefty C clamps is all it took. I can clamp the posts wherever I want to the ceiling joists (incidentally, the clamps ensure that I don't permanently mar the joists). I always have to laugh at sizing conventions in the hardware world... a 1" diameter dowel fits into a 1" diameter hose clip with about 1/4" of clearance all the way around. I had to jam pieces of wood into the gap and fill the chinks with hotglue. But I guess the pipe clips weren't made to fit real snug anyway. Oh well, it works.

The other day as I was setting up for one of the Skulkin animation sessions I was struck by a thought....

The stopmotion studio is all one machine. All of it... every part.... the table with the holes drilled in it, the little puppets that can be secured to it, the lighting grid, the camera positioning apparatus, the camera and the capture device (computer, software). It's all made to work together in perfect harmony, like clockwork with you as the operator - nothing moving or changing until you want it to.

The really cool part is when I get the puppets set up and get ready to do a shot.... I position and plug in the set lights I'll be using one by one, and then switch off the normal overhead light. This process is a gradual transition from the ordinary basement surroundings into the Stopmotion World. Now only the set is lit, and it takes on a special look... far more attractive than under ordinary household lighting. The mess that is the rest of my basement fades into darkness behind me, and now my attention is focused completely on those little puppets that I labored so hard to make, and will now labor to bring to life.

Welcome to the Stopmotion World!!!

In fact, now that I think about it, you could extend the machine metaphor to include the shelves full of books that feed my knowledgebase... the DVDs and tapes that provide invaluable inspiration... even the computer that connects me to the internet... to other animators and friends all around the world. Wow... it means my machine is connected to Shelleys, and Svens, and Jeffreys... and to YOURS if you're a stopmoe!!! Insprirational!!!!

Commedia Dell'Arte(more esoteric theory to keep me fromactually accomplishing anything);)

2009-05-31T04:26:00.000-05:00

I was amazed when I started delving into the world of Commedia. (I know, commedia is just Italian for comedy, but Ill be using it as an abbreviation for the full term, which is a bit long to type out over and over. Sue me.... )

The thing that really blows my mind about it is just how many of today's familiar characters have filtered down from it. Harlequins painted by Picasso, Cezanne, and many other artists, extended all the way to the Joker's sidekick Harley Quinn. Oh, and the Joker himself looks an awful lot like a Zanni mask with that long nose and long pointed chin.... rather similar to Paul Berry's Sandman puppet. Lots of examples throughout history, from Cyrano to (I suspect) Don Quixote and possibly even Quasimodo (his renaissance garb coupled with his acrobatic capering suggest Commedia to me). I'm sure there are countless others.

As a theatrical form, Commedia was very physical -- involving mime, clowning, acrobatics, and improvisation in addition to voice acting and often singing, or grammelot -- invented gobbledygook -- gibberish language made to sound like some language or dialect and including occasional words... it was designed to get the meaning across even though most of it was nonsense. There's more to grammelot than just made up gibberish... you can find a great description of it in Dario Fo's Nobel prize winning book Tricks of the Trade (along with excellent descriptions of techniques for various mime techniques and other physical acting methods).

Mister Punch is the direct descendant of Pulcinella (meaning Little Chicken), who walked like a chicken and beat everybody with his slapstick. Many commedia characters are modeled after animals... birds, monkeys, etc. Commedia is the theatre of TYPES.... characters aren't individuals with psychological depth but the masks and characteristic walks represent types -- The Old Skinflint (Pantalone), The Clown (Harlequin, or earlier Arlecchino), The Cowardly Braggart (Il Capitano, or The Captain), The Self-Important Windbag (Il Dottore - The Doctor) and others.

It was all set up within the framework of classes.... basically most of the characters were servants on different levels of the hierarchy.. with Pantalone and Il Dottore being the homeowners and their sons and daughters being The Lovers (who wore no masks and were completely self-absorbed, in love with the idea of being in love, but so narcissistic that they hardly noticed each other). These Lovers feature frequently in some of the films derived from Commedia... in particular the Marx Brothers and the Three Stooges. Chaplin, Keaton, and other silent clowns are direct descendants as well.

The Zanni are the lowest class... always at everyone else's mercy, but the most mischievous and clownish of the bunch. Zanni is a generic term (not sure exactly what it means) which eventually translated into Zany. As many of the characters did, they would often stand and walk in first or fourth position (ballet terms), lending them an exaggerated grace.

Here are some great YouTube vids on the subject of Commedia Dell'Arte:

Commedia Dell'Arte playlist on YouTube Some are good, some not so much. I offer the entire playlist, feel free to skip around it. Below are some individual clips I find excellent.

The Masks of Arnold Sandhaus
Commedia Dell'arte at Brennan High School
Commedia dell'Arte
Workshop de Commedia Dell' Arte com Antonio Fava (part 1)
Workshop de Commedia Dell' Arte com Antonio Fava (part 2) This girl does the best Zanni I've ever seen!!! This is the way Commedia characters are supposed to be.... acrobatic, walking with balletic grace and poise, speaking in unnatural voices... incredible!!!

And the books I've got (browse suggestions for many others):

Commedia Dell'Arte: An Actor's Handbook by John Rudlin
The Moving Body: Teaching Creative Theatre by Jaques Lecoq
The Mime Book by Claude Kipnis
The Art of Pantomime by Charles Aubert (available for free online download)
The Tricks of the Trade by Dario Fo
Mask Characterization: An Acting Process by Libby Appel
All highly recommended, especially when taken as a group... they feed into each other perfectly.

more practice

2009-05-24T00:14:00.000-05:00

Just messing around, trying to get some different expression into some moves.

One thing I notice now that I've been animating fairly regularly -- and this applies to any kind of art I've ever done. There's a certain Art Making Mode that I sometimes go into... a super-patient mode where I'm completely unaware of the passage of time or of anything beyond what I"m doing. And when I go into this mode during animation, that's when I get really good results. I was in that mode when I did the Skull Love clip (well, the last 2 thirds of it anyway) and when I did the One Good Yank mime thing. But I was a bit impatient when I did the shrug tests.

You can see the difference. Watch Skull Love... notice at first things are pretty rough, but it smoothes out as I go.

I think it's alright that my sketches are a bit rough.... I was improvising, just messing around and making stuff up as I went... in some cases I really didn't even know what the next frame would be till I touched the puppet. I think the shrug tests were a step beyond what I've done before in terms of difficulty because I was aiming for expression, as opposed to simply putting the puppet through the motions smoothly. The 2 shrugs are very different (and yes, as Prosser mentioned on my YouTube page, it IS difficult to shrug without collarbones!). I don't like the weird head shake on the second one... it didn't work the way I wanted it to. And everything after that is weird too... doesn't match the aggressiveness of the beginning of the shrug. But I thought I'd go ahead and post these attempts anyway. Hopefully in the future I'll do some more successful ones. But there's no failure in practice -- the whole point is just to keep myself animating and trying things that are beyond my comfort zone.

There are a couple of false starts included, and at the end of the clip I tried an idea for how to get Hoppy across the room really fast. He needs to move like a jackrabbit on speed, but with those short little legs I need to find some alternative way to get him there.... if I actually animate the legs using ease-ins and ease-outs for every step he can't go fast enough!!

Not quite there yet, but it's a start. I'll try a few different ideas as I progress.

One Good Yank -- new clip posted (now with titles added)

2009-05-15T04:34:00.000-05:00

This is my entry to the May challenge at StopMotionMagic (the successor to StopMoShorts). The only criteria Marc and John specified was "puppet struggles". I like it... nice and open-ended -- not too specific. Well, I was already doing exercises with Skulkin, and was preparing to try some mime stuff, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity. Incidentally, the contest is running till May 30th at midnight, so there's still time to get an entry in. You can use existing puppets and sets, bare armatures, anything you want. You can even enter films you've already finished. They're pretty easy over there.

This shot took me (believe it or not) 3 nights to complete... but I only worked on it for about an hour or so each night. You can easily see where I cut off between sessions by the way the background light creeps down the wall suddenly. That's the Solux Framing Art light of course.... a very frustrating little device that rather tantalizingly features a nifty little adjustable set of shutters to shape the beam easily - otherwise it would be no problem to just put it away and not use it. It didn't occur to me until I was almost finished, but I should have folded a piece of paper a few times and jammed it into the swivel joint to tighten it.

My secret weapon is Claude Kipnis' The Mime Book, which I highly recommend to all animators. Who better than mimes to teach us about movement and how to express using only the body? The main thing I concentrated on for this exercise was flexibility of the spine and beginning his movements from the torso. Kipnis says a movement that is originated from an emotion in the character will begin from the center of his torso and undulate out to the extremities. So I did this for all of Skulky's movements, ignoring it only when he's yanked off his feet by his invisible adversary, when the movement begins from the extremities (hands) and everything else follows rather reluctantly.

I was also very conscious of something from Lecoq's Le Corps Poetique (The Moving Body); "Action has no drama in it... all the drama is in the reaction". It seems to be true.... things get a lot more interesting when he starts to interact with the invisible rope and whatever is at the other end of it! It implies things you can't see... makes you wonder (mystery). And it's also conflict.

This being a single continuous shot, it's the smallest cell of drama that exists... a single cell that can accrete with others to form organs (scenes) and finally a complete organism. But a cell like this one is nearly complete in itself... it contains a complete microdrama with beginning, middle and end, so in that sense it's actually a single-celled organism... I'm trying very hard to resist the temptation to dub it a Dramamoeba. Ok, no, as well as the term fits, it just sounds stupid!!

In retrospect I wish he had found the rope lying on the floor... tripped on it and then felt it and picked it up. That would make a lot more sense than just grabbing it out of the air as if he knew it was there. I also wanted to put some more 'business' in... he could have shifted his grip on the rope, hefted it over his shoulder and turned around to pull it harder, et... but it was getting really annoying because I was whipping his torso around so much and every frame I had to go in and try to put his hands back precisely where they were before.

A couple more reasons that I feel this line of approach (mime, Lecoq etc) is perfect for me.... Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin studied mime (or if they never formally studied it, they were certainly two of its foremost practitioners!). Lecoq has his students begin their training with the Awakening exercise... pretending to come to life for the first time in this world and begin to explore it in silence. This not only reminds me of Quest, but also of just about every Harryhausen creature ever put on film!!! And in my reading on Mime, I keep running across references to the idea of the Primal -- the characters and worlds conjured by the actors should seem fresh and new, as if only just created... as if we're witnessing the birth of the world and of the creatures in it. This is very similar to my last point -- but it's important to me because it articulates something I've tried to say in the past about the films I want to make... I want to conjure this primal world.... I want the films to take place in primordial settings... no social situations, no commercial products or prefab architecture... I'm talking ancient ruins, the forest primeval, dank caverns and dark, rotting ships! (And incidentally, this also reminds me of Harryhausen.)

Balancing Lecoq and the Lauensteins (now including the Quest connection!)

2009-05-10T03:33:00.000-05:00

Take a look at the brief description below...

"...theory developed by [French mime and movement teacher] Jacques Lecoq that actors must recognize the dynamics of the stage. One of the Lecoq exercises asks the actors to imagine a platform. When one person steps on stage, the person opposite must compensate as if the platform might tip. The actors need to understand keeping the stage in balance."

Which came from this web page about a contemporary stage production of Sartre's No Exit.

Does it remind you (my regular readers in particular) of anything? That' right... it sounds like the Lauenstein's film Balance - one of my favorite animated films, and I know a favorite of a lot of people. I've long pondered what makes the film so universally loved, and while very simple in some respects, it's got a lot going for it. The symbolic nature of the balancing platform and the small society who live on it for one thing.... makes you think about group dynamics in both the micro and macro scales. Families, friends, war, politics, etc. But another factor making it compelling is simply the delight of watching the physics in action.

In my reading of Lecoq, I ran across his description of the above mentioned exercise for placing actors in a Greek style chorus. (I grabbed the rather sparse description from that website because it was the only decent reference I could find online, and I didn't feel like laboriously typing out the whole thing from the book myself). So.... a startling similarity between lecoq's concept and the Lauenstein's film.... could it be a coincidence, or is it possible the German brothers had encountered the Lecoq technique somewhere? I know the Lauensteins and Thomas Stellmach (famous for the stopmotion short Quest) were taught by Professor Paul Driessen - well-known and highly respected cartoon animator from.... somewhere in Eastern Europe (sorry, too lazy to look it up right now!). Could he have maybe recommended studying Lecoq's techniques of physical Theatre to his students?

I'm not suggesting they "ripped the idea off" or anything so crass.... the reason I was so struck by this is that it makes me feel like I'm on the right track. Balance being one of my favorites, and now seeing the Lecoq connection, it reinforces the feeling that I'm definitely embarked on the right course of study. But fear not... my animation exercises continue... I'll be posting more soon -- just wanted to break for a moment to post this real quick.

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There may also be a connection between another Lecoq exercise and Thomas Stellmach's film Quest (which I've always felt was somehow connected to Balance). The exercise... it's the first of Lecoq's Neutral Mask exercises, designed to make actors express entirely though their bodies, no voice and no face --- the actor, wearing the mask, awakens and begins to explore the space around him (the studio). The idea is to explore and interact with every object there... climb onto the tables and ladders, etc.

This connection obviously isn't as clear cut as the above (Balance), but it's pretty darn close. Close enough, taken in conjunction with what I wrote above, to make me strongly suspect Professor Dreissen DID encourage his students to study Lecoq's methods, or even recommended these particular exercises as great ideas for stopmotion films (a thought I agree with).

Skulkin take 2

2009-05-04T19:34:00.000-05:00

I'm getting some practice in... learning to get my animation more under control, so a puppet's movements start to look coordinated and graceful, rather than disjointed and spasmodic. As I begin to get this kind of control I can start to make the movements become dramatic - the next step.

I had a good long conversation with Jay Wojnarowski - AKA 1BigLebowski on YouTube, who is a theatrical actor / director and has received training at Dell' Arte International School of Physical Theatre in Blue Lake California. Maybe you wouldn't know it from seeing what he's posted on YouTube so far, but this guy really knows his stuff!! And, if you've looked at any of his behind-the scenes videos, you know he likes to talk, so I got a good detailed overview from him about physical theatre and commedia dell'arte, which is very closely related to stopmotion - at least the kind of stopmotion I'm interested in. It's the type of training clowns get, and mimes, and silent film comedians.

So I ordered a few books and I'm studying the physical training techniques developed by Jaques Lecoq, who pretty much single-handedly developed these methods (according to his book anyway) - or I should say re-discovered the techniques used in ancient Commedia and Greek Tragic theatre and further developed them.

Jay stresses the importance of the actor in the process.... having been thoroughly trained in physical theater an actor knows how to bring his character to life, and doesn't need permission from a director or writer... he's the main driving force behind the creation of the character and of the drama onstage.

So I'm now changing my focus from researching drama and story to actual performance. Don't misunderstand.... of course it's important to study drama and story, but unless you can express something through actual performance, it's a moot point. Until you're capable as an actor/animator of creating dramatic moments through your puppets, you can't really tell a story with them. So I'm beginning there.

Lecoq puts a lot of emphasis on mask work... training actors by putting masks on them. It frees an actor up... strips away the face and the social persona and puts emphasis on motions of the entire body. I think this is very similar to animating a puppet in a silent performance. So I plan to try some of the exercises he discusses. More to come...

Jeff Wayne's Musical War of the Worlds

2009-04-28T04:57:00.000-05:00

Can't believe I discovered this in its entirely on YouTube!!!! Incredible....

This has long been an absolute favorite of mine, though tonight is the first time I've seen the accompanying stage show. I had only heard it previously.... once on the radio and then I sought out the CD which I listened to until it imploded!

I'll never forget the first time I heard it... quite by accident. It was Halloween night sometime in probably the early 80s (maybe late 70s?). My friend and I had just left a party and he was dropping me off at my house. We were randomly changing the station (in those days it was done with a knob, no electronics) and suddenly we heard this amazing sound. It immediately transfixed us both... we just looked at each other with our jaws hanging open. We had no idea what it was, and we found it just before arriving at my driveway, but there was no way we were going to shut it off... it was like nothing we had ever heard before. So we kept on going and drove all around the city and out into the countryside and listened to the entire thing... we had fortunately caught it from right near the beginning.

Rediscovering it tonight after all my recent delving into drama and story etc made me realize just how dramatic this production is... something I had taken for granted before. But no spoilers....

At least check out the beginning of it.... I'd venture to say if you're anything like me you'll have to watch it all.

Featuring Justin Hayward of the Moody Blues (and including the song Forever Autumn, which you may have heard before) and narrated by Richard Burton, looking *uncannily* young and suspiciously robotic in his floating head appearance....

Followup notes

2009-04-27T23:59:00.000-05:00

A number of observations and/or conclusions I've arrived at after consideration of the recent posts I've made.

Watching all the clips included in my Best in Cinematography playlist made me realize they all share certain things in common...

1) They're all shot in black and white. (DUH!!)

2) They all construct purely imaginative worlds, built from the stuff of history, but not as concerned with accuracy as with the possibility of a world where creative ideas can flourish. This concept runs all through my writing on this blog and elsewhere... I've recently realized it's a thread that links all my favorite authors, music, and movies. Fantasy.... "A world of pure imagination".

3) The stories are told primarily visually... with little or no dialogue. In the case of Von Sternberg, as was brought up in an earlier post about him (click on his name in the labels beneath this post if you're interested) the dialogue was a smoke screen... a surface illusion... a mask of a story designed to subtlely disguise the real story being told through the visuals alone. In Marketa Lazarova, and in Two Lane Blacktop (not included in the playlist but another of my favorites) dialogue is sparse and used almost musically... to punctuate with notes of pure emotion now and then rather than to explain.

4) I'm becoming increasingly aware of a different kind of black and white photography.... markedly different from the high-contrast Expressionist stuff with its emphasis on light and dark areas and with lots of solid black.

Look at the visuals of Marketa Lazarova for instance... not much solid black in most shots... in fact the lighting is very diffused and all-pervasive, being shot outdoors in snow. There also seems to be plenty of fill light, some natural and I'm sure some added artificially. The visual interest lies in contrasts of shapes, textures, tones... in other words, the principle elements of design... of art itself.

This suggests to me that it's necessary to design your sets.. in fact your entire production, well before the story writing stage -- with these textures and shapes in mind. Much the way modern fantasy movies and video games are based on concept art which is done very early in the planning stages of a production.

YouTube I think I love you!!! Embeddable playlists plus Marketa Lazarova posted on the Tube!!!

2009-04-23T02:18:00.000-05:00

Let me start this post by citing Sturgeon's Law (that's Theodore Sturgeon - yeah, he's a science fiction writer, you got a problem with that?): "90% of everything is crap". And that's definitely true of YouTube. But when you start to find that hidden 10% - the diamonds in the rough, nestled down among the garbage, that's when you really see the true power of Web 2.0.

I've only recently started to work on my YouTube channel, and begun to discover the power of the Tube. Tonight I was busy Tubesurfing, favoriting some clips, when I noticed I could create a Playlist, and not only that, but I could also embed said playlist on my blog!!!

So here it is, my Best of Cinematography list (very subjective of course). Mouse over it to see the various included clips, or just use the left and right arrows to move to a new clip.

My most astonishing discovery tonight.... Marketa Lazarova uploaded to the Tube in 15 installments.... in its entirety!!!!! . I had tried to find even brief clips from this masterpiece in the past to show people the pure brilliance of Franticek Vlacil's cinematic genius, and was only able to find 2 clips. But tonight I stumble upon the entire freaking movie!!!!. And also a fantastic music video with scenes from the film set to the Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter.

Ok, anyway, yeah -- I'm a little excited about it.

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Wow, now I see 2 of the video clips don't allow embedding (unfortunately including Marketa Lazarova). So they won't show here on my blog. Just click through to my YouTube Channel and look at the playlist itself (where it says Best in Cinematography) and click to "see all" (or use the direct link in the paragraph above). So, the love affair with the New YouTube continues, but with caveats.

Not your father's YouTube

2009-04-20T07:35:00.000-05:00

Remember when we used to complain about the quality of YouTube videos? Yowsa... now it's crystal clear and high-res to boot. Gave me an excuse to fiddle with my Skulkin clip and upload it. This Web 2.0 stuff is pretty awesome.

All the world's a stage (now with CLIPS for clarity!!!)

2009-03-27T04:49:00.000-05:00

"You can introduce characters in odd, unusual, or active environments. James Bond films often open with dramatic action scenes meant to be thrilling and unique, but which also name a story issue....

If there's nothing interesting about the story environment you're using to introduce a character, why did you choose it? Can you make a better choice? Are you describing your environment in a way that clearly impacts your audience? Think of your story environment as a character in the story, rising up to act, to block, to help, to frustrate your main character."

These passages come from Bill Johnson's A Story is a Promise book. Again, I highly recommend this as one of the finest books I've seen on the subject of story. Along with Robert McKee's Story (the bible on Plot Driven Narrative) and Lajos Egri's The Art of Dramatic Writing (Character Driven Drama), this forms the Trifecta. Most books I've read on story give you the bones and muscles and the organs that make up the anatomy of story... Johnson gives you its soul. I still recommend reading more (especially the 2 others I mentioned), but Johnson's book goes deeper than most, bypassing most of the anatomy to get right to the inner core, the true dramatic thrust that makes a story into a living organism.

In the above quoted passages, he was really discussing character and how to introduce them in a dynamic way without stopping the dramatic movement of the story (something most inexperienced writers tend to do... they let the story stall while they introduce characters). He just mentioned using environment in these few sentences, but it gave me a jolt. I realized this is something else that's done in these stopmotion films I've been dissecting... they all use environments dramatically... environments that were custom designed to help make the story issues concrete and palpable. Balance, Quest, The Sand Castle, and In the Box (which I haven't discussed yet, but it will be upcoming quite soon I promise) take place in specialised worlds that are definitely not part of the real world. They're more like dream worlds, that have their own very specific laws and physics... custom tailored to fit the dramatic action at the core of the story.

I don't think the image I posted above really demonstrates what Im talking about all that well... in Krysar the world is warped and stylized beautifully, and it does create a sense of everything being cohesive, all from one mind and very dreamlike. But I don't believe the environment in Barta's film really acts in any way against the protagonist, as it does in the other films I mentioned in this post. I would have posted an image from one of them, but I used Balance for the pic in the last post, and I couldn't find any nice big pics from any of the others.

Strangely enough though, in searching, I did run across an old post on my own blog about Balance and Quest from 2006. I've long been fascinated with these films and others like them, and I have been attempting to understand what makes them tick. In reading what I wrote back then, I was trying to explain the question, answer, question technique, and came pretty close. But now my understanding of it is much clearer... then it was muddy and fumbling. Ahhh... if only a clearer understanding of why something works would translate to being able to make it work in my own films.....

Ok, that's more like it! Any of Bickford's films take place in an active dream world! But I'll leave that awesome shot from Krysar up there at the top... I do like the way it looks. And having both pics here helps to illustrate the crucial difference... a simply picturesque environment versus a truly active one that helps to name or define the story issue, or the main dramatic thrust of your story.

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I've been alerted by a couple of my keen-eyed readers that I wasn't being very clear in this post. The images I posted in particular failed to get across my meaning. In order to see my point... an active environment engaging the characters as opposed to a beautiful and highly stylized but dramatically inert environment, I need to post clips! So here they are...

Starting with Jiri Barts's beautiful Krysar:
Krysar clip 1

Krysar clip 2

Krysar clip 3

These clips are ones I originally posted on my Darkstrider site, kindly uploaded to YouTube for a wider viewing audience by Niffiwan. Don't misunderstand, I love this film!!! But as beautiful as it is, it illustrates a static environment.

In contrast we have the ever-morphing world of visionary Bruce Bickford:

Prometheus' Garden

Cas'l

... And perhaps the ultimate living environment...
Baby Snakes

Environment in his films is in constant, ever shifting restless motion, and occasionally extrudes a part of itself to interact physically with the characters.

Now, this idea of an environment actually physically moving and changing to help or harm characters isn't really what Bill Johnson meant. He was talking more about choosing an environment that allows you to block or help a character toward their goal. But to me, this is one of the ideas that take on a whole new level of meaning in the short animated film. We can really take it to the utmost, and actually have environments with inimical intentions, that reach out and bitchslap the characters, or that cuddle and embrace them.

Exploring the Dark Regions - delving into the nature of the short animated film

2009-03-23T21:26:00.000-05:00

I've been studying various techniques of writing for film, stage and book now on my blog for some time. The idea was to fill my head with an embarrassment of riches, to overwhelm myself, so that no one technique dominated and I would be free to think democratically about the process. Also I hoped to illuminate much of the world of writing, so that the area where the techniques for the short animated film lie would be in one of the dark areas left over... enabling me to locate it by the process of elimination. And Now I feel like I"m prepared to take a stab at it. Following is essentially a wrap-up.... a listing of the techniques I've studied, plus my idea of what it leaves.... an exploration of the dark regions left unexplored by books about writing.

Areas of story I've explored to varying degrees thus far are:

The classical Aristotlean approach (Plot Driven Narrative)

Character Driven Drama

Poetic forms

Theatre of the Absurd

Cartoon writing (gags)

Episodic structure

The Aristitlean and Character Driven techniques apply primarily to feature-length live-action films, or novel-length stories, though I do believe some ideas from each can be used in slightly modified form in short films. The cartoon and episodic approaches are suited to of course cartoons and animation in general. And Poetic and Theatre of the Absurd apply to experimental films mainly. Any of these can be used to some extent in a short stopmotion film, but there are more approaches, that I haven't seen discussed or written about anywhere.... I have a vague notion of some of them, but it requires further exploration to bring it to light.

There's no way to develop good, 3 dimensional characters without a lot of time, a lot of dialogue, and a realistic social environment, all things I have no interest in. And I don't think there's any point in trying to develop solid 3 dimensional characters in short animation anyway, unless you're interested in fully naturalistic animation and essentially want to make a live action film in animation - not what I' want at all.

I'm looking for approaches to short stopmotion films that allow for great creativity, that don't try to imitate live action.

I need to analyze films like Balance, Quest, The Sand Castle etc.

In these films there's no real characterization or story development. In Balance the puppets are basically identical, differentiated only by numbers printed on their coats. And this works because it's a story about balance in relationships... social or interpersonal or political relationships... it's about the balance of power and the concepts of selfishness versus sharing. I suppose it has some degree of Aristotle in it... there's an Inciting Incident that kicks off the action, things build to a crescendo through a sequence of rising tension, and there's a climax that seems inherent in the beginning of the film, leaving a final image that imprints itself on the viewer's mind indelibly and makes them think about deeper issues.

The character in Quest is anonymous... a mannikin made of sand. This is right because he represents thirst and dryness, the quest for water. It's episodic and is situation-based, basically a cartoon, only not funny so much as fascinating and compelling.

The strange creatures in Sand Castle are inhuman, but represent early forms of creation, like some sort of early animal forms given life and left to create their environment. They also, like the character in Quest, seem to be made of sand (and created right in front of our eyes from it). Again, no individuality among characters... they're anonymous. It's more about how fun it is to watch these strange whimsical creatures form sand in various ways.

All of these films seem to operate on the Question, Answer, Question principle.... opening with a mysterious image that makes the viewer wonder what's going on, then answers (partial answers) are provided that lead him on like a trail of bread crumbs toward the ultimate conclusion... the revelation to the question that began it all.

These 3 films also serve to make their drama palpable (or physical) - turn it into something solid that can be manipulated. The idea of balance is made manifest by a tilting platform suspended in space. Creatures made of sand build a castle from sand... or a creature made of sand searches for water as he dries out. The idea of each film is made manifest by use of props or environment so the characters can act out the drama physically.

"Movement is consciousness made manifest"

Each of these films does something else as well... they all begin on a mysterious note and draw the viewer in with curiosity. Who are these strange beings, and what are they doing? You learn more stage by stage as the film progresses, till at the end your curiosity is satisfied. This is what I used to call "unravelling a mystery", and it's something I've written about since my first post about story structure way back on the original blog on my Darkstrider site.

A few months ago I wrote this:

"A scene can unscroll in such a way that, in the beginning, the audience is mystified... what is happening? And as it plays out, or perhaps in the next scene, or two or three scenes later (or even at the end of the movie) the mystery is revealed. Max Payne is an entire movie done in this way... the beginning is a tableaux - a montage of enigmatic and confusing but enticing images which are only explained by the end of the entire film. This compels a second viewing.

Let the Right One in (just saw both movies today) is set up so that each scene (at least near the beginning... or at least certain key scenes) play out enigmatically, with an answer provided only near or at the end of the scene. As long as there's something to captivate and hold the viewers interest this results in suspense.

I should add that this post was actually inspired originally by seeing Crone, an incredible stopmo short animated by Mikey Please and designed by Ben Gerlis. In addition to the mysterious scene construction there was also a Wolfean twist of sudden powerful violence that led from what seemed to be a somewhat dark cartoon to a stark, intense revelation of the truly darker side of human nature. "

And now I want to amend it with more.... deeper meaning can be put into these enigmatic reveals using ideas from Bill Johnson's A Story Is a Promise. Rather than just be mysterious and draw a viewer in, they can posit a question, or deep meaning that speaks to the human condition. The opening statement of a story should not only captivate the viewer's attention, it should encapsulate the dramatic promise of the story to come.... begin the dramatic movement that is the essence of the story.

One idea that's emerging as I think about this --

It seems you can use some of the basic concepts I've been learning in my studies into story, but in abbreviated form -- characters need not be fully-realized, the society in which the film is set can be a microcosm - a small self-contained world separated from the world of drab reality - the story itself can be very brief and to-the-point, no need to fully develop it in great depth the way you would for a longer film. It's about brevity - reducing things to their essence. In fact in all the films I discuss in today's post there are no real characters at all... they're all pretty vague and nondescript. I think in films of this nature character just gets in the way... these puppets are only ciphers... stand-ins... the ideas of characters.

But I do believe it's necessary to use some of the principles of good story development to create a strong dramatic movement and tension, and to provide a good sense of resolution at the end. Unless of course you're doing a purely experimental film or aren't interested in drama. Bear in mind.... what I'm seeking here are ideas for the kinds of film I want to make... I'm sure there are many other ways to go.

*** *** ***
On the issue of dramatic movement... it occurs to me that both Balance and Quest have a pretty good dramatic concept embodied in them -- while The Sand Castle really doesn't. In Balance and Quest there are characters who are fighting against each other or against their environment for something they desperately need or want so badly they'll endanger their own lives or the lives of others to attain it. But The Sand Castle is more a whimsical creation myth with nothing really at stake. Creatures are made of sand, then build a castle from sand. There's no real tension anywhere... nothing to lose.

Analysis of the film Crone:

At first a question is set up....

Who is the narrator?

Additional questions...

If the narrator is really a crow, why does it have the voice of a woman? and why does it seem so ominous, as if its intentions are evil?

Why has it "been sat here" for so long?

We don't get the answers to any of these questions yet, we must watch to learn. And the ominous atmosphere is interesting enough to make us want to do that.

The narration continues. In lieu of any other explanation, we assume the crow is the narrator. Then suddenly something happens to dispel that notion... the camera 'blinks' from a low-level shot, looking AT the crow! This leads us to believe it's a POV shot, most likely from the narrators viewpoint.... so the narrator isn't the crow, it's something down on the ground looking at the crow.

In the next sequence, there's an indication that grass, in fact all vegetation - is subject to the narrator's power... serves it as a weapon of some sort. "green fingers" etc. And we see grass and leaves trembling and moving seemingly like conscious things, as if moving toward someone with menacing intent. This begins a new thread... the idea that the narrator either IS vegetation, or somehow controls it - is in league with it.

The woman who watches the old man walking to the bench has a lot of plants in her bathroom... she's watering them as she watches him. This increases the sense of menace from plant life... it seems to be multiplying and dominating the screen more and more.

In fact the next shot is a downshot of nothing but a field of grass and some branches in front of the camera, with a slow pan and the sound track increasing the sense of menace and importance of the grass.

And then we see something new... a little pink worm of some kind wriggling amid all the grass, almost like a blade of grass itself, but pink and writhing with more animation, more life.

This completes something... there has been a crow, there has been talk of the narrator searching the ground for morsels of food, and now a worm. Birds eat worms... everyone knows that. At this point we expect the crow to eat the worm. What could be more natural?

Next shot... the crow sees the worm and swoops on it. Again we hear the narrator talk about "something catching her eye" while talking about food. But suddenly there's a reversal... prey becomes predator as the "worm" springs up, stretches to what would be an impossible length for a normal worm, and grabs the crow in mid-flight.... stops its forward momentum instantly and slams it repeatedly against the ground.

This is shocking!! So far everything has obeyed normal, real-world physics, and though this is an animated film, there haven't been any unrealistic creatures... only people and vegetation like you'd see in any park. Now we're suddenly and violently introduced to something new... and we suspect this will answer most if not all of the questions posed up until now.

The poor crow is killed mercilessly and dragged down into the ground. The camera follows along, the sound track providing a chilling rumbling sound as we plunge into the depths of the earth. Skulls litter the dirt as we progress... there has been a lot of killing here.

We emerge in an underground chamber where a strange cronelike creature sits. The wormlike tendril that snatched the crow drags it through the ceiling and brings it right to the crone's mouth where she takes a bite... raw and with feathers and all still intact. This creature eats like some wild beast.

Personal note... this creature reminds me of Grendel or possibly Grendel's mother. But that's neither here nor there at the moment.

We see that the tendril is one of a pair that emerge from the crone's forehead like feelers of an insect or something.

Is she holding a skull and talking to it? Or is it alive and on some kind of long neck... perhaps a part of her body, or another creature altogether? I can't tell, but then the online version of the fim is very dark and low resolution... a better copy might resolve the issue. I also have a hard time understanding some of what the narrator says, which if I understood it might explain some points I missed.

But we now realize that the cronelike being is the narrator. The main question posed at the beginning of the film (Who is the narrator? Also Why does shoe sound menacing and evil?) has been answered, and in a thrilling manner. Some mystery still remains, but it doesn't all need to be answered... this is a monster, and most likely we'll never fully understand it or its origin. I think it's best we don't actually... monsters become very mundane when explained fully. They should be mysterious.

As the closing theme begins to play and gets louder, announcing the end of the short film, we rise up rapidly along the same path we entered the underground lair, and see a little girl who thinks she sees a worm. It grabs her and begins to give her the same treatment the crow received. then the camera goes black... the film is over.

We never learn the true nature of the crone.. is it a woman who got herself stuck in here and perhaps the glowing green sludge she sits in is some kind of nuclear waste that caused her to mutate into this monster? We'll never know. It doesn't matter... the big question has been answered, and the structure of the film has been completed. We know by the rising of the music and the end credits that it's over, and it FEELS like it's over. It's achieved a sense of closure, or catharsis. And what's more, the abrupt, shocking revelation at the end has left us pondering.

This isn't an inhman monster... it's very human, much like Grendel... in fact, it suffers from lonliness and frustration, just like people can do. It seems to have been suffering like this for a long time, and this has twisted its nature into what it has become. There's something tragic about it (or am I reading Grendel into this character?).

This film doesn't lend itself to an Aritsotlean analysis... there's no main character, no problem that needs to be solved, no inciting incident. Instead the viewer's mission is to determine who the narrator is. The film seems to be built entirely on the question, answer, question technique.

Breaking Bad -- Character Driven ACTION

2009-03-22T05:47:00.001-05:00

Breaking Bad is my favorite show... and the best-written one I've ever seen. In my quest to learn as much as I can about writing, I decided to seek out what I can find online about the writing for this powerful character-driven drama. Here's an excellent interview with the creator and head writer: Vince Gilligan interview @ Writing for Performance -- and if you look closely at the bottom of the page, you'll find a link to the script for the pilot episode. I'll copy the link here: Breaking Bad pilot script. It's amazing how perfectly worked out everything already is in the script... it's polished up to perfection! Apparently the years of writing for the X Files with Chris Carter learnt him a few things. The characters are all there fully realized... but some of the minor differences from the actual episode are fascinating as well. A setting or two are different, a few lines of dialogue, and Jesse Pinkman's name was originally Marion Dupree. Strange... though his character shines exactly as it will in the episode itself.

This script shows how to write character driven ACTION.

And I'll just drop a few more links here for related goodness:

Vince Gilligan teases the new season of Breaking Bad @ The Futon Critic

Q&A - Bryan Cranston (Director) @ AMCTV.com

A Story is a Promise

2009-03-16T04:45:00.001-05:00

http://www.storyispromise.com/

It seems like there was a long hard slog through the whole Aristotlean thing, learning the basics of story and screenwriting technique, but suddenly after switching over to dramatic (theatrical) techniques things have taken a (ahem) dramatic leap forward.

I've run across the best writing about writing I've seen yet, on the site Linked above. Bill Johnson's whole concept is that a story is a promise, and you must deliver on that promise in a way that's satisfying to the reader or viewer. I've read a few of the essays, and so far each one is excellent. But the best thing I've found there is called Question, Answer, Question. I hope Bill doesn't mind if I post a bit of that essay here (with a link to the rest of it):

Bringing the Dead to Life

Notes on Twilight

by Bill Johnson

I'm always curious when a book becomes a phenomena. Twilight, by Stephenie Meyer, is such a novel. So I bought it to see how the story 'works' to draw in its audience. In these notes I'll begin by breaking down the novel's opening preface line by line.

First line,

I'd never given much thought to how I would die--though I'd had reason enough in the last few months--but even if I had, I would not have imagined it like this.

This is pure drama, which I define as an anticipation of an outcome. There are many dramatic questions here.

Why did the narrator have reasons to imagine his or her death?
What kind of death is the narrator facing, that he or she couldn't have imagined it?
What situation does the narrator find him or herself in?
Where is the narrator?
To get the answer to these questions, the reader has to read the next sentence. That is the prime responsibility of the first sentence of a novel, that a reader be compelled to read a second sentence. That's why this kind of mysterious first sentence is often seen in popular novels. A first sentence that is not compelling becomes a first step in a reader disengaging from a novel. I teach that it's three steps and the reader is gone.

There's a difference between a dramatic question and a question. 'Would I die today?' is a question, but it's not a dramatic question like the first sentence above. When I try and teach some writers the art of a good opening line with dramatic questions, some people respond by framing ordinary sentences as questions.

Second paragraph, second sentence,

I stared without breathing across the long room, into the dark eyes of the hunter, and he looked pleasantly back at me.

This begins to suggest a place, 'the long room,' while raising the question, why a long room? Where is this room? It also raises the question, who is the hunter? Why does the hunter look 'pleasantly' at the narrator who, based on the first sentence, would appear to be facing death from the hunter? Or not. To get the answer to that question, the reader has to read the third sentence.

These two sentences have set up a process I call question, answer, question. The first sentence raises questions, the second sentence begins to answer those questions (who or what is threatening the narrator with death), while the answer to the question (the hunter is threatending the narrator) simply raises another question, who is the hunter?

This question, answer, question process creates an on-going hold on the attention of readers, and also creates forward movement that pulls the reader ahead. When the opening to an unpublished novel lacks this process, the sentences are often a collection of details describing a time, place, or character. Such statements operate as statements: this is what so-and-so looks like; this is what this place looks like. The risk is that such statements lack drama -- there's no anticipation of an outcome. There can be an anticipation of an outcome based on the appearance of a character, but when there's not, the opening pages of a story can be the weakest writing in an unpublished novel.

A literary agent or editor reading the above two lines would be immediately aware that this is a novel written by a storyteller.

Third paragraph,

Surely it was a good way to die, in the place of someone else, someone I loved. Noble, even. That ought to count for something.

Many more questions here; more 'pull' on the reader.
Why is the narrator ready to die in place of someone else?
What makes that noble?
Why is it important to the narrator that this noble act 'count for something?'
What has the narrator done in life that he or she needs to balance the scales?
Fourth paragraph,

I knew that if I'd never gone to Forks, I wouldn't be facing death now. But, terrified as I was, I couldn't bring myself to regret the decision. When life offers you a dream so far beyond your expectations, it's not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.

This begins to answer the question, where is this story happening (Forks), but that answer raises another question, where is Forks? Why did the narrator go to Forks? Why does the narrator not regret the decision, which could lead to his or her death? How did this journey to Forks become this grand fulfillment of a dream for the narrator?

Last sentence of preface,

The hunter smiled in a friendly way as he sauntered forward to kill me.

Click here to read the entire essay - ok, I posted most of it above, but there's still a little more left!!

This concept of question, answer, question has explained something to me. I'm a huge fan of the show Breaking Bad, as well as a few of the other recent character driven cable shows (Saving Grace especially). There's something extra compelling about these shows... once you start watching it's hard to stop, and they only seem to follow basic Aristotlean structure to a very limited extent. I knew it was something about the characters that drove these shows, but I couldn't figure out how they did it.

The question, answer, question technique answers a big part of that question. As I was watching Breaking Bad last night I could see it in action. Little revelations fed out sparingly as the show progresses, enough to answer a previously-posed question, but always raising new ones, until the end. Well ok, scratch that... at the end they leave a big question hanging to make you want to watch the next episode. The process creates a dramatic throughline that draws a viewer all the way through the story while keeping their interest riveted. It's also a perfect example of a show that's character driven but with plenty of action. Too often the term character driven means quiet and internal, with little to no action, but Breaking Bad proves it needn't be like that.

Breaking Bad is a perfect example of this technique. If you want to examine how it's done, download an episode or 2 from the iTunes store for $1.99 (or Netflix it, whatever) and watch with a critical eye. It helps to watch twice... the first time you tend to get sucked in and just enjoy the ride... the second time you can spot the tricks and techniques better.

Introducing Skulkin

2009-03-14T02:01:00.000-05:00

Meet Skulkin. He's a puppet I whipped up quickly just so I could get in a little practice at animation. He's built similarly to the Radkin puppets for the film I'm working on, because I don't want to practice with them and break their aluminum bones.

Don't worry too much about the words... they have no meaning really, just something I thought up to connect these completely unrelated clips.

I don't know why the clip is squashed on my site... but if you download it to your own computer (right click and Save As on a PC, or control click Download Linked File on a Mac) it shows the way it's supposed to, and you can even watch it fullscreen. I'll see if I can figure out the snafu... I know the clip wasn't squashed like that when I uploaded it. In the meantime, please just bear with me and download the clip to watch it.

I've also added it to the sidebar with my other clips. Enjoy.

Character Driven Drama (now with LINKS!)

2009-03-13T01:53:00.000-05:00

My latest discovery in the realm of story is Character-Driven Drama, a particular type of story that originates from the world of live theater.

In order to understand what it is, it helps to learn what it ISN'T.

Its antithesis is the Plot-Driven Narrative. (I call one drama and the other narrative because, to me, the word drama essentially MEANS character-driven). Plot-driven stories tend to be more structured.... all this 3-act, inciting incident, turning point, Aristotlean stuff that I've been studying. That's not to say all those things don't also apply to character-driven drama... they DO... but in a less obvious way. The structure tends to be more subliminal, giving precedence to the personalities that power the story and letting things flow forth in a more organic, holistic manner. The CDD (Character Driven Drama) tends to be focused on individuals -- a character portrait or a biography if you will, whereas the PDN (Plot Driven Narrative) is about a series of events. Writing a plot-driven narrative has the tendency to flatten characters by subjecting them to the twists and turns dictated by the carefully crafted story.

I've been discussing the subject with fellow Stopmoe and blogger Sven Bonnichsen, who is currently taking a playwriting course and digging into it much deeper than I am... Im basically just getting the benefit of his studies and doing a little additional research of my own. D G Goans introduced us to a great playwriting book by Laos Egri called The Art of Dramatic Writing, which has been the basis of my own studies thus far into the field. I won't bother to repeat anything Sven has said on his blog.... I'll just give my own thoughts, which are fairly subjective.

Since reading the Egri book I now have a much stronger idea of what's meant by "character driven" stories. I had heard the term before, but had only a vague notion of what it really meant. Basically it means all the action in the story derives directly from the personalities of the main characters, as opposed to stories that are about ideas or situations.

And suddenly I understand something that I was dimly aware of but couldn't put my finger on until now....

These days there are a lot of really powerful cable shows that are pushing the boundaries of what can be done in an ongoing television series, such as Saving Grace, Breaking Bad, Rescue Me, The Shield, etc. These shows are a complete paradigm shift from formulaic TV sitcoms like Giligan's Island, The Odd Couple, Family Matters, or Saved by the Bell.

All these cable shows I mentioned plus the rest I can think of (The Closer, Madmen, Nip/Tuck etc) are entirely character driven. There have been some character driven broadcast TV shows in the past... but not many. The only ones I can think of now would be Hill Street Blues and its spinoffs (such as NYPD Blue), All in the Family, M*A*S*H -- and those Joss Whedon classics Buffy and Angel.

Sitcoms, as the name implies, are situation driven. They always begin and end with essentially nothing having changed.... no-one dies, suffers any type of debilitating injury or illness, or has anything happen that changes their situation. The passengers on the SS Minnow never get off the island, no matter how close they come at times. Characters in a sitcom are pretty simple and almost formulaic.... not complex 3 dimensional individuals.

In a character-driven drama all the motive power derives from the personalities of the main characters. Often shows (or movies) of this nature seem formless, drifting -- because the structure (while usually there) is to some extent sublimated to the ebb and flow of the combat between the protagonist and antagonist, or just the protag going up against the world at large. How many shows were taken on a dizzying ride with Andy Sipowicz at the wheel, careening dangerously through the turmoils of his life?

The protagonist of a character-driven story is a deeply flawed person. Think about the main character in any of the cable shows I mentioned above.... these people all have serious issues!! At times the issues threaten to destroy them or the people around them. And in today's dark, edgy shows, sometimes it actually happens.... people suffer devastating losses and setbacks that you'd never see on prime time television.

Protags in character driven drama are also people who just won't let things be. They're always pushing... driving, striving to get what they want. They're not people who "don't rock the boat"... they're willing and quite ready to blow the boat right out of the water. They're what you would call driven people.... powered by their inner obsessions or compulsions. They're always pushing the issue. But their antags are the same way.... pushing back against them just as hard. When they meet, its time to duck for cover.... these are the alphas staking out the same territory and neither one is about to back down.

It's this kind of conflict that propels the character-driven drama. Things don't happen TO these people, they go out and happen to things -- and to each other.

I know quite a few people in real life that'd I'd call "Character Driven". These tend to be people with strong opinions about everything.... they have no neutral ground. You can be talking about the weather and they'll run the full emotional gamut -- they tend to push and probe to test you -- see if they can draw you out and get some fight out of you. And make no mistake, they love to fight!! They get bored when there's nothing to challenge them, and there's nothing they hate more than boredom. They tend to be people you either love or hate.... they get a strong reaction either way. You might admire them at times and at other times they annoy you or worse. They're AGGRESSIVE. Not passive.

This is hardly a complete rendering of what makes a character-driven drama, but it's all I got right now, so I thought I'd just plop it down here in my online notebook in case I want to look at it later. And you're welcome to peek in too if you want.

Oh, and here are some links:

Character-Driven or Action-Driven? @ Writer's Store

How to write the character driven novel @ Suite101.com

A lighthearted peek at Character Driven Plotting by Valerie Comer

The Basics of Screenwriting Includes many of Egri's Dramatic concepts

'Breaking Bad' and Character-Driven TV @ The Harvard Crimson

Raising the Marketability of a Character-Driven Story also about 'finding your hook'

Let characters reveal themselves @ Suite101.com

Six Simple Questions @ Suite101.com

** I've come to the sudden realization that some of my favorite books are character driven, such as Moby Dick, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser series by Fritz Lieber, and the stories of Gene Wolf. These are also the ones I'd characterize as Poetic Fiction (as per an earlier post).

Amazing Coraline Maquettes!!!

2009-02-10T05:43:00.000-06:00

Wowsers!!! Check out the amazing maquettes and sculptures from Coraline at the Bard Sculpture Studio site!! You can see Coraline characters and sets in galleries 1 through 4 I think, plus possibly elsewhere (I haven't looked through it all yet). Lots of other incredible sculpture and concept work all over the site too... this is one to explore with relish!

Also be sure to check out the Wieden & Kennedy blog for more behind the scenes goodness. This is the advertising agency who masterminded the Coraline Mystery Box campaign that took the web by storm. Ok maybe the Visual Companion book sucks (so I keep hearing anyway), but this time around there's a huge wealth of information on the web for us to whet our appetites on. Be sure to check out my buddy Sven's blog for pics of the inner workings of the puppets. Man, I can't believe I still haven't seen this.... everyone is saying it's Selick's absolute masterpiece and that it even trumps the Nightmare Before Christmas....

Concept art & behind-the-scenes pics from Noro Drziac's The Great Sneezer

2009-01-13T06:09:00.000-06:00

These don't really require any explanation. Just some beautiful art and BTS shots from a fantastic film (more info in the previous entry just below this one). Sent to me quite kindly by Mr. Drziak himself in honor of the exhibition opening in New York (also detailed in the preceeding post).

I particularly like this one - it reveals the secret to those wonderful, warped buildings!!! Look closely -- is that sheets of styrofoam I see being cut and glued to each other? Interesting....

Exhibit of Czech/ Slovak animation at Czech Center in NY (now including PDF Exhibition Catalog!!)

2009-01-08T06:28:00.000-06:00

These pics are of puppets from The Great Sneezer (Velky Kychac), directed by Noro Drziak. You can see a clip from it on my Video Clips Page at my Darkstrider.net site. Scroll down a ways, you'll find it next to a couple of clips from Jan Bubenicek's Pirat, which is also included in the exhibit I believe.

Following is a quote from the Czech Center New York website about it:

New Generation of Czech Animation
January 20–February 5
Opening: January 20, 6:30 pm

Czech Center New York at the Bohemian
321 East 73rd Street, NYC

Exhibition of works of Czech film directors, artists and animators. Michal Žabka, Václav Švankmajer, Noro Držiak, Jan Bubeníček and David Súkup are graduates of the Film and TV School of the Academy of the Performing Arts in Prague (FAMU), whose films were awarded in prestigious international film festivals. The exhibition includes marionettes, costumes, stage properties, designs, and a retrospective of their films.

Film screening at the exhibition opening at 7:30 pm.

The films I mentioned above, as well as other fantastic ones also made in many cases (if not all?) by students of FAMU can be found (in R2 unfortunately, last I checked) on the Nova Generace, Ceska Animace series of DVDs. My favorite place to buy international puppetfilm these days is through HMV Japan, which carries all 3 volumes of the series:

Nova Generace, Ceske Animace

Vol. 1

Vol. 2

Vol. 3

For information on buying DVDs from foreign sites like HMV or Amazon Japan or Bontonland, and on getting ahold of an all-regions, all-systems DVD player (which cost the same as a regular DVD player by the way) check the left sidebar on the Masters page of my site.

Special bonus!!!! Here's a PDF file of the Exhibition Catalogue!!!! Right-click and Save As. Enjoy!!! This is really incredible info to anyone interested in Czech and Slovak animation, especially the newer stuff!

the Blasphemous Brilliance of Moral Orel

2009-01-03T03:39:00.000-06:00

I'll freely admit -- in the beginning, I was not a fan of the show, or of just about anything on Adult Swim. I had seen a couple of the early episodes, and to me it seemed like little more than an irreverent poke at Davey and Goliath, dragging the characters through the mud for laughs.

But something happened around the end of season 2 -- the show transformed into something exceptional. I wouldn't even have known, because my original impression stuck with me, except that I've been hanging out with some friends who keep Cartoon Network on all the time, day and night. And of all the shows on Adult Swim, Moral Orel is probably the least stupid and offensive (hmm... faint praise, but it gets a lot better).

Little by little, I got to know the characters and the situations, so I was primed when I suddenly saw the season 2 closer... a 2-parter called Nature, about a hunting trip Orel shared with his father. I caught it on the Moralthon for New Year's Eve. And suddenly I was riveted -- compelled by an irresistible force that wouldn't let me look away. I was literally stunned by the sheer power of the writing. Deep, dark stuff.... definitely not for the faint-hearted!! But brilliantly done. I'm still in awe.... and at this moment I'll go out on a limb and say it's the most powerful stuff I've ever seen on a TV series, broadcast OR cable!

And after that bombshell, as I was still trying to get my breath back, season 3 started to unspool.... episode after episode building on the brilliance I had just witnessed. Let's say I consider Moral Orel to be a rare gem spawned in the sewer that is Adult Swim.

Another great thing about the show I'd like to comment on is continuity.

Most cartoons follow a simple formula... no matter what happens, everything is restored to default for the beginning of the next episode. Even if they kill Kenny. But on Moral Orel when something happens, it stays. One of the funniest things for me was when Orel's baby brother Shapey got accidentally switched with the neighbor's kid, who looked almost the same except for different colored hair. Oral was the only one who noticed!!! For the rest of season 2 (if not longer?) the parents failed to notice, and even when Oral tried to tell them, they interrupted him.

Little touches like this really make the show shine. References to things that happened in earlier episodes might be lost on you if you haven't seen it, but if you have it adds a lot to the entertainment value, and really, it shows that the creators of the show credit the viewers with some intelligence, unlike the creators of most ~~cartoons~~ shows today. Watching an entire season is a very rewarding experience.

Huge congratulations to animation director Ethan Marak and of course to creator Dino Stamatopolous, and all the rest... including a host of very familiar names. You can go to Adultswim.com and watch any or all of the episodes. Strider's highest recommendation, but viewer discretion is definitely called for!

Coraline Bendy toys

2008-12-24T23:10:00.000-06:00

I just saw Neil Gaiman's blog where he got the most awesomest, coolest Coraline Box of all... an actual Coraline animation puppet with cat!!!:

Ok, turns out this isn't actually one of the Coraline Mystery Boxes.... it's more a special gift for Neil as the author of the book from his friend Henry S. But it made me say $@#$!..... I WANT one of those!!!!

So a quick Google search turned this up:

Entertainmentearth.com - Coraline Bendy toys

Coraline bendy toys!!! And look at what they're standing on.... makes them look like actual animation puppets. As if they have tie-downs. Hmmmm....

Well, I kind of doubt they really do though. That would just be TOO cool!! More likely these are pre-production pics of actual puppets, intended as a "suggestion" of what the actual toys will look like. I hope they don't suck... but these are made by NECA, known for some of the best toys in the industry. So I have high hopes.

I wonder how many of us big, manly animators are going to have these girly dolls standing around in our basements in January?? Playing dress-up with them? (they come with multiple outfits)

Weird, but they should be pretty animatable. And who knows.... they just MIGHT actually come with tie-downs already in the feet!!!

Ok, just found this -- apparently you actually get 3 different bendy toys, each with a different facial expression and different outfit and accessories. Kind of cool, but not as cool as interchangeable faces (and tie-downs!!).

***

Ok, Jeremy mentioned prototype bendy toys on Flickr, and here's what turned up:

Prototype Coralaine Bendy toy at ComicCon

This one has a selection of replacement faces -- we can keep our fingers crossed, but somehow I doubt the actual production version will have them. Seems like they would have mentioned it in the advertising on one of the sites I already linked to above.

Cross your eyes

2008-12-13T07:40:00.000-06:00

Here are the images again, only this time I photoshopped them to reverse the sides. Now you can view them using the (much easier) Crossed Eyes technique. This is something I can do even when the images are on the computer monitor. If you were unable to see the effect in the last post, chances are you can do it now. Here are detailed instructions on how. Also, click on each image to see a larger version.

3D images from Coraline

2008-12-11T08:14:00.000-06:00

These are the 3D images I got in my Coraline Box. They came with a nifty 3D viewer; sort of like an old-world Viewmaster, but you don't need it to see the effect. These are what's called Magic-Eye or Parallel-Viewing images. Take a look at This Site to learn how to do it. It's kind of tricky.... I can do the Crossed Eyes method a lot easier. In fact, I can't actually parallel-view these images here on the computer... I can do it if I hold one of the cards up in front of my face and look at something way past it, then slide the card up into my field of vision quickly. You might want to print these images out and cut them apart - cut each posted image into three separate strips horizontally. Don't want to make them too big... apparently the eye can only handle smallish images in parallel viewing. The cards I was sent are about 6 inches wide or so.

Thanks to Mysterious Ron for letting me know these actually AREN'T made for crossed-eye viewing, as I had originally posted!! Well, they kind-of work that way, but as he said in the comments, they 're reversed - what's supposed to be far away looks close and vise verse. Weird though - the stairwell image actually looks great that way.

Coraline Box #9 has surfaced!!!!

2008-12-10T23:28:00.000-06:00

I got a freakin' CORALINE box.... do you HEAR me??!!??!?

This is amazing.... it feels like getting a Golden Ticket to get into Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory (the original one of course!)

This is by far one of the coolest marketing campaigns I've ever heard of.... and absolutely perfect for a stopmotion film where the props are small enough to easily be mailed. Why not? Instead of just chucking it all in the trash, send bits and pieces to people who will not only appreciate it, but blog about it and spread the viral love!!! Oh man... viral love... not even gonna go there.

So, with no further ado, here are the opening pics.

I love the old-fashioned tin and wood 3d viewer!!! No mirrors or anything, it's essentially the same kind of 3d images I posted on my blog back when I was all excited about 3d technology... you just have to learn to re-focus your eyes to see it. The viewer helps by framing things to block out everything beyond the border, and allowing you to slide the picture card backwards or forwards to get it in better focus and find your optimal viewing length. In a little while, when I'm past this rush of excitement and able to do things more coherently, I'll take some pics of the 3d images they sent... they should work on my blog.

But the most exciting thing for me is the Other Father arms.... I wonder if one is torn open deliberately to show the inner workings? It's wrapped-wire technology! The little tag next to the arms (which is lost in glare in the above pic) says O. Father Pumpkin Hands / Jointed / Wire / Silicon.... which I didn't understand until I looked very closely into that tantalizing tear in the wrist of the left arm. There's a tiny little ball-and-socket joint in there!! I guess that would help eliminate breakage at one of the high-stress areas. I can't believe I'm already thinking about this, but I know Im gonna have to slit that sucker open the rest of the way and take some detailed pics of its inner workings. The other arm is pristine. Heck... I think I'm gonna have to animate one of them too!

What an incredible treat this is!!! I've been all excited for the last few days, when I discovered I would be getting one of these (it's been extremely hard to keep my mouth shut, but it seemed prudent). It's made me into one of Coraline's 50 biggest fans.

Here's the text of the letter I was sent:

Since ancient times, strangers who work on feature films have sent strangers with great websites mysterious gifts in the hope that they can connect over a mutual interest and come to love each other. Some people think that recieving random gifts from strangers in the mail is illicit. Not when the gifts are awesome, right?

Inside this old box is a one-of-a-kind collection we've amassed and catalogued with you and you alone in mind.

Why? We at Laika are nearing completion of Coraline, our first full-length animated film. For the last three years, 351 of the world's oddest and most talented animators, artisans, and puppet fabricators have been hand-making one movie. Led by Henry Selick, the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, this team has created the first stop-motion feature shot in 3D. Based on the beloved best-selling children's classic by Neil Gaiman, Coraline is a fairy-tale nightmare steeped in classic storytelling, craftsmanship, and the old-fashioned art of moviemaking magic. That means everything is handmade. Every leaf, drawer pull, and roast turkey. Even the rusty shower water.

The plain truth of the matter is, we are pretty obsessed with stop-motion. Like you. That's why we admire Darkmatter. It's artistic. It's wise. It's got an unconventional POV and you've got a voice worth hearing. Henry likes to say the magic of stop-motion is, it is a live performance. "You start someplace and know where you want to end but you can't say exactly how you'll get there." Please keep up the super work. We'll be reading.

Coraline is coming out this february. If we have guessed correctly that you are a curious person with access to the internet, perhaps you'll look for more cool things about this film. This is not a secret we hope you won't want to share. And so, we say thank you for your time. Enjoy, and hello.

Sincerely,
The Coraline Team

Building movies by hand in Portland, Oregon
(983 miles from Hollywood)

***
I couldn't stop myself... I cut open the torn arm!!! It's pretty amazing all the technology I found in there... cloth and thread all wrapped tightly around wire, bound together with flexible adhesive, and that incredibly tiny balljoint, plus a tie-down in the hand.... Hey, why not have a look: Dissecting Father's Arm on Flickr.

***

Wow... this just in from Jeremy's Do Something Constructive blog - there's a new password for the Coraline.com website that unlocks all the previous movies plus a few more! Try OTHERWORLD. Word.

Storyfanatic.com -- and Do Something Constructive

2008-12-04T04:54:00.000-06:00

I just discovered an incredible blog called StoryFanatic.Com, where the author expounds on the differences between a STORY and a TALE. I quote:

A Story is an Argument

There is a significant difference between stories and tales. A tale is merely a statement; a linear progression from one event to the next culminating in one singular outcome. It can be thrown out immediately and disregarded as a one-time occurrence primarily because it has relatively little to stand on. A story, however, offers much more to an audience member.

Apparently his ideas come from a source called Dramatica, which I have yet to investigate. But go to the blog.... see for yourself... he says it much better than I can. Looks like an exciting find for sure!

I've added the link under Blogs (Other) in my sidebar, and also a link to my friend Jeremy Spake's blog Do Something Constructive. Jeremy just came off a stint working on Coraline and now he has plenty of time for blogging, so check it out.

***

Ok, I looked into it a bit, and I see Dramatica is a sort of cut-and-paste system of creating a story.... decide which type of Character each one is from the official Dramatica list, plug them in alongside your allowed Dramatica themes and plot devices, trace a few lines from box to box, and get your Resolution. Well, not quite that simple, but it definitely sounds like a plug-in system. Could definitely be useful in helping find new ways to break down character and story, but I'd caution against wholeheartedly plunging in (plugging in?) to Dramatica. Though I do like the talk about the difference between a Tale and a Story.... as I have a great interest in Tales like those of Edgar Allen Poe and H P Lovecraft. A Tale is also a thing that can be told in short format, which would be a very challenging showcase for a really sophisticated Story.

I'll be reading this blog quite a bit though. Some really good stuff to be found there, even is Dramatica sounds suspiciously like the storytelling version of Scientology.....

Where in the world is Melvyn Erville???

2008-11-08T05:23:00.001-06:00

The Infallible Specific blog (with its ever-changing name) has disappeared off the face of the bloggosphere. No notice, no reason given.... nothing!!! Perhaps he couldn't take the revelation that in reality he was no more than a voice in my head? Or maybe Freud was right... when you learn the truth about your inner reality the problems start to clear up on their own?

Ok, sorry... that's so wrong!!

Melvyn, YOU'RE NOT JUST A VOICE IN MY HEAD!! You're a real, living, thinking, blogging human being!!! Please report in and let your befuddled and confused readers know what's going on!

Need a fix of StopMoShorts?

2008-10-29T02:33:00.000-05:00

Visit one of the most powerful of all websites... the mighty Archive.Org, which periodically crawls the web and takes snapshots of existing websites to archive them for posterity. A tremendous boon for those sites which, like SMS, meet their demise for whatever reason and leave a void where they used to exist.

I clicked through on one of the tutorials just to see if it would really show up, and it did. So I don't know if the site has full functionality or not... sometimes parts of a site are archived but not others. So, some or all of the films might not be functional.

Here's a quick lesson in how to utilize the power of the Archive.org Wayback Machine.

Type or paste in the name of the website you hope to find in the search window, then from the dropdown menu select Wayback Machine (the top option). Then click GO. If the site has been archived, you'll get a page with dates listed, and links under some of them. These are the "snapshots" of the site. You can click on any of them and see what the site looked like at that point in time. Generally the later ones are the more complete, though sometimes, as I said, only parts of the site might exist in certain versions. If you get an incomplete version of the site, try refreshing the page and give it some time, sometimes the images load slowly. Or just go in at random and try a few different dates.

This is an incredibly powerful site, and the knowledge of how to use it is invaluable. Learn it, and enrich your cyberlife. I've added a direct link to the Archive.org version of StopMoShorts to my Resources section for your convenience (as well as my own).

Two great artists that taste great together -- or: You got your Alizarine in my Puce

2008-10-28T07:37:00.000-05:00

If you've been with me for a while, you may have seen me rave in the past about the work of contemporary artist Kent Williams. Definitely one of my favorites on the scene today. He did one of the images above. Can you guess which one? Hint.... it's not the top one, as much as it looks like his work. I could Almost have been fooled had I not known it was actually the work of his wife, Mari Inukai.

There's a remarkable similarity in their approach, which really messed with my head when I first discovered her work (which actually was through the Totoro Forest website I posted about recently). To see more of her work, check her blog at SEKAISEIFUKU or her website at MariInukai.com.

They must have really learned and developed alongside each other.

In unrelated news, I must report that I don't expect to have anything accomplished for Monster Month, barring some unforseen burst of creativity. But hey, at least I did spend my month doing something creative.... I made some new friends! Been spending the majority of my free time with Rose and Cliff (yes, their real names.... very evocative and imagistic, no?). So, no monsters, but one monster hangover a while back....

crosspollenNation

2008-10-13T23:39:00.000-05:00

Stephanie Dudley has posted a very interesting response to my recent post about the power of the human voice on her blog at Forkstudio.com. She's also working on what looks to be a great little stopmo flick. Check it out.

Wanna see some great art? Oh, and save the forest too...

2008-10-12T23:48:00.000-05:00

http://www.totoroforestproject.org/ (click the Gallery link)

Ran across this on a blog I found through Melvyn Erville's Infallible Specific blog last night. Each page includes a link to the artist's homepage, you can discover new favorites and see loads more art. Here are some items taken from the official website describing the book and its purpose:

"Anime is one of the most influential forms of contemporary art today. Among Japanese masters of animation, Hayao Miyazaki is undoubtedly the most popular and respected. The storytelling, visual approach and philosophical depth of his films have made a massive impact in the world of filmmaking Today.

Many prominent animation and illustration artists in the world proudly recognize Miyazaki's strong influence and inspiration on their own work.This project gives the opportunity to the artists involved to voice their appreciation for master filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki and the inspiration he has given them through the years."

"Hayao Miyazaki has been actively supporting the preservation effort of Sayama Forest for more than ten years. This 8750 acre park in the outskirts of Tokyo is also known as Totoro Forest. It's in these woods in fact that the concept for the film "My Neighbor Totoro" was born.

In the past few decades, the forest has been subject to urban development. Only continued support to the Totoro Trust Fund can help preserve this much needed island of green in the midst of Tokyo's urban sprawl. We intend to donate the entire proceeds of the project to this worthy cause.

This event can also be a symbolic gesture, sending a strong message to the world in terms of environmental and social awareness. Imagine artists from all over the world coming together to donate artwork to help conserve a forest they have never seen."

Unfortunately, the book itself is already sold out. Hey, good for the project, but bad for those of us who might want a copy. But there is talk of a second printing on its way, so keep your fingers crossed and keep checking the TFP blog

The book itself may not be available just now, but we can still look at lots of inspirational artwork on the website (and hey, it's very Monster Month friendly stuff too!)

A response to FILM AS A SUBVERSIVE ART

2008-10-11T02:48:00.000-05:00

Here are my thoughts after reading Film as a Subversive Art.

First - I was looking for an overview on Modernism in film and the radical avant-garde. This book fills the bill perfectly.

There's a great danger in reading a book like this that you'll become intoxicated by the ideas and get lost in them and decide that traditional narrative filmmaking is useless and foolish, and that the only appropriate response to the scientific and philosophical issues of the modern world is existentialism, expressed through various modernist tendencies like Absurdism, Nihilism, Minimalism etc. I think these movements are extreme reactions against the traditional approach.

The ideas expressed in the opening chapter of the book are very extreme.... life consists of instability, no security, nothing but horror vacuui - the universe and people are unknowable etc. Ok, I know modern discoveries have upset the old secure concepts about space and time and identity, but come on... it's not THAT bad! The things modern science and philosophy has showcased have always been true and always been part of our world.... it's just that in the past we were able to ignore them officially and only feel them at certain troubled times.

For most of us, stability and security are the norm, only interrupted a few times in a lifespan by the chaos of unemployment or war or some other factors. Some people of course live in a world that's constantly subject to upheaval.... the poor for instance, or those born into a war torn environment or subject to cruel religious or political systems.

I'm part of the safe, secure bourgeois middle class for whom life is mostly stable and continuous. Space, time and identity can be comfortably conceived in the traditional Newtonian/old world ways and expressed in traditional narrative style. And yet, I AM drawn to SOME of the ideas expressed in the book... in particular mixing up the timeline and creating non-realistic worlds. I also like the idea of allowing characters their mystery, but not in presenting them as completely bizarre. So I'm not interested in progressing too far along the line of radicalism... more in just a little scrambling of the simple straightforward timeline and the clear understanding of character and plot. I feel like spelling these things out too explicitly is like talking down to the audience, assuming they don't have the intelligence to understand something a little mysterious... like writing a big-letter book for very young children. And I think the kind of storylines I want to create are decipherable with a little effort.... I suppose I like the idea of a viewer being able to construct (or re-construct) the story in a way that makes sense.... to solve the puzzle. I don't want it to be too hard.... they're only watching a movie after all! This is the Marketa Lazarova approach.

I also have an interest in another type of movie.... basically a dream movie. For films like that I'd go farther along the scale of radical deconstruction of traditional film form. A dream movie can take place in a constantly shifting environment that's far from realistic. But this kind of film isn't something I can write about.... the language-processing part of the brain is lost in this territory.... you can't know how you'll approach a film like this until you do it (conceive it anyway.... which can be done largely visually but not expressed through written or verbal language). But now, thanks to this book, I have more knowledge of how to approach it, how to think about it.

Narrative films provide nice, comfortable entertainment. Especially traditional Hollywood movies.... with happy endings, and where nothing ever has a lasting consequence.... if you're a hero or a villain you can massacre people and never suffer a twinge of guilt or suffer any legal or moral consequences. (Well, depending on when the film was made, and in what genre). Safety and security and fuzzy warm feelings are the stock in trade for Hollywood and its imitators. I think that's precisely why the avant-garde and radical filmmakers do what they do... it's a radical and reactive rebellion against the nice cozy warmth and security.

And yes, life does have its chaotic side, its moments of stark terror and sometimes long periods of suffering or grief. Chaos does exist, and yes, for the most part Hollywood ignores the fact - pays only feeble lip service to it... makes it something that can be fought against and conquered by the end of the movie with no lasting ill effects. But these movies serve a good purpose..... they reinforce an illusion of stability and the idea that love can conquer all, that hard work or heroic action can stave off chaos or push it back into the darkness where we don't need to deal with it. By reinforcing these positive ideals it gives people a sense of security - even people who might live in a state of chaos can enjoy a good movie and, at least for a while, feel better for it. Why make them suffer through difficult, negative movies that refuse to let them forget their pain?

I realize the radical filmmakers aren't interested in providing pleasant entertainment. I guess that's the question I need to answer for myself.... do I want to be an entertainer or an 'important' artist? I know I'd rather make cool little movies that people like than make films that make people feel bad. But as an entertainer, there are great lessons to be learned from what was once radical and revolutionary. So it might be fair to say that my main use for these modern techniques is just to add a little spice to my otherwise pretty traditional, entertaining flicks. And yet, as soon as I wrote that, something in my mind flinched. I don't want to close the door on the possibility of going more radical. I think about Street of Crocodiles and I know it wouldn't be as good if the Quays had only "used modern techniques to add a little spice to their otherwise traditional film". So I'll keep myself open on the issue... why choose a side? I don't really believe in polarized opposites anyway, I think that's a weird oversimplification when in reality there are many positions along a scale, and in fact people's opinions might be different enough that they can't really be measured on a scale. They're ambiguous and mysterious. Hmmm... see, I really do believe in a lot of the modernist ideas. And in this case, as in many others I'm sure, it doesn't mean a retreat from safety and security, but rather a blossoming from polarization and a move toward inclusiveness or at least acceptance. So it's not really as simple as "TRADITIONAL = WARM/FUZZY >>> MODERNIST = CHAOS/TERROR".

THE POWER OF THE HUMAN VOICE

2008-10-08T05:01:00.000-05:00

Just now, as I sat down to type this, I turned off the TV.

Why?

Well, I needed to concentrate. To THINK. And it's very hard to do that when the TV is on. Actually, let me back up just a bit....

There's really a hierarchy to it. I find if there's music playing, assuming it's instrumental or nothing too intense (like punk rock or death metal or something) I can concentrate just fine (I have iTunes playing now). But I've noticed (and this becomes eminently clear when you're trying to WRITE) - that when someone starts talking, the concentration goes down a notch or two. I probably would never have noticed, until the COMMERCIALS came on!!! Geeze Louise!!!! ANNOUNCERS WITH CRAZY LOUD VOICES SHOUTING INCESSANTLY TO BUY BUY BUY!!!!!

Stops the pen dead in its tracks.

Which led me to realize that we automatically tune in to the human voice... especially when it's in a language we know, and ESPECIALLY if there's any great urgency or tension in it! Don't believe me? Try it.... open a notebook, or maybe your text edit software, and start writing something. I don't mean "Mary had a little lamb" or anything you know by rote... I mean something that requires THINKING. Try telling the story of the scariest thing that ever happened to you. And do it with the radio on pretty loud. You'll do pretty good I'll bet, until those CRAZY LOUD ANNOUNCERS INVADE YOUR HEAD!!!! I believe it's similar to what I've heard about vision and the human face.... we're all hardwired to scan for familiar faces, even in a huge crowd. Some function that runs in the backchannel, we're not consciously aware of it. Probably a survival mechanism from way back.

So, what does this mean to us as filmmakers?

I think it means that talking in a movie doesn't allow the viewer to THINK. It leads them.... corrals them. I don't believe it completely BRAINWASHES them.... though for some viewers it might. Most are able to pick up on SUBTEXT (that's when people don't say exactly what they mean) - but I suspect that's about it. They either believe what they're being told, or they pick up on the clues and realize they're being lied to (another old survival skill, I have no doubt). And I'll even go one better.... I think as viewers we can solve simple puzzles presented in dialogue or narration too.... put together clues in a detective flick, or whatever. But still, we're being led into what we're supposed to think. These are all levels of varying complexity put there by the writer for us to decode. But I still maintain that, WHILE CHARACTERS OR NARRATORS ARE TALKING, we have no choice but to think about what they're saying. Decide whether we believe it or don't.

Another illustration of the power of the human voice - I remember sleeping once with the radio on - this was in the 70's. Remember those Oxy-10 commercials? They had this voiceover by an actor with a really commanding, authoritarian voice. I was in mid dream when he came on, and suddenly my subconscious was forced to invent a character to match this loud voice that came from nowhere. It did one of the sudden, unmotivated switcheroos - I had been climbing among the rigging over a theater where a performance was going on (with some group of dangerous spies and assassins infiltrated into the audience and the performers, and only I was aware of their presence). Suddenly with a shock I found myself standing in an office, being spoken to very loudly by this administrator-type with (you guessed it) a deep, commanding voice. For some reason he spoke in code... he seemed to be babbling inanities about skin pores and cleansing, but I knew it all had hidden meaning (something along the lines of spy cells and murder), and the very continued existence of life on earth depended on my decoding it. The dream kept going in the way dreams do, sudden jump cuts to scenes already in progress etc, but throughout my head was filled by this booming oration - see, even as I made my escape the secret leader of the spy/assassin group was using his telepathic powers to project his commanding powers of persuasion into my mind.

So, obviously the human voice has a great deal of power over us. This fact might explain why silent movies are harder to watch than 'talkies'. The constant stream of verbiage rivets the viewer's attention, even if there's nothing of any great interest happening in the film. But without it, viewers have to force themselves to continue paying attention.

Draw your own conclusions. The voice is a powerful tool.... much more so than we normally realize (barkers and infomercial hawkers excepted). Use it like an instrument. Orchestrate it.

One of the benchmarks of the more poetic films I like is long periods of silence punctuated by voice, often used as an instrument. And please.... don't be droll enough to say what you mean and mean what you say! So trite.

Of bunnies, blogs and monsters

2008-10-02T06:49:00.000-05:00

Once again, I'll let the tireless John K do my blogging for me:

JohnK Archives

Ran across this in a completely unrelated search looking for facts and info on the Ether Bunny after my buddy Prammaven just posted his newly completed film about him. Seemed like a weird coincidence, and I don't know why all these particular posts are lumped together on one page, but there's a lot of good stuff there, much of it about writing and story for cartoons. And of course, you can find more by clicking on the tags at the bottom of any post.

I feel like my quest for Poetic Form is at an end, at least for the time being. I have a handle on what it is... at least the particular strain of poetic form described in Martin Esslin's book Theatre of the Absurd. And the main point of that whole quest was to free myself from the restrictions of Narrative Form that have been hammered into my head all my life by Hollywood. Until discovering the nature of Poetic Form (as described in the About Me box on the right... convenient place for it right here at the top o the old blog, where I'll see it again and again and try to get it hammered in instead) I couldn't imagine any way to make a short stopmotion film other than by telling a story. The funny thing is, I've seen lots of short films that don't follow Narrative Form at all and that work brilliantly! Many of them don't follow what I understand as Poetic Form either.

Of course you have simple short gag films, where the joke is the thing. But somewhere in that long and rambling list of blog posts I linked to above, John K discusses a different approach. He has always maintained that a cartoon is, first and foremost, funny drawings. And that, essentially, all they really have to do is keep the audience entertained. He did a post on structure that I like, which is pretty freeing. If I can absorb that into my head (it seems to take a while for things to really soak in there, but once they do they're in for good) then I should be able to just start making films without worrying too much about structure and form.

Also, he stresses the importance of learning the basics of animation and drawing before trying to create full films. This confirms my long-held belief that the way to learn stopmotion is by making a couple of puppets, and doing a lot of shots with them. Just little single-take episodes, working out how to make them move in interesting ways, how to use space, and incidentals like lighting, staging etc. I think a lot of these will get you most of your basics, even if you don't know the names of the principles you're learning. Then you start linking a series of shots together creating scenes. After that, it's just a matter of figuring out how to start and finish a film.

This is the approach I was using, until I got caught up in the StopMoShorts thing and the emphasis was on making finished films right from the start. And then I got myself into this Radke project, which is a massively huge undertaking in terms of fabrication before I can even start animating. I'm bogged down on it completely, hit the wall, stuck in a rut, uninspired. Burnt out being the technical term. Tooo many puppets, too many bottles, tiny little labels etc. Makes my brain hurt thinking about it!

And suddenly here's Monster Month upon us!!! Jeffrey is launching himself into it, and Sven might be contributing as well. I think it's time to put this bar flick on hold and do something creative and fun for a little while.