Alla Gadassik
Notes for lecture “Analyzing Animation”
RTVF 220
November 12, 2010
INTRODUCTION
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We’re going to watch and analyze animation, using some of the tools already learned in
the course.
Taking a brief tour of animation from different parts of the world, noting some common
motifs and formal devices, but also picking up unique stylistic differences.
DUCK AMUCK, Dir. Chuck Jones, Warner Bros., 1953, USA
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Brief introduction of film
Let’s watch this famous film with the following question in mind:
What is funny about this film? How does the film build its jokes?
So, if you catch yourself laughing, ask yourselves – why?
<screening film> 7 minutes
Discuss student responses to the guiding screening question.
The film is deliberately playing with the formal elements of filmmaking, the same
elements we have been studying so far in the course: artificial sets and costumes (miseen-scene), sound (synchronization), cinematography (framing and excluding in the fame)
[leaving out primarily montage]
Some comedic moments in Singing in the Rain do the same, but Duck Amuck really takes
the illusion of cinema as its central structuring principle
Because of its complex relationship to live-action cinema, its ability to come close to
live-action but also to become an abstract exaggeration, animation often plays with that
line/border between reality and illusion
In fact, in some ways Duck Amuck shows us that all cinema is a construction, a set of
formal components that you can put together or pull apart in new combinations.
Like the character of Daffy Duck himself! Chuck Jones wrote that he came up with the
idea for this film because he wanted to explore what makes an animated character. If you
change Daffy’s costume, appearance, sound – is it still Daffy? We figure out that the
“real” Daffy is a compilation; he is a function of his formal components. To take away all
of those components is to take away Daffy himself. Just like, to take away a film’s formal
components would take away the essence of a film.
So the film questions the illusion of cinema, and then steps behind the frame to show us
the rabbit behind the curtain, the animator.
But the ending of the film is also an illusion! Because…who is animating Bugs Bunny?
We can say, well, okay, Chuck Jones is animating Bugs Bunny, he is the animator behind
the “animator”. But that, too, would be an illusion. (This is all turning into a Christopher
Nolan film). Because to make an animated film in this style at this scale, you actually
need a huge team of animators, a whole production house of people, each one working on
their own component of the image, like a factory.
SUMMARY POINTS:
1) Animation can be analyzed in the same ways and with the same formal
components as we’ve applied to live-action films
2) But animation often plays with and subverts typical cinema codes and
patterns. One can analyze the way animation plays with the line between the
real and the imaginary, between animated and live-action strategies
3) Animation often exposes the technology of cinema production, only to
perform another sleight of hand and hide the true methods of its construction.
HEDGEHOG IN THE FOG, Dir. Yuri Norstein, Soyuzmultfilm, 1975, USSR (Russia)
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Since animation does not rely on the photographic image, it can construct its own visual
style beyond what you can achieve in live-action. One major aspect of animation’s formal
construction is it style – how the images is made, how they look.
Introduction of the next film.
Like Duck Amuck, this film follows a character through a series of adventures and
ordeals. So on the level of most basic storytelling they are similar. But they look
completely different. So the question to keep in mind during the screening is:
How does the film look? How would you describe its visual style to a friend?
<screening film> 10 minutes
Discuss student responses to the guiding screening question
Brief discussion of the cut-out technique, and how that overlay technique gives the film
its depth and texture (contra Jones’ flat style)
Hedgehog, like Duck Amuck, also plays with the boundaries of the frame (what is behind
the frame?), but in this case the boundaries of the frame are explored through depth rather
than side perimeter.
The most striking thing about the film is its mood, or atmosphere. It is less about specific
events than the kind of sensations and associations that arise in us.
This film evokes a sense of wonder, wonder at the world around us, in all of its
mysterious and sometimes frightening forms.
The hedgehog lives in a world where things can move and come alive, where a moving
leaf can be as animated (and possibly as alive) as an actual creature.
Question: How many of you have at some point in your life thought or wondered if your
toys came alive when you weren’t looking? How many of you have named your personal
electronic devices? (examples)
Talking about this kind of “animism”, belief in the life of inanimate objects.
Animation taps into this belief (or feeling).
It is an impulse that can be playful (eg. the living toys in Toy Story), but it can also be
creepy or frightening. Does anyone have any examples of animated films that are creepy,
or frightening? Or films where inanimate objects came to life to frightening effect?
We have the word “animation” but we also have the word “re-animation”, which has a
darker and more unsettling ring.
Like in Hedgehog in the Fog, what does the little hedgehog imagine lurking in the fog? Is
it a majestic horse, or some frightening giant creature?
SUMMARY POINT: Animation often plays with the line between the living and the
inanimate, between life and death, between excitement and terror at the prospect of
facing sentient objects.
SCHEDULED BREAK (The actual break actually happened later)
THE RUNT, Dir. Andreas Hykade, Film Bilder, 2006, Germany
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Brief introduction of this film and filmmaker.
Stating guiding question(s) for screening: Why would the filmmaker choose to tell this
story through animation? What does animation “buy” us for this story that might not be
attainable through live-action film?
<screening film> 10 minutes
Discussing student responses to guiding screening question.
The film makes the violence more bearable. Does it draw us in or distance us from the
violence? (differing opinions, discussion).
Child’s style shows us how things seemed from the boy’s perspective; we get a look into
his memories; this lets us empathize with him.
Question: How many of you were disturbed during the killing scene? Why did you laugh
at the misfortune of poor Daffy Duck, but not at the Runt? (We discuss different answers
and options).
SUMMARY POINT: Photographs buy us one way of addressing our memories and
dealing with the past. We discussed photographs and memory, or photographs and truth,
when watching La Jetee last class. Animation, too, can offer us ways to access memory,
as well as access to certain versions of truth.
BREAK (This is when we actually took a 5 minute restroom break)
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Scott McCloud, a famous comic book artist, notes that the animated or drawn line can be
more “universal”. For instance, when drawing a face, if you make the image more
cartoony and abstract, the face becomes more universal. You do not have the specific
details of just ONE unique person. The image is more general and perhaps solicits more
empathy.
But of course, the detail of live-action and photographic images can also have a great
affective power that animated images might now have. Do more cartoony images really
force us to include more of our own imagination into a film, or do they distance us?
We already talked about this in regards to The Runt. And in some ways, the last
filmmaker we’re going to consider today also asks the same question. Can we abstract
something so much that we don’t feel anything at all? What is the minimum formal
realism that we require in order to become invested in a character?
PLEASE SAY SOMETHING, Dir. David O’Reilly, 2009, Ireland/Germany/World Wide
Web
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These are very difficult questions. So the guiding question for the next film is more
straightforward: Does this film have anything in common with the preceding films we just
watched?
<screening film> 10 minutes
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Discussing student responses to guiding questions, looking for interesting common
elements between the different films we’ve screened.
Animal protagonists (why would that be so common?)
Violence that is on the border between being funny and being uncomfortable
Character of an animator/god.
Exposing the tools and technologies of animation in the digital age: computer
wireframes, glitches, noise, repeating figures.
Some notes on the animator’s work and inspirations, the production context of working
alone with CGI animation.
Playing with the experience of digital web surfing and the “MTV” generation: fast
cutting, quick bits, absurd juxtapositions.
Some final discussion of whether the film’s chosen visual style and structure drew us into
the characters’ lives or pushed/alienated us so that we didn’t care.
END OF CLASS