German Avant-garde Animation of the 1920's

German Avant-garde Animation of the 1920’s

When people think of early animation, the first thing that springs to mind are those old black and white cartoons of Mickey Mouse. Disney had monopolized the mainstream animation world of the 1920’s. This was American animation however. In Europe, though, a new kind of animation was being born. This was the German Avant-garde Animation.
Avant-garde is a French term, which has come to mean anything new, creative or innovative in culture and/or art. The German animators of the 1920’s were not abashed to head in a new direction with art. In fact it is hard to put your finger on just what they were making. Many of their animations involve flashes of color and shapes drifting in the fluid movements of ghosts across the screen.
One such avant-garde animator was Walter Ruttman. Ruttman began his career studying architecture and graphic design but by the early 1920’s he was one of Germany’s most profound abstract filmmakers. He named his first film Lichtspiel Opus I. The film opens to a quivering title, and music that sounds as if it should be played behind an ancient horror film. An orb pulses up from the bottom of the screen, and another and another. The entire film is done in glowing, floating colored shapes. The music keeps an unsettling rhythm the entire film, dousing the animation in a somehow eerie light. Ruttman continued on to make three other Opus films in the same style.
Ruttmann did not always work alone though, together alongside German theatre director, Erwin Piscator he helped create the film known as Melodie der Welt. He also helped German Animator, Lotte Reiniger in her feature length animation, The Adventures of Prince Achmed. Ruttmann made fifteen avant-garde animations in all, but these are not what he is known best for. His most famous piece was Berlin: Symphony of a Great City 1927. This piece was not abstract but was again set to music. It was a documentary of the life of Berlin.
Lotte Reiniger is probably best known for her use of paper cutout puppets that she silhouettes behind a bright background. Her first film, The Ornament of the Enamored Heart, was a success. It told the story of two lovers whose moods were represented by an ornament that they shared. Another such animation that sported her signature technique of silhouetted cutouts was her rendition of Hansel and Gretel. She made a number of short animations all of which she directed and were shot by her husband, and partner, Carl Koch.
Reinger’s most popular animation was The Adventures of Prince Achmed. It is considered the oldest surviving feature length animation. It was based off of an old Eastern collection of stories known as A Thousand and One Nights. This is the same text that Walt Disney would later pull the story of Aladdin.
For The Adventures of Prince Achmed Reinger employed the help of fellow avant-garde animator Walter Ruttmann. Ruttmann designed the background of the scenes, lending to them the dreamlike quality of his Opus collection. The Adventures of Prince Achmed was a huge success and opened new doors for her. Reinger continued animating and created another film, Doctor Dolittle and his Animals based off of the British children’s book.
Not long after Ruttmann a man named Oskar Fischinger came into the German Avant-garde Animation scene. Fischinger co-owned an animation factory in Munich when he was only twenty-two and through this he constructed a number of animations. Fischinger had two passions in life, music and photography, and he attempted to combine them in his company. He used cutouts, melted wax and even liquids to try and make something new.
With Fischinger’s determination, it did not take long before he had assembled for himself a devise that would cut blocks of wax into very thin shapes and fitted with a camera. This is how he got the very precise and detailed shapes he is known for. He claimed that you could make any shape you could imagine with this machine, and he would shoot the wax as he made the shapes.
It was clear that Fischinger was inspired by Ruttmann’s fascinating new direction, but Fischinger took Ruttman’s abstraction to new levels. Fischinger used dramatic music to set the mood, and then let his animation spark a life of it’s own. He had mastered Ruttman’s technique of using alternating shapes, making them smaller, more precise, and more delicate. Trained as an abstract animator and painter, Fischinger made over 50 animated shorts and many other paintings as well. Fischinger had made collected himself quite the following, even outside of Germany. This was lucky for him, as in 1936 he was forced to flee Germany as the Nazi Regime was slowly tightening their grip, they called art such as his own “degenerate.”
Fischinger was not done with animation yet however, as he was confronted by an agent working for Paramount pictures at the time. Walt Disney was offering him a job in the U.S. Seeing that there was no hope for him in Germany, Fischinger took the offer.
This is where Fischinger created the animation he would become most famous for, Walt Disney’s Fantasia. When released it was immensely popular. Fischinger’s precision in his work had paid off again. Everything he did was calculated and exact, and he had even learned to super-impose images over one another. Despite his major success and total acceptance of the film by viewers, Fischinger did not like it. He felt that Disney had altered too much of his film. He resented seeing his art turned into “half seen violin bows and stylized mountains.”
This however was the end of the German Avant-garde era in animation. In fact it was the end of all creative art in Germany for a time, as the Nazis had put an end to that. The visual arts in particular were under close watch, and all forms of art were regulated to specific themes. Art had to show strength, obedience, racial purity and militarism. Anything that did not show these themes were marked as “degenerate” and was put on display in Munich to be ridiculed. This art did not suffer the worst fate under the Nazi regime, as in 1933 the infamous Nazi book burning took place. Every book that did not align with Nazi ideology was destroyed, and thus the time of the avant-garde animation of Germany had come to an end.

Noah - Chuck Jones paper

Noah Rosenfeld

Animation – Chuck Jones research paper

 

In his 90-year life span, Chuck Jones could be considered, along with Walt Disney, the most influential cartoonist during the “golden age” of animation. (He has been described as the most influential individual in the history of animated film.)  Walt Disney was a necessary and decisive figure for the history of commercial cartoons, and created globally-recognized icons such as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck.  In terms of lasting popular lovability, Jones’ characters Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck would likely win in a contest. Jones probably has no peer as a creator of widely recognized, intimately recalled, plus highly specific cartoon characters.¹

“Animation isn’t the illusion of life; it is life,” said the legendary American animator/director. He was born on September 21, 1912 in Spokane, Washington, and grew up in Hollywood.  There, as he worked as a child extra in Mack Sennett comedies, he had the opportunity to study Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton.  He died at the age of 89, in his California home on February 22, 2002.²

Unhappy in high school, his father took him out and placed him in the Chouinard art school, now the California Institute of Art.  He was always an advanced reader and a huge fan of Mark Twain, which would later contribute to the literary quality of his animation.³

His first job was in Disney studios; he was only a cel washer for animator Ubbe Iwerks, but there he was exposed to the Disney style.  In 1936, he moved onto the Leon Schlesinger Studio, where he had responsibility as an actual animator.  (As head honcho of the Warners animation department, Schlesinger nurtured the careers of at least four highly distinguished animators- Freleng, Avery, Clampett, and Jones.)⁴

Later, when the Leon Schlesinger Studio was sold to Warner Bros, he was assigned to Tex Avery’s animation unit. This Warner Bros. team made Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies in a back-lot building that was nicknamed “Termite Terrace”.  It was there that the characteristics and personalities of Bugs Bunny, Porky Pig, and Daffy Duck were created and produced.⁵

            The Night Watchmen, which was released in 1938, was the first animated film that Chuck Jones directed at the age of 25.  As director, he timed the picture, finalized all the writing, produced more than 300 layouts, and directed the art design, sound effects, music, and animation.  The cartoon was 6 minutes and used up to 5,000 drawings.⁶

            World War II brought Jones some new and different opportunities.  He directed army training films with a popular 1940s character named Private SNAFU, and he worked on a political re-election film for President Franklin D. Roosevelt.  He became head of his own unit at Warner Bros. Animation until it closed in 1962.  Jones’ exclusive contract with Warner Bros was terminated when he and his wife Dorothy wrote the screenplay for the animated feature Gay Purr-ee, since UPA produced it and was in violation of his contract with Warner Bros.  He then moved to MGM Studios, where he created new episodes for the Tom & Jerry series.  While there, he also produced, co-directed, and co-wrote the screenplay for the critically acclaimed full-length feature The Phantom Tollbooth, and directed the Academy Award-winning film The Dot and the Line.⁷

            In 1966, he directed Dr. Seuss’ How the Grinch Stole Christmas.  It has endured to today as one of the most favored holiday television specials ever produced.  He won a Peabody award for Television Program Excellence for his work on How the Grinch Stole Christmas as well as Horton Hears a Who, also by Dr. Seuss.  For a year, he worked as vice president of the American Broadcasting Company to improve children’s programming in 1972.  Ironically, Jones himself stated that if he were to try writing a cartoon “for children” or for any particular market, he wouldn’t know where to start.⁸

            Chuck Jones was known as being a true icon of creativity for creating mini-epics; a classic example being 1957’s “What’s Opera, Doc?”.  This cartoon was included into the National Film Registry for being “among the most culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant films of our time”.  When his cartoon Duck Amuck was added to the registry, he became the only director to have 2 animated shorts among the 275 that were listed at the time.⁹

            He has made over 300 animated films in a career spanning more than 60 years, and has earned four Academy Awards, three Honorary Doctorates, and the Director’s Guild of America’s Honorary Life Membership Award.  Jones is also the world’s most widely collected animation artist.  His 1989 autobiography Chuck Amuck was published in paperback in 1990, both in the US and abroad.  His work has also been exhibited at over 250 galleries and museums.¹⁰

In the late 1930s when Jones was first starting out at the Leon Schlesinger Studio, his early cartoons imitated Walt Disney's shorts (especially with such cartoons as "Tom Thumb in Trouble" and the Sniffles cartoons).  His earliest cartoons were highly Disney-influenced and “cutesy”, something that he broke away from, and broke away from traditional animation conventions with the cartoon "The Dover Boys" in 1942.  Jones credits this cartoon as the film where he "learned how to be funny," and started developing his brand of wackiness and edginess.  (He also had not been educated at the Chaplin studios in the art of comedic timing before that point.) "The Dover Boys" is also one of the first uses of Stylized Animation in American film, breaking away from the more realistic animation styles influenced by the Disney Studio.¹¹  He really utilized clarity of timing and posing in this early work, a skill that is displayed in later Jones cartoons.

For example, a Jones cartoon that displays the virtues of extreme stylization is Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½ Century (1953).  Jones’ imagination regarding navigation through space and floating constructions of the space port was advanced, considering the moon hadn’t even been landed on.  Also, the disintegration-proof vest (and disintegrating gun that actually disintegrates itself instead of the target), etc. showcased his use of creative irony.

Jones has used particular visual tools such as abstract backgrounds, to aid in creating the mood of a scenery.¹²  Sometimes the background will change with the mindset of a character, for example a character starting to appear more and more insane might alter a background’s pattern.  He also has used (more often) something called smear drawings, to animate the illusion of a character moving very quickly.  This is an effect in which a character has one starting pose and an ending pose- and within about 3 frames, the drawing of the character would be “smeared” as opposed to animating a walking cycle, or maybe even simply warping instantly from one area to the other.

According to Jones, each of his characters, such as Pepe Le Pew, Marvin the Martian, Wil E. Coyote and the Roadrunner all embodied some “despicable neurosis or some impossibly noble aspiration” from his personal experience.¹³  The fact that he draws the separate character’s personalities from his own self allows for more intimately skilled character creation.  Once briefly a comic relief character in the beginning, Daffy Duck quickly became a vain, egomaniacal prima donna trying to steal the spotlight from Bugs Bunny, who always gets the spotlight without trying and is claimed to have a Jungian “ENTP” personality.  Jones has stated “Bugs is who we want to be.  Daffy is who we are.”¹⁴

Jones’ use of humor and intuitive understanding of human psychology is what connects his characters to his viewers probably forever.  For example, Wil E. Coyote, after chasing the Roadrunner, finds himself over the edge of a cliff.  However, he doesn’t begin to fall physically until he realizes and understands that he has no ground beneath him.  The physical reality lags behind mental understanding.  Another example is the now iconic “duck season vs. rabbit season” argument between Bugs and Daffy (which Daffy once refers to as “pronoun trouble”).¹⁵  It’s the hyper-competitive nature of Daffy which is his undoing.  He pays no attention to the substance of what he says, and is instead intent on saying just the opposite of what Bugs says.  Bugs tricks him into arguing to hunter Elmer Fudd that it’s duck season, and Daffy consequently gets shot in the face (only resulting in his beak doing 360-degree turns around his head, due to the invincible and extreme-slapstick-allowing nature of Jones’ cartoon characters).  This is a fundamental concept of the physical world of his cartoons; he scraps traditional rules of physics to skyrocket the availability for comical opportunities like this to happen.

Ray Bradbury, at his 55^th birthday party, was asked who he wanted to be when he grew up.  He replied “I want to be 14 years old, like Chuck Jones. Perhaps that will be my most apt Epitaph.”¹⁶  And perhaps Chuck Jones’ as well.

 

Footnotes:

1. Schaffer, Bill. “Chuck Jones.” Senses of Cinema.  July 2002 <http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/jones.html>.

 

2. Ibid.

3. Jones, Chuck. Interview. Charlie Rose Show. December 29, 1994.

< http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/7131>.

 

4. Schaffer, Ibid.

5. Schaffer, Ibid.

6. Schaffer, Ibid.

7. “Introduction to Chuck Jones.” Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/article/?cid=218723&mainArticleId=218721.

 

8. “Chuck Jones - Extremes and In- Betweens, a Life in Animation.” Great Performances Dir. Chuck Jones, Margaret Selby. 2000. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2002.

 

9. Schaffer, Ibid.

 

10. Schaffer, Ibid.

 

11. Schaffer, Ibid.

 

12. Great Performances, Ibid.

 

13. “Introduction to Chuck Jones,” Ibid.

 

14. Ibid.

 

15. Charlie Rose, Ibid.

 

16. Ibid.

 

Sources:

“Chuck Jones - Extremes and In- Betweens, a Life in Animation.” Great Performances Dir. Chuck Jones, Margaret Selby. 2000. DVD. Warner Home Video, 2002.

 

 “Introduction to Chuck Jones.” Turner Classic Movies. http://www.tcm.com/thismonth/article/?cid=218723&mainArticleId=218721.

 

Jones, Chuck. Interview. Charlie Rose Show. December 29, 1994.

< http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/7131>.

 

Schaffer, Bill. “Chuck Jones.” Senses of Cinema.  July 2002 <http://archive.sensesofcinema.com/contents/directors/02/jones.html>.

KHODA

Khoda from Reza Dolatabadi on Vimeo.

This is freaking incredible

An animated film made using 6000 paintings.

Instructions (in progress)

All that's here is 100% flash. Cells haven't been put in, yet. Use the play controls in the top right (but for the love of god don't press pause after playing, it breaks it). The last frame is another scene in progress.

EDIT: Soooooo I need to adjust the colors on my monitor; they're completely off. Imagine the same video but with a much darker pallet.

Michael's Cel Work-in-progress

Hi everyone. Here are the parts of my cel assignment I've managed to assemble. They are to go along with the poem "RSVP" by Terrance Hayes, in which a narrator pretends to be a white female fan in order to attract the attention of Michael Jackson.

First, my cels:



And the rest will be cut-outs like these:

SSSR Animations

Hello all,

I've been really getting into some music videos by the Norwegian/Japanese animation collective that calls themselves "SSSR." It's really hard to find out much information on them, other than the fact that they're contemporary and that they're making music videos. A little late to apply them to the music video assignment, but I think there's a lot of cool stuff they do with different media and techniques that's inspiring to us beginners now trying to mix our animation forms. Here are my two favorites:

Billy Bitzer's The Sculptor's Nightmare

Here's link to watch Billy Bitzer's The Sculptor's Nightmare (an early example of clay animation) on the Library of Congress' website. (American Memory, for anyone still working on animation history papers, is a great place to find examples of the old American-made films you might not be able to find otherwise!)

http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mbrsmi/trmp.4144

Apples

The whole thing actually loops so I hacked together my own (ugly) basic player (pause/play/fullscreen <- be sure to do this last one). The YouTube link should be up and running by the time you read this.



the apple looks slightly less like a butt this time, too!

EDIT: looks like somewhere in the mix something went wrong. The youtube video is appearing, but it's covered in artifacts.

YUM Alex Irwin

Animation History Student Papers

Aaron Mayper's Animation Paper

Animation From 1798-1892

            Though today animation has a rather defined place in the art world, in its earlier days the lines between animation, scientific pursuit, and still painting and photography were less distinct.  From Etienne Gaspard Robertson’s Phantasmagoria to Eadweard Muybridge’s instantaneous photographs, animation has held a place in both the scientific and artistic realms, relying on continuous advances in technology as well as creative spirit to bring still pictures to life in new, exciting ways.  The story of early animation is one of art and technology being brought together by great minds, advancing both in the process.  The Magic Lantern, the Zoetrope, the Praxinoscope, and the Zoogyroscope act as excellent points of interest in the timeline of early animation. 

            The Magic Lantern, developed by Dutch scientist Christaen Huygens in the mid 1600s, was one of the earliest predecessors of today’s animation (Barber 73).  The ancestor of today’s slide projector, the Magic Lantern used glass slides painted with transparent oil paint and held together by bulky wood or metal frames to project images onto curtains and stages (Hayes; Barber 76).  Seven basic parts comprised the Magic Lantern.  The first was the Lamp, the light source of the projector, originally an oil lamp or candle.  This resulted in dim but sufficient light.  The second piece, the Reflector, was a mirror which redirected the light produced by the lamp into the third piece, the Condensing Lens.  The Condensing Lens focused the light onto the glass slide, much as a magnifying glass focuses the sun’s rays into a more localized point.  Finally, the Lens Tube magnified the light focused through the slide, making the image on the projected on the surface appear larger.  The remaining basic pieces included the Body, a metal casing, the Base, legs which could readjust the Magic Lantern’s height, and the Smokestack, which released smoke from the Lamp (Hayes).  The end result was a projected image, something unusual and exciting for its time.

            The Magic Lantern, while rather simple by today’s standards, was hugely popular, and was put to good use by Etienne Gaspard Robertson in his Magic Lantern show, Phantasmagoria.  Phantasmagoria consisted of Robertson using his Fantascope, an altered Magic Lantern, to project ghosts and demons in front of his audience’s eyes (Barber 74-75).  Using a powerful Argand oil lamp with a tubular wick allowed Robertson’s Fantascope to throw a brighter, more powerful projection onto the screen, meaning a larger audience could see it (Barber 75).  A rolling platform gave Robertson the ability to move his Fantascope closer or further away from the screen, making the images of ghosts and skeletons appear to advance and recede (Barber 75).  To the audience, the effect was a harrowing illusion of life beyond the grave. 

            Phantasmagoria premiered in 1798, directly after the French Revolution and in the middle of the Romantic period in France.  The public’s uncertainty with the state of their post-revolution country, as well as Romanticism’s focus on the strange and dramatic, made Phantasmagoria an instant hit (Barber 74-75).  Held in a dimly lit abandoned chapel, even the atmosphere and setting of Phantasmagoria conjured superstition in the audience’s mind (Barber 73).  By projecting the images from behind a screen, Robertson hid the image’s source, making the skeletons and ghosts appear to come to life of their own accord.  Sometimes Robertson would project onto smoke so that the figures appeared to float in mid-air (Barber 74-75).  Phantasmagoria was in many ways the first large-scale animated production, using projections, music, and even silhouetted dancers to create multi-media entertainment (Barber 77).

            Though Phantasmagoria was animation in the sense of paintings brought to life, the movement of the figures was basic and based more on moving a stationary image across the stage than having the figure itself move.  This limitation in animation began to disappear in 1825 with Michael Faraday’s discovery of the Persistence of Vision principle (Hayes).

            The Persistence of Vision principle states that the eye will retain an image for 1/20^th of a second after the image is gone, and led to a wealth of early animation toys (Hayes).  Using this principle, John Ayrton Paris created the Thaumatrope, a disk of paper with different images on either side.  Two strings attached to the disk were wound, and when the disk was spun the images on either side of the disk merged in the viewer’s eye into a single picture (Hayes).  The average Thaumatrope  showed a bird on one side and a cage on the other, or a tree with bare limbs on one side and its leaves on the opposite (Hayes).  It was this merging of two separate images into one which would lead to animation as we know it today.

            William Horner created the Zoetrope in 1834, also based on the Persistence of Vision principle (Hayes).  The Zoetrope was a hollow metal drum with sequential images placed around the inside edge and viewing slots above each image.  When a viewer spun the device and looked through the slots the images on the opposite side of the drum would merge into a continuous and repeating moving picture (Hayes).   

            In 1877, Charles Reynaud created the Praxinoscope, based largely on the Zoetrope (Hayes).  The difference between the two was that the Praxinoscope had upright mirrors inside the drum, which allowed for a clearer, brighter image than the Zoetrope produced (Myrent 193).  Reynaud’s invention became a huge success, and the public’s demand for new animations was enormous (Myrent 193).  Between 1877 and 1879 Reynaud painted thirty different filmstrips for the Praxinoscope, selling them in sets of ten each (Myrent 193).  In 1879 Reynaud created the “Praxinoscope Theatre,” a box with a hinged top and the Praxinoscope housed within, simulating a staged performance (Myrent 193).  But even with the many filmstrips Reynaud produced viewers grew weary of watching short, repetitive loops of animation.  In response Reynaud began to work on what would eventually become the Theatre Optique (Myrent 193).

            In the mid 1880s Reynaud developed a longer stretch of film that would be run in front of a magic lantern, creating the first projected animation (Myrent 194).  Reynaud did this by painting transparent frames strung together by a leather belt (Hayes).  When run in front of the Magic Lantern the belt of frames acted as an early predecessor of today’s film reel, resulting in animated films of up to fifteen minutes in length (Myrent 195).  The Theatre Optique gave its first show on October 28, 1892, marking a new age in animation in which lengthy stories could be told (Myrent 195).  The first show consisted of three segments of about seven hundred frames each with a separate slide and projector for the continuous background (Myrent 194-195).  Reynaud, then, was one of the early heralds of animation as a storytelling art form, combining Robertson’s flair for entertaining large audiences with Horner’s moving image.

            During Reynaud’s history-making career, however, advances in the science and art of photography were made, as well.  In the 1870s, Governor of California Leland Stanford hired nature photographer Eadweard Muybridge to find out whether all of a horse’s legs leave the ground simultaneously when it runs (Dougan 280).  After five years Muybridge finally came upon a camera design that had a fast enough shutter speed and film with a short enough exposure time to clearly record a horse in motion.  Muybridge set up twelve instantaneous-exposure cameras in a row along a horse track and took pictures as the horse raced past (Dougan 280).  When the photos were developed they revealed that all of a horse’s legs do leave the ground simultaneously, but more importantly it sparked new insight into the way movement was perceived, paving the way for more accurate animation, as well as the motion picture.

            On May 4, 1880 in San Francisco, Muybridge used the Zoogyroscope (later to be renamed the Zoopraxinoscope) to project the first motion picture (Bell 125).  The Zoogyroscope did not, however, use film reels as we do today.  Instead, it featured sequential transparent photos on a rotating glass disk through which light was projected (Bell 125).  While it was not an animation in the sense of being drawn, it was in the sense that it created a compelling illusion of movement, one that would lead to more complex films and animations in the future.

            From Robertson’s Phantasmagoria to Reynaud’s Theatre Optique to Muybridge’s instantaneous-exposure cameras, the late 18^th to early 19^th century was a stunningly vibrant and exciting time for animation and the illusion of moving pictures.  Predicting the huge popularity of animated film and television today, these inventors merged scientific understanding of movement with artistic flair and storytelling to create a compelling art form which has lasted and continued to evolve to this day.

               

A Magic Lantern

(http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Magic_Lantern.jpg)

An illustration of Reynaud's Theatre Optique.

(http://www.victorian-cinema.net/theatreoptique.jpg)

Eadweard Muybridge's instantaneous-exposure photographs 

of a racing horse.

(http://www.gregeans.com/greenvillesky/images/Muybridge_race_horse_gallop.jpg)

             

Works Cited

 

Barber, X. Theodore. "Phantasmogorical Wonders: The Magic Lantern Ghost Show in

Nineteenth-Century America." Film History 3.2 (1989): 73-86. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2009. .

 

Bell, Geoffrey. "The First Picture Show." California Historical Quarterly 54.2 (1975):

125-38. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2009. .

 

Dougan, Robert O. "Review: [untitled]." The Pennsylvania magazine of History and

Biography 97.2 (1973): 279-81. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2009.

.

 

Eastman House. "Animation--Kit Overview/Eastmanhouse Education." George Eastman

House International Museum of Photography and Film. 2009. Web. 18 Oct. 2009. .

 

Hayes, Laura, and John H. Wileman.  "Exhibit of Optical Toys." Exhibit of Optical Toys.

Web. 18 Oct. 2009.

 

Lawrence, Amy. "Counterfeit Motion: The Animated Films of Eadweard Muybridge."

Film Quarterly 57.2 (2003-2004): 15-25. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2009. .

 

Myrent, Glenn. "Emile Reynaud: First Motion Picture Cartoonist." Film History 3.3

(1989): 191-202. JSTOR. Web. 18 Oct. 2009. .

Walters, Jonathan (March 2002). Earlycinema.com—Technology.

http://www.earlycinema.com/technology/index.html. 10/18/09.

 

Student Cinema History Papers

Micah Levin
Robin Starbuck
September 13, 2009

The Importance of Winsor McCay’s
Animation and Animated Film

“I hope and dream the time will come when serious artists will make marvelous pictures that will love and live in life-like manner and be far more interesting and wonderful than pictures you now see on canvas. I think if Michelangelo was alive today he would immediately see the wonders… The artist can make his scenes and characters live instead of stand still on canvas in art museums.”(Pg 1, Ledbetter-Winsor McCay 1927)
Imagine this: a little boy goes to sleep after eating too much rarebit and finds himself exposed to a dreamlike scenario that revolutionized the American industry of cartoons and pioneered a completely new take on how we viewed the Sunday Funnies. Winsor McCay was an American artist, journalist and creator of such memorable comic classics like Dreams of a Rarebit Fiend, Little Nemo in Slumberland and Little Sammy Sneeze. Aside from working heavily from 1905-1913 for the New York Herald(Pg 1, Ledbetter), McCay was also an key frame animator. Remembering that the difference between an animator and a cartoonist is that use of real-time movement for one medium, and still art for another, Winsor McCay was seen as a visionary for his time, when stop-motion was relatively new to the States in the early 20th century.

The mutoscope was the first ever device built specifically for the purpose of utilizing multiple frames of pictures taken over a short span of time (1-2 minutes). By applying the concepts of the mutoscope developed in America in 1894(based off the British invention of the flipbook), the first silent shorts were produced(non-animated) for viewing entertainment. At this time of the invention of the mutoscope, Winsor McCay was employed as a freelance journalist and political cartoonist for the Cincinnati Inquirer, and hadn’t found cartooning at that time, dabbling in experimental sketches on newspaper and eventually making his first major cartoon series, Tales of the Jungle Imps in 1903 (Pg 2, Ledbetter).
After his initial success with cartooning in the New York Herald, being among the first men to use color in their Sunday comics, Winsor McCay became interested in certain “trick films” by early film directors such as Stuart Blackton and French animator Emile Cohl. Their use of simple animation mixed with real-life acting resulted in a time for Winsor McCay where most of his efforts were concentrated on making an animated feature short for himself. Released September 15, 1914(Pg 1, Ledbetter), Gertie the Dinosaur was released to the general public as one of the first animated films that took advantage of the “thousands-of-frames-per-second” technique which must have taken a lot of effort and patience, being of the first animated shorts of its time. Clocking in at around 12 minutes and only opening up in two theaters in America, Winsor McCay single handedly brought about a new meaning for animated feature, introducing his own unique artistic talents and writing to the production in a resulting performance that would later be deemed the sixth most important animated feature of all time by the National Film Registry in 1994.

After watching the film in class, I was completely blown away by the detail and complexity of the movie. Not only were such crucial elements of nature implemented in the film, such as shadows, blowing of the wind and anatomically correct dinosaur features, but the short also proved to the film industry at the time that animation was not just a gimmick, but a full fledged movement, and one that would later influence mid-twentieth century animators such as Walt Disney and Max Fleischer. I remember thinking to myself after viewing the cartoon, what was the importance of this film? What was so special about a 12 minute little short without any dialogue. Don’t get me wrong, I personally enjoyed the piece, but was initially hesitant to label it as an automatic classic in my book; classics in my mind were Oswald the Lucky Rabbit and Koko the Clown. And although these three animated creations were similar in their classical stylings of big eyed, long limbed and cutesy cut-out look, they are separated by their times. Gertie the Dinosaur was important because of the time in which it was produced. Imagine the circumstances involved in making a 12 minutes short, only half of which was animated, and the funds that must have been used to make it! Apparently the project was partially self funded by Winsor McCay himself(Pg 2, Ledbetter).
For the time it was made, Gertie was revolutionary in her actions. Standing on two legs and dancing, drinking all the water in a lake and tossing a woolly mammoth far back into the distance, all on top of being within the confines of a fully drawn environment, McCay took the best of his talents and literally brought to life an extinct dinosaur. Another important aspect of Gertie the Dinosaur, was that it was not a linear story like his newspaper comics. Gertie was more of a vaudevillian act of sorts then a simple twelve panel laugh-in-a-half. For instance, Little Nemo in Slumberland, was a cartoon about a little boy and his adventures in Slumberland, a fictional place where up is down and where the princess only wants to be playmates with Nemo whilst trying to avoid the crude and childish character “Flip.” These stories every Sunday would chronicle the continuing adventures of Nemo as he tried desperately not to wake up and spoil the fun of Slumberland. These stories were unique in the sense that they drew interest from the journey, not so much the end of the adventure. Gertie the Dinosaur could be watched over and over because of the authentic use of the character Gertie. Get a dinosaur to dance and that was all you needed to get people excited, because how else would one get to see a dancing dinosaur in their lifetime? Little Sammy Sneeze, another interesting comic serialized in 1904-06, more closely resembled Gertie in the sense that it was not about a continuing adventure or enchanted setting, but merely the amusing fixture on a particular action, an action which happened to be about a little boy’s tremendous sneeze and what it did to those around him!(Pg 3, Ledbetter)
By drawing all those frames for Gertie the Dinosaur McCay did a wonderful thing, he defined what it was to be an animator and at the same time, raised the bar for other artists who aspired to enter the field.

The reason I chose to cover the importance of Winsor McCay’s film and it’s background was due to the fact that I had always had a strong interest in Little Nemo in Slumberland. A lot the reason for my strong interest in his art style was the realism mixed with imaginative abstraction. Everything about Little Nemo, I felt, translated perfectly into Gertie, and his art style still remained almost untouched when crossing the boundaries of still cartoons to moving pictures. Looking at the cartoons now in my lap, and looking back on Gertie the Dinosaur, it becomes much easier to appreciate the importance of McCay’s creation. Every frame must be relatively equal in proportion and shape, every detail must be replicated thousands of times, and if one mistake is made, it would have been almost impossible to go back and find where the splotch or hiccup was in the collection. Chuck Jones, the animator for Bugs Bunny and Looney Tunes once said this much about Winsor McCay’s contribution to animation:
“It is as thought the first creature to emerge from the primeval slime was Albert Einstein; and the second was an amoeba, because after McCay's animation, it took his followers nearly twenty years to find out how he did it.” He was a true pioneer and a man with dreams truly much bigger then life. To say Winsor McCay contributed to art would be a gross understatement; Winsor McCay defined what it was to make art when it came to the medium of abstract animation, and if Gertie the Dinosaur wasn’t enough to convince you otherwise, then perhaps you are just having a nightmare of a rarebit fiend.






Bibliography/ References Page
1. Ledbetter, Cammie. Winsor McCay’s Little Nemo in Slumberland. New York: Checker, 2004

2. Smith, Samuel, “About the Mutoscope” Mutoscope Manufacturers- History 2000. U.K. . http://mutoscope-manufacturers.co.uk/history/index.asp?adapt

3. Pearson, David, “BIOGRAPH The oldest movie company in America History” History. 2009. http://www.biographcompany.com/history_home.html

4. http://www.listsofbests.com/list/42337

5. http://springlakemccay.blogspot.com/2007/11/chuck-jones-quote.html

Micah's Egg Hand Drawn Animation Color Corrected

Animation History Student Papers

Billy Bitzer’s 1908 Film The Sculptor’s Nightmare
Lauren Schott

Billy Bitzer began his career in filmmaking in 1894, when he began working for The Magic Introduction Company. This was a period before the movie theatre was in popular use, and the peep-show was the only way to see the thirteen second films. Billy Bitzer, also known as G.W. Bitzer, was in film in its very earliest stages, and indeed, film may never have developed as it has were it not for his influential career.


Courtesy of Billy Bitzer - His Story: Billy Bitzer with Camera 1898

Billy Bitzer is known popularly as a cameraman, although titles such as this were not as strictly applied as they are at present. Reportedly, Bitzer did a little of everything on a set, with exception to acting. In his autobiography, Bitzer admits, “In those days, lots of people acted in films who had other jobs around the studio. Don’t laugh, but I was too nervous and full of stage fright before a camera. I never would take a chance on acting.” This limitation did not stop him, however. Bitzer, more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it, pioneered effects in lighting and camerawork essential to the fundamentals of modern day film.


Courtesy of Billy Bitzer - His Story: Billy Bitzer Reassembling Camera for the MoMA 1940

The bulk of Bitzer’s early work was released under the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. Here he created such films as Little Egypt, The Birth of the Pearl (both early pornographic films) and Two Brothers (a Mexican romance). In this period he also met one of the strongest influences in his career in 1908, D.W. Griffith. The two became fast friends after Griffith made the jump from acting (where he, in Bitzer’s opinion, floundered) to directing (where Bitzer admired his genius) successfully; Bitzer and Griffith trusted each other to the extent that, “In all the years we worked together, even after I finally left Biograph with Mr. Griffith, there was never a written contract, only a handshake and our trust in each other.”
The friendship and collaboration between the two was fortuitous for both film in general and the Biograph Company itself (as well as subsequent companies for whom they worked). Griffith’s artistic visions and Bitzer’s unceasing ability to bring these visions to fruition turned popular and profitable. Griffith, unsatisfied with mediocrity in his films, refused to settle the same tricks other filmmakers and companies were pulling, and so, despite constant discouraging from the penny pinching board of Biograph, Bitzer, “encouraged by Mr. Griffith, …went ahead with…experiments anyway.”
To simply list some of these innovations, one might name the fuzzy-cornered cutoffs on prints; wash-drawing; certain shields for lenses, and certain lenses themselves; and cutting within a scene; not to mention his hand in creating a 1915 feature-length film entitled The Birth of a Nation, which grossed $20,000,000 in its first few years of showing, skyrocketing the world of lengthy movies into popularity. (Although Billy Bitzer is often attributed with inventing the close-up as well, he emphasizes in his autobiography that Edison’s Frank Ott’s Sneeze from 1894 is, in fact, an earlier example. )
Many of these innovations and creations were the result of necessity in Bitzer’s mind. For example, noticing the way light glanced off white pebbles to highlight a talking couple’s faces, Bitzer applied this to film and created a reverse-lighting effect. Where he had been unhappy with, “…the ugly shadows that usually made hollow masks of faces on the screen,” Bitzer now had a way of eradicating that effect. This new concept in turn created a, “…misty rainbow effect,” leading him to invent a shade for the camera lens which then led to the slightly fuzzy-edged cutoff on prints. Bitzer became known as a master of lighting; film was golden in the hands of Billy Bitzer, and audiences cued around the block to see the films in which his innovations resided.
Interestingly, one leap Bitzer made into the world of film is rarely discussed. This, of course, would be his brief foray into the world of animation with his 1908 American Mutoscope and Biograph Company film The Sculptor’s Nightmare.
The film begins with a group of gentleman arguing around a table. The argument is heated and leads the audience to understand that the group is fighting over which political figure should be sculpted to replace the bust behind them. No conclusion is drawn within this argument, and the group of gentlemen tussles and leave the room.
They rejoin in the studio of a sculptor and each faction scrambles to bribe him into sculpting their personal choices (all the while the model that he had been sculpting is hiding behind a screen, leading to a comical exchange between herself and a gentleman who notices her). Each group having bribed the sculptor, they leave him to work; he instead celebrates his good fortune with his model, only to discover and momentarily lament the fact that the gentlemen have practically destroyed his studio in their enthusiasm.


Courtesy of the Library of Congress: Screen Captures from The Sculptor's Nightmare

The sculptor and his model leave with their bribes and eat a meal, in which the sculptor becomes inebriated. He causes an uproar after having offended a woman who came to talk with the model, and the restaurant is thrown into chaos as the customers subdue the sculptor, the police arrive and the sculptor is taken away to jail.
Shouting after his jailors, the sculptor finally gives up and stumbles drunkenly to his bed, where he falls asleep. While his body remains prone on his bed, his dreams act themselves out on the foreground; first one pedestal, then a second, then a third appear. Through stop film animation, lumps of clay assemble themselves atop the pedestals and sculpt themselves into Democrat William Jennings Bryan, Republican Charles W. Fairbanks and William Howard Taft.
The sculptor stands and marvels at them (as does the audience, as one of the busts smokes his pipe), and they suddenly disappear. The sculptor returns to his bed and another pedestal appears. Clay this time forms itself into a small bear, which animates itself and waves, looking about. The bear dissolves and its clay forms itself this time into Theodore Roosevelt. The sculptor stands and marvels at the bust, which then disappears. The sculptor returns to his bed, shaking his drunken head.
Here we see some of the first steps into the world of animation in filmmaking. While some other films at the time were being made with clay animation (for example, Edison’s A Sculptor’s Welsh Rarebit Nightmare of 1908 ), they have been swallowed into obscurity. Possibly due in part to Billy Bitzer’s overall success in the world of innovative filmmaking, and otherwise due to its charm, The Sculptor’s Nightmare has survived and is available for viewing even today.
In Bitzer’s film, we are able to see the political machinations that drove not only the country, but his personal interests throughout much of his filmmaking. One of Bitzer’s earliest films was, in fact, the first presidential film to be made: that of William McKinley receiving notification of his nomination to the presidency. In this later political work of The Sculptor’s Nightmare, we see the theme which drove both Bitzer and Griffith to work in film—a purpose to the art (a theme which resurfaces yet again in their collaborative work The Birth of a Nation).
Outside of this political theme, however, the work presents the dynamic, aesthetically pleasing visuals for which Bitzer was known. There is almost constantly some small movement which draws the eye across the screen in some way or another, and in no place is this truer than in the portions of clay animation.
The statues form themselves in thick, fluid motions, building up and reforming slowly but progressively until finally the true bust surfaces. The four busts move lips and cheeks in speech, and, as mentioned earlier, one bust truly jumps into reality as he smokes his pipe. Perhaps most delightful of all is Theodore Roosevelt’s symbol, the little bear. It appeals to the audience in its motions, more complex than those of the heads as it moves nearly the entirety of its body. The cub charms in its appearance and enchants in its liveliness.
While Bitzer never returned to clay animation in any dedicated sort of way, the success of the effect is evident even today, as the art of clay animation is still prolific. Billy Bitzer, the man well known as a pioneer in the world of light and filming, took some of the first steps into that potential world of clay animation within this short picture and proved its potential.

Bitzer, G.W. Billy Bitzer: His Story. Toronto: Doubleday Canada, Ltd., 1973. Print. xi.
ibid, 82.
ibid, 247.
ibid, 67.
ibid, 85.
ibid, 10
ibid, 84.
ibid, 84.
The Sculptor's Nightmare / American Mutoscope and Biograph Company; Director, Wallace McCutcheon; Camera, G.W. Bitzer. 1908. 18 Sept 2009. http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.mbrsmi/trmp.4144.>
Lemay, Brian. "History of Animation 1900-1910." The Animated Cartoon Factory. 30 Jul 2009. Web. 18 Sept 2009. .
The Sculptor’s Nightmare.
Bitzer, G.W., 11.
ibid, 106.

Michael's Hand-Drawn Animation

Monica'sHand-Drawn

Peace Frog

Noah - Jungle Box

Ian's Hand-drawn animation

When I uploaded this to youtube, it turned red for some reason...go figure. 

Micah's Egg Hand Drawn Animation

Lauren's Hand Drawn

it is almost november by Chloe

it is almost november from Chloe Utley on Vimeo.

Germaine's Hand Drawn Animation

Germaine's Cut Out Animation

Lauren's Cut Out Animation

Articles of interest!

1. A Conversation with Michael Dudok de Wit

2. Drawn to Life – Reanimating the Animate
Animation Breakdown Study Day, Tate Modern
London, 21.03.2009

3. The Mechanics of Motion

Cool Animation

Neatorama does it again: this is a video by Dutch animator Sjors Vervoort. It's similar to Blu, but each image is an individual piece of cardboard. I found this during class!

Monica's Cutout Animation

The music is taken from Dan Deacon's Baltihorse.

Ian's Cut Out Animation

Alex's cut out animation

Michael's Cut-Out Assignment

Micah's Cut-Out Animation

Project 4. Simple Hand Drawn Action

Animation, 2009 Sarah Lawrence College Professor Robin Starbuck
Assignment #4 – Simple Action Hand Drawn
Assignment – 2 weeks Due: October 30

DOWNLOAD LINK


Time: 45 second - 24fps – 3 frames per drawing for a 45 second piece = 360 drawings

Student Group: Work alone

Assignment: Produce a simple action hand drawn animation

Parameters:

No sound

Hand drawn animation on bond paper with sharpie or 6B, 7B, 8B pencil

Design a simple action with a main character and an object. Your character will enter the film, carry or find an object, interact with this object and leave the screen. In addition you must (as all good animations do!) have a secondary action. So if your bird flies onto a birdbath, takes a bath and then flies off, you might have a cloud passing, or an insect flying, etc. Remember examples in class. Of course you can have as many simultaneous actions as you like. For your next project you will be asked to select a poem to work with. If you have something in mind already then you might use this project to create your first scene or A scene of the poem piece.



Objectives: This assignment is designed to allow you to learn the process of drawing for animation, You will learn to register your drawings on the pencil test stand, pace your animation for effective action, and use freeze frames and zoom where/if needed, You may include text in this short film but it is not required.



Process:

1 - Workshop with Scott Duce on October 16

2 - Select a style of peg bar and prepare 400 pieces of paper (or buy paper already punched)

3 - You will be working on a light board. You may work in 129/136 or check out a light board from the ER

4 - As you draw BE SURE to have your registration outline drawn on each paper. This will guarantee that all of your action will be inside this picture plane (and your peg bar won’t show on camera)

5 – Be sure to number your drawings outside the picture plane (small). Very important as your drawings WILL get mixed as you work.

6 – If you need to add in drawings you can label these 4a, 4b, 4c, and etc…

7 – You should shoot at 24 fps using 2 or 3 frames per image. Remember you can zoom in a little in final cut so if you want to hold on a single image for say 8-10 frames this will give you zoom capability in FCP. FCP blurs as you zoom in so you will have to keep this to a minimum.

8 – Be sure you have ENOUGH LIGHT – keep focus on manual focus and CHECK focus

9 – With the still cameras you will have much better resolution but you will NOT have preview (shutter must be open for preview). You can check out a video camera and use it on the Oxbury (wood) stand if you like. Or use the graph sheet I have left for you in 129.

10 – Add color if you like. Remember watercolor will wrinkle your paper. Colored pencils, pastels, acrylics are good.

11 – You will be starting Photoshop next week. You CAN hand color in Photoshop but remember you’ve got 360 drawings here, which is a monster project in Photoshop.

12 – You CAN do your animation by drawing and erasing (as per Kentridge)– which means you will use one piece of paper or several for several scenes. Again you’ve got no preview so you might want to use a video camera if you go this route.



Friday October 23rd see documentary on William Kentridge

Films:

Emily Dunn, Bird, George Griffin, Winsor McKay, etc.

The Foxhole Manifesto by Jeffrey McDaniel

From Animation Anthology

Words: Lev Yilmaz

Animation in the Home Studio

Hairy Birds

Revised Syllabus

Animation I: Experimental Shorts
Fall 2009

DOWNLOAD HERE


Sarah Lawrence College /Film/New Media Arts Professor Robin Starbuck
REVISED Schedule
Thursdays 6 – 8:30pm, Lab either 129H or 136H (screenings 135H)
Fridays 10:30 – 1pm, Class either 129H or 136H


Week 6 Thursday: October 15 Assignment III: Cut Out Animations DUE, Media file
Screening of single action drawing animations
Friday: October 16 DRAWING FOR ANIMATION VISITING ARTIST–Scott Duce
Drawing for Animation demo and Assignment IV: Hand Drawn Animation
Week 7 NO CONFERENCES
Thursday: October 22 Photoshop - Matthew Smallheer
Friday: October 23 Screening: The End of the Beginning, William Kentridge

Week 8 Thursday: October 29 Photoshop - Matthew Smallheer
Friday: October 30 Assignment IV: Hand Drawn Animation Due, Media file DVD required
Screening of Plympton and Griffin
Homework: select a poem for Assignment V

Week 9 Thursday: November 5 Assignment V: Drawing and Cell Animation
Friday: November 6 Screening: Susan Pitt and Work in class

Week 10 Thursday: November 12 VISITING FILM MAKER - Andy London
Friday: November 13 Screening and Work in Class

Week 11 Thursday: November 19 AUDIO LAB
Friday: November 20 Assignment V: Drawing and Cell Animation rough cut screening

Week 12 NO CONFERENCES
Thursday, November 26 THANKSGIVING NO CLASS
Friday: November 27 THANKSGIVING NO CLASS

Week 13 Thursday: December 3 Visiting Animator – Martha Colburn
Friday: December 4 Final Project - Assignment V: Integrating Live Footage

Week 14 Thursday: December 10 NO LAB
Friday: December 11 Work in class – live type

Week 15 NO CONFERENCES
Thursday: December 17 Final project FILM SCREENING, Media file DVD required
Notebooks Due
Friday: December 18 NO CLASS

Ryan

A short film by Chris Landreth. If you haven't ever seen this, definitely give it a look; it's pretty incredible.

Ryan (make sure to set quality to high)

Project 3 - Music Cutout Animation

Participants: Work in pairs or alone
Exercise: 45 second – 1 minute object animation
Films: Maya Erdelgi. Plume, Ourobouros 1-4, Rohtash Rao – Coffee and MTV VS CNN, Javanese Shadow Puppetry, Ivan Inavov-Vano & Yuri Norstein, The Battle at Kerzhenets
Reading: Malcolm Le Grice, “Reflections on My Practice and Media Specificity” from Experimental Film and Video, edited by Jackie Hatfield ,“The Semiotics of Music Videos” by Heidi Peeters , and “Audio Visual Poetry or Commercial Salad of Images,” by Sven Carlsson

Objectives: 1. To develop skills in working with cut paper for animation.
2. To develop a short animation using music as rhythm for movement.
3. To develop a short animation using music style for abstraction or visual storytelling.
4. To develop skills in working with paper objects for complex movement or visual storytelling based upon a musical score.
5. To develop skills in implying deep visual space and directional movement in simple paper animation.
6. To further develop formal skills in camera use, frame composition, and timing. Recalling the need to temper movement and change to allow the viewer to “catch up” to your action… in other words to SLOW DOWN.

For this project you will produce a 45 second to 1 minute film produced with cut paper. As we discussed in class, you may use a light box or one of the stop motion stands with a glass base and a light underneath. Keep the light below on the floor. You may choose to filter the light with paper, with colored Plexiglas or with painted onionskin paper or transparency paper. As we discussed you can use construction paper, magazine cutouts, cut paintings, or any other form of cut paper-ish materials (fabrics and fibers are also fine).

In this piece try to consider the space your objects inhabit. Is this space deep or shallow? Do you have a middle ground, foreground and background? Are there objects working as doors to an internal action, barricades to action (as in I am looking over a fence, beyond a shoulder, etc)? What part does gravity play in your film? Do objects float in space or do you have a ground plane? What is the visual weight of each of your objects?

Shots Again:

Close Up
Detail
Medium Shot
Long Shot
Over the Shoulder Shot
Slow Pan
Low Angle (looking up_
High Angle (looking down)
Appearance of layering
Objects start as miniature and expand, or large and contract

Action:
Fluid movement - slow graceful
Hard movement - rapid changes of action (ex jump cuts where you wipe out the entire sand drawing and begin your next shot with a different image entirely)
Subtle movement – leaf falling, hair blowing – usually while something else is happening
Spinning motion
Full screen movement - character or object moving onto screen from left then off screen right, or bottom to top, etc.
Depth movement – object or character moves up at an angle on the screen and gets smaller, less clear and lighter (indicating depth)
Bounce – if something falls does it have bounce; if it hits water does it splash?


PROCESS

THIS WEEK

1 – Choose a piece of music you might like to use.

2 – With your group (or alone) establish a format you might like to pursue – representational objects, figurative, abstract. Color or black & white silhouette

3 - Read the article “The Semiotics of Music Videos…”


FRIDAY OCTOBER 2nd

1 – Participate in class discussion. Evaluate your music. Develop a list of adjectives and verbs to describe your music.
Discuss the value of illustration vs. non-representational signing, syntagmatic vs. paradigmatic linking, and abstraction based upon rhythm.

2 - How much of your music clip will you use? Will you repeat the clip? Overlap this with multiple cuts? Montage your sound?

3 – Choose your materials. Decide whether you are lighting from the top down or from the back.

4 – Decide if you will need to green screen and prepare for this.

5 – If your film has more than one scene consider your transitions.

6 – Again: Best camera to check out is the Panasonic DVX – use on Stop Motion Stands or use the one in place in 136.

7 – Set your lighting. TURN OFF FLORESCENT LIGHTS

8 – Remember you might need to make several attempts at the film. So give yourself enough time.


THURSDAY NIGHT OCTOBER 8

Final Cut Pro Labs will help you edit your sound and visuals.

THURSDAY NIGHT OCTOBER 15

Project is due. Please have uploaded to YouTube AND have as a QuickTime movie on a DVD. (From IStopMotion you MUST go to Export> as a QuickTime Movie). The burn your DVD on DVD Pro or on iDVD.