Notes Toward a Theory on Animation

The first thing that comes to mind when reading Wells' notes on animation is wondering how he would react to today's computer animation methods.  It's easy now to set up frame-by-frame animation with programs like flash, and in-betweens are often exported overseas.  Some of the older Simpsons episodes had some odd/funny in-betweens due to this...

Narrative form - Wells writes of how in the early days of animation, character actions would sync up with the rhythm of music.  These animations would have stories based on sudden conflict or chase scenes without much exposition.  I could see this being an effective way to learn animation, as I've found that the hardest thing to learn when doing frame-by-frame is timing character movements.  In my experience, building a sound track and then animating on top of it is much easier than animating to a ryhthm only in my mind-- unless I've thought about the scene a lot and know exactly where the beats are.  It would be interesting to read Wells' thoughts on how a lot of modern cartoons are written through the storyboards-- the artists double as writers and the initial storytelling is through the visuals.  I'm assuming that this helps voice actors out as well, as they can visualize a scene before it's animated.


Orthodox & experimental - Wells' notes on the dynamics of musicality remind me of "Begone Dull Care."  Norman McLaren and Evelyn Lambart had a definite grasp on the relationship between sound and visual-- they didn't rely on a narrative of any kind to tell a story, but instead let the film present itself for interpretation.  I'd agree with Wells that if orthodox animation is about prose then experimental animation is more poetic.  Experimental animation has an element that I don't think can be taught, just like written poetry.  It's an expression of feelings that others may have difficulty relating to, but when poetry is done well it can still be appreciated by anyone.

Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing seems like a great way to get a large amount of people involved with the same project- as long as the project rules are clearly explained.

From an artist's perspective, crowdsourcing could allow a variety of styles to merge like pieces into a whole- although I feel that the completed whole would still be a bit disconnected as opposed to a project worked on by one person or a team of people working together.  The overall project would have to be restrictive of the amount of stylization each individual could do, or maintain an experimental style.

When I think about having crowdsourced clips fit into a whole, I think of the microtasked "Star Wars Uncut." The film is a version of "A New Hope" which was cut into 15-second increments and crowdsourced to Star Wars fans.  The results range from kids in their living room with cardboard sets to Disney-style 2D animation.  It's a great way for fans to express how much they love the Star Wars films, and it's just a fun video to watch.  As a whole, it's hard to make sense of the story given the constant switching between clips-- but the point is just to have a bunch of fans reenact one of their favorite films.  "Star Wars Uncut" couldn't have existed (as least not split into this many parts) without the internet acting as a medium (a 'series of tubes', if you will) for information and communication.

I also think of the film "Life in a Day," which selected from 80,000 clips uploaded to youtube one day and cut a 95-minute film from all the footage.  They had to cut through 4,500 hours of footage and convert from 60 different frame rates to make the clips fit visually.  It does a good job of representing a day in the life of people from all over the globe-- the ones fortunate enough to have access to video cameras, anyway.  This film is particularly interesting to me because the end result was completely dependent on the editors-- I mean editors certainly have a huge impact on any film, but with a different editor it could have ended up being an entirely different film.  The final result is an optimistic film about the perseverance of humanity, but what if someone had cut the film to focus on negative themes?  I have no idea what the footage they didn't use looks like, but I'm sure one could cut a film with a completely different feeling out of it.

Crowdfunding is something that seems to have just popped up a few years ago, and suddenly it became huge.  I went to Heroes Con (A comic convention in Charlotte) over the summer, and it seemed as if every other indie artist there was asking visitors to donate to their kickstarter or indiegogo project.  I've donated to a few and have been pleased with the results- the backer rewards have provided me with some cool items and behind-the-scenes info that I wouldn't have access to otherwise.  I love it when artists allow an audience into their working process- last year there was a project on kickstarter called "Double Fine Adventure", which was started by the video game studio Double Fine to finance a new point-and-click adventure game.  Being a fan of both Double Fine and point-and-click games, I donated.  Since then I've had access to a series of behind-the-scenes documentary episodes dealing with how the game is being conceptualized/produced.  A reward like that ensures that I'll be backing whatever crowdfunded projects Double Fine does in the future.  (Also I get a copy of the game when it's done and it's gonna be the bomb)

In "The Cloudfilmmaking Manifesto" they say that when people look back on this time, it will be called "The Age of Collaboration."  I completely agree with that-- the surge of interest in crowdfunded/crowdsourced projects will surely fade after a while, but I see it as a viable form of production/funding in the future.  I'll have to try crowdfunding a short film before too long!

"Begone Dull Care" thoughts

As I watched the short film, I molded a storyline out of the frantic assortment of scratches and paint. This is my interpretation, straight from the paper:

epilepsy  (I underlined this three times)

Ok so there are two people who really love music, and one day they're playing on opposite street corners.  So they notice each other and think "oh man dude, he/she's really good, I hope they think I'm good."

They end up giving all of their attention to each other and start playing different parts of the same song until their melodies sync up.  The guy is playing trombone or something and the girl is playing piano even though it would probably be hard to lug one of those around on the street.  Anyway they end up playing in the middle of the street because they're moving closer to each other and they're holding up traffic but nobody cares because hey, these two are falling in love and people are crying because oh geez the music is so good dude.

The two of them go to a ballroom and dance to someone else's music.  It turns into this big dance sequence like in Titanic and all the foreign passengers are going on and on about how awesome the statue of liberty must be.

They end up running together to a warehouse while music from The Wizard of Oz is playing.  (I think I put this in because there was a visual that looked like the yellow brick road.)  And they end up playing racketball until they collapse on the floor because what a long day.