more practice

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)

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!)

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.

*** *** ***
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

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

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

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!!!

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.


*** *** ***
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.