Animation's Lack of Consequences

I recently read Opening Wednesday at a Theater or Drive-In Near You: The Shadow Cinema of the American '70s by Charles Taylor.  The following quote from the introduction struck me for how it relates to animated features, though Taylor ignores animation entirely.

"The best genre movies, no matter how rooted in the conventions of Westerns, detective stories, adventure stories or noir, have always involved adult emotions: temptation, guilt, sexual desire, the pull of responsibility.  The violence in those films is wrought and suffered on a scale far more direct than the explosions and anonymous mass killings of today's big-budget action spectaculars.  In the best genre films, we're immersed in a world where decisions have to be made and consequences have to be endured."

Family films are also a genre.  And they're defined, in large part, by the lack of consequences that have to be endured.  It is this lack of consequences that ultimately make family films so lightweight.  No matter what danger the characters are exposed to, in the end there are no consequences.  Since the majority of animated features are family films, they are caught in this trap.

This isn't true of every animated feature.  Bambi, Princess Mononoke, Pom Poko, The Wind Rises, Princess Kaguya (sense a pattern here?) don't conform.  Some Pixar films develop consequences early (Finding Nemo's death of the family, Up's death of Ellie) but they occur so early in the film, they're more inciting incidents that consequences that must be endured.  By the time the films end, the survivors have triumphed and all's right with the world.

Audiences are happy with the genre as it is.  It's light entertainment, safe for the kids.  Executives are happy with the status quo as the films are lucrative.  So animation artists are stuck honing their craft rather than expanding their content.  While people change intellectually and emotionally as they age, animation artists have to put their evolving perspectives on life on the shelf.  They have to deny their own experience and manufacture fictions where truth may seep into the cracks but can't be central to the stories they tell.

It's hard for me to stay an animation fan as I age.  I want entertainment that speaks to my experience of life, not the experiences of a child.  For me, craft is not enough.  Yes, I can admire the design, the direction, and the animation.  I can admire the construction of a story (though not often enough these days), but the story itself fails to connect to me.

Not every genre is for everyone, but the family film starts out excluding adult concerns.  Charles Taylor thinks that the modern tentpole blockbuster has done the same, so maybe the family film is just being pulled along with the general drift.  While cable and streaming TV have created drama series that have captured large audiences and critical acclaim, TV animation hasn't even dipped a toe into that water. 

Young animation artists are happy to create work similar to the work they loved growing up.  But as they age, there's nowhere for them to grow in their medium.  I don't see that changing, though I wish it would.

My Life as a Courgette

For me, the most interesting animated features being made today are not from North America.  Europe has come on strong, both in terms of subject matter and technique.  Drawn animation is still alive there and now there is an excellent stop motion film called My Life as a Courgette (the French word for zucchini).

This film has racked up awards, including an Oscar nomination, and fully deserves whatever praise it's received.  The story is about a group of children who are victims of neglect or tragedy living in a state-run institution.  While the subject matter sounds depressing, the film avoids being dreary or maudlin.  This is not a story by Charles Dickens.  The institution is a haven from their former lives, and while the children are marked by their experiences, they don't dwell on them.  They go on being children who laugh, play, learn, fight, question and who are eager to experience new things.

The script, based on a novel by Gilles Paris with the screenplay by Celine Sciammo, Germano Zullo, Claude Barras and Morgan Navarro, and the direction by Barras are perfect, maintaining a balance between the emotions of the children's pasts and their present.  The stop motion puppets are not as flexible as those made by Mackinnon and Saunders for films like The Corpse Bride, but the animators evoke a wide range of emotions with them, helped enormously by the tasteful script and direction.  The film successfully develops the characters and their relationships.  The events grow out of the dynamics of the group and are never less than believable.

There are no big set pieces as there typically are in North American films.  It is not anywhere near as elaborate as Laika's work, but I found it to be far more satisfying.  The characters simply try to live their lives and it is surprisingly interesting to watch.

I caught the film at the TIFF Kids International Film Festival.  So far, the film has not received a release in Canada, though it opened in the U.S. in February.  I don't know where Canadians will next have an opportunity to see this film, but don't miss it when it becomes available. 

Toronto Screenings of My Life as a Courgette

My Life as a Courgette (aka My Life as a Zucchini) is a Swiss-French stop motion feature that was nominated for an Oscar and has won prizes at festivals all over the world.

While it is playing in theatres in the U.S. and Canada, it has no release date for a run in Toronto.  However, it will screen twice at the TIFF Kids International Film Festival, once on April 9 at 10:45 a.m. and once on April 17 at 3:45 p.m.

Information about the film can be found here and information about the festival is here.

Laika Speculation

I am thousands of miles from Laika's studio and have no inside information.  However, I've been interested in following the company's fortunes as it is one of the few companies making stop motion features.

Travis Knight, CEO, animator and director, is going to direct a Transformers spinoff for Paramount.

This is unexpected and raises many questions about the future of Laika.  It's clear from the budgets and grosses of Laika's films that the company is not self-supporting.  I've always thought that it has survived because Travis Knight wanted it to, and because his father, Phil Knight of Nike, was willing to financially support the company on his son's behalf.

What does Travis Knight's latest move mean?  Is he just looking for a change of pace with the intention of returning to Laika?  Was there an understanding between father and son that Laika had to become profitable after some amount of time or number of films, and if it didn't the subsidy would end?

Travis Knight is the reason that Laika exists.  Without him, there is no reason for Phil Knight to finance a money-losing company.  Perhaps this is nothing more than an opportunity that popped up and was hard to resist, but Travis Knight's plans and the box office success of the Transformer's spinoff could have a major impact on the continued existence of Laika.

Michael Dudok de Wit and The Red Turtle

Michael Dudok de Wit's film The Red Turtle is playing at the TIFF Bell Lightbox in Toronto as of January 27.  Some Sheridan animation students and I had the pleasure of spending an hour with Michael Dudok de Wit when he was in Toronto to publicize the film last September as part of the Toronto International Film Festival.

After the success of his Oscar winning short Father and Daughter, Dudok de Wit was approached by Studio Ghibli and asked if he had a feature idea that they could produce for him.  He told us that when he was a student, just getting laughs was enough but as he's gotten older, he wants his films to be built on more substantial emotions.

Creating the story reel was a case of  two steps forward and one step backwards.  His feeling is that without a good storyboard, it's impossible to make a good film.  He sought out feedback from the Ghibli producers and praised Toshio Suzuki and Isao Takahata for their input.  Their goal was to be as ego-free as possible and just look for the best idea.

In creating the story reel, he felt he benefited from working with an editor.  He said that rhythms and flow are far more important in a feature than in a short and the editor, who regularly cuts live action, was able to help.

For the production, done entirely in Europe with TV Paint software, live action reference was shot.  There was no rotoscoping, but as Dudok de Wit was interested in realistic motion, various gestures from the live action were used.

Dudok de Wit's preference for long shots has to do with his interest in the environment the characters live in.  He also prefers to communicate using a character's whole body.  He talked about how subtle human expressions are and how difficult it is to duplicate that subtlety in animation, especially when you're trying to communicate to a crew.  Therefore, long shots work best.

He worked 80-100 hour weeks because he wanted the film to be as good as possible.  He's too close to the film to know if he wants to make another feature or if he will return to shorts.

(There are spoilers below.)

I have mixed feelings about the film.  In some ways, it reminds me of Pete Docter's work at Pixar in that Dudok de Wit is excellent at evoking emotions, particularly those that come from familial relationships, but like Docter he seems to have problems with story logic.

Fantasies are delicate things.  The audience must understand what is possible and what's isn't in a story in order to believe the film's events.  The opening of The Red Turtle is brutally realistic.  A man is lost at sea, being battered by stormy waves with nothing to hold onto.  Once he reaches an island, the film maintains the realism.  The flora and fauna are real and the man's struggle to leave the island is completely believable.  He tries several times and each time his raft is destroyed by a red turtle.  There is no hint at the turtle's motivation for this.  As the film shows baby turtles hatching on the beach, it makes more sense that the turtle would be glad to get the man off the island as his presence might threaten the turtle's spawn.  When the turtle comes to the beach to lay eggs, the man is justifiably angry at the creature who has foiled his escape. He flips the turtle onto its back and it appears to die.

Earlier in the film, the man dreamed or hallucinated the presence of a string quartet on the island.  It's clear to the audience that this is not real.  The man himself realizes it.  So when the dead turtle turns into a woman, the audience has not been prepared for the possibility that the transformation could be real.  The earlier dreams led me to believe that the man was once again hallucinating.  But within the film, it most certainly is real.

The lack of preparation for this moment took me out of the film.  I kept waiting for some sort of explanation after the fact, but there was none.  The turtle's destruction of the rafts and the man's murder of the turtle in no way suggest the eventual transformation or relationship.  For me, the film never recovered from this.

Visually, the film is lovely.  There are bravura sequences of the storm at sea and a later tsunami.  The environment of the island is portrayed in great detail.  There are moments of powerful suspense and there is comedy provided by a population of crabs.  The musical score is lovely and emotionally evocative.  The bulk of the film is about the loving relationship between the man and the woman, the birth of their child, and their life as a family on the island as they deal with the unpredictable natural world.  But the flaws in the first act are never addressed.

Another issue is the lack of dialogue.  I have no problem with a film that doesn't have talking, but the characters do yell.  The director has given them voices, yet they say nothing intelligible to each other.  At the TIFF screening, Dudok de Wit said that they tried writing dialogue for key moments but couldn't find words that seemed to fit the style of the film.  As the film relies heavily on sound effects, he could not have natural sound and keep his characters completely mute.  But by allowing them to make sounds yet not talk, he's created an artificial constraint that doesn't work in my view.

There are other inconsistencies that are minor, but still forced me out of the story.  The man builds a small shelter to protect the woman from the sun before she wakes for the first time.  Yet when they have a child later, the family builds no shelter.  There are sudden, heavy downpours on the island, yet the family seems to have no problem being constantly exposed to the elements.

After the tsunami, the family burns all the uprooted trees.  This is the only time fire is present in the film.  The family never builds a fire for light, warmth or to cook with.  As shelter and fire are not present except for these two occasions, it is every bit as odd as the characters yelling but not talking.  They have the knowledge, but don't use it.

Feature scripts are difficult.  There's no shortage of films whose scripts don't work.  For a director who is moving from shorts to features, there are many new challenges in terms of story, characterization and pacing.  Dudok de Wit spoke a great deal about using intuition to find what worked for him.  And while his intuition has created a film with excellent parts, it failed him in constructing the whole.

While Dudok de Wit was undecided about future films, I hope that he makes more features as he has much to contribute.  The film has great sequences and strong emotional moments.  It broadens animated features' range and nudges the medium a bit more towards adult content.  I'm glad the film received an Oscar nomination and hope that it makes the film profitable and motivates Dudok de Wit to continue.

Long Way North is a Great Film

Long Way North is a dramatic adventure film, devoid of the comic relief and musical numbers all too common in North American animated features.  While artists and fans are constantly calling for animation to expand its horizons, Long Way North has done it, but its botched release in Canada will keep it hidden from the people who would champion it.

With Canada's recent hunt for Sir John Franklin's two ships, the Erebus and the Terror lost during the search for the Northwest Passage, there was a natural Canadian marketing hook for this film.  Set in Czarist Russia, an explorer sets out to find the Northeast Passage across the pole.  When the ship doesn't return, everyone assumes that it sank.  A search turns up nothing.  But Sasha, the granddaughter of the explorer, finds some notes in her grandfather's study indicating he took a different route than expected.  She argues for another search mission, but is not only refused, she damages her family's position with the royal court.

Vilified by her father, Sasha takes off on her own to prove her theory correct.  Connecting with the crew of a ship thanks to the reward offered by the Czar as well as an obligation a crew member owes her, they take off following her suggested route.

What follows is a rigorous adventure, where she and the crew undergo storms, ice avalanches, bitter cold, hunger and injury.  It is an uncompromising look at a difficult journey and the film pulls no punches.

The script, direction and art direction are all excellent.  The story has echoes of Captains Courageous and what might be an homage to a moment in Chaplin's The Gold Rush.  The characterizations are realistic.

The film, a French-Danish co-production, has an insane number of partners.  Pulling together the financing for this must have been hell.  And for all the film's excellence, the budget is the weak link.  Act 1 is full of animation done on threes, fours and maybe sixes.  The resolution of various story threads is done with stills during the end credits instead of being animated.  However, director Remé Chayé has put the money where it counted.  The search is doesn't skimp on animation or effects.

I can't think of another animated feature I can compare this to directly.  It is like The Iron Giant in that the release has shortchanged it and people who eventually find this film will like it.  It's like Castle in the Sky as it is a straight up adventure without the cuteness that plagues so many animated features.

In its second week in Toronto, it's showing just once a day on a single screen at Canada Square.  The Sunday screening I attended had maybe 8 people in the audience.  It was preceded by trailers for Trolls, Sing and Moana.  The three reeked of formula, which made Long Way North that much more impressive.  I'm afraid the film will be gone by October 28.

If you get a chance to see this in a theatre, don't pass it up.  Eventually it will turn up on other screens.  When it does, watch it.  I wish that GKids was distributing this, as they are great at marketing independent animated features.  I've seen The Red Turtle and will see Miss Hokusai shortly.  I'm betting that either those films or Long Way North will get a Best Animated Feature nomination as the art film this year.  Should Long Way North get it, know that it deserves it.

Long Way North Playing in Toronto

Long Way North, a French-Danish animated feature, has arrived in Toronto playing on a single screen.  Three of the five papers in town have not reviewed it.  None of this bodes well for its box office prospects or for people in the animation industry being aware of it.

If you want to see this film, head to Canada Square at Yonge and Eglinton.  Who knows if it will last more than a week.

Anomalisa

Michael and Lisa

(Spoilers below.)

Anomalisa, written by Charlie Kaufman and directed by Kaufman and Duke Johnson, is a film that I respect but don't love.

I respect it because its ideas have been rigorously worked out in the script, cinematography, animation and soundtrack.  It's a film that is extremely clever in revealing the nature of the main character and uses animation in original ways.  My problem is that for all its excellence, it is a cold film.  Michael, the main character voiced by David Thewlis, is stuck in a depressed state and by the film's end, does not understand himself any better than he did at the start.  He's needy, presumptuous, impatient, selfish and ultimately clueless as to his own nature.  It was difficult for me to spend time with him or to care what happened to him.

Michael is an expert in customer service traveling to Cincinnati to give a talk at a conference.   By the time we learn this, we've seen him interact with many people in the hospitality industry, all of whom behave in ways that Michael would endorse.  However, he's so wrapped up in his own head that he can't appreciate the service he's being offered and is so distracted that he comes off as brusque. 

As the film progresses, it becomes clear that every character except for Michael has the voice of actor Tom Noonan and all have identical faces, whether they are male or female.  While Michael's speech to the conference emphasizes treating customers as individuals, he himself is incapable of seeing people that way.  The only person that looks and sounds different to him is Lisa, voiced by Jennifer Jason Leigh, who is there for the conference and is damaged in her own way.

Lisa has a scarred face and crippling self esteem problems.  When Michael invites her to his room, she assumes that he would be happier with her friend.  After spending the night together, Michael wants to run away with her.  Her life is so empty that she agrees, but when they breakfast together, Michael finds flaws in her and her voice transforms into the the generic voice all the other characters have.  Michael can't accept people as they are, which is why all his relationships end with him unhappy and isolated.

At the end of the film, Michael returns home to his wife, child and a house full of guests, but the final image of Michael is him staring at a mechanical doll, unable to relate to any of the people around him.  By contrast, Lisa seems grateful for the attention she received and seems renewed by the tryst.

While this film looks like it could have been done in live action, stop motion is used to distance the characters from reality enough to make the audience aware of the difference.  The puppets are about five heads high, proportioned with slightly larger heads than real people.  There is no attempt to hide the seams on their faces that separate the parts that are replaced frame by frame. 

The animation successfully communicates the characters' emotional states.  That's what animation is supposed to do.  The facial and hand movements are subtle.  Michael and Lisa are individualized through their movement.  The acting avoids animation clichés and grounds the characters in understandable human emotions.

The direction, cinematography and art direction are impressive. Michael's hotel room and the corridor outside it successfully capture the generic look familiar to anyone who has stayed in a North American hotel.  The lighting of the characters and sets is exceptional.  While lighting in cgi has advanced tremendously, it still can't match the beauty of live action lighting.  The camera moves are fluid and generally unobtrusive until they need to add emphasis.  The sound effects bolster the reality of the world that the puppets move through.

For all of this film's accomplishments, it's difficult to do a story about a character who can't change and who ends up where he began.  The audience learns more about the character over the course of the film, but as the character is not very appealing, it's hard to engage with him.  The central character, while fully realized, is the film's weakest point.

While I don't care about the Academy Awards, this film and Inside Out are both nominated in the Best Animated Feature category and I suspect that one of them will win.   They are opposite in many respects.  One is cold and the other is warm.  This film is tightly structured while Inside Out is a bit of a mess.  I suspect that the Academy will go with the feel-good film, but there is no question that Anomalisa, in spite of its coldness, has taken animation in a new direction in terms of subject matter and technique.  It presents possibilities, something that Pixar hasn't done in years.  While I can't say I enjoyed watching this film, I'm glad that I saw it and glad that it exists.  Anomalisa is a direction worth pursuing.

Is There an Animated Feature Bubble?

Cartoon Brew has a list of 47 animated features that will potentially be released in 2016.  Some have already been released outside North America, others are still in production.

There have been articles in the past about whether animation is wearing out its welcome or not, but now we are reaching a saturation point that is constrained by the calendar.  With only 52 weeks in a year, next year could potentially see a new animated feature released almost every week.  Is it possible for the box office to sustain that many animated films?  Even if half of them don't get a North American release, that's still a new feature every two weeks.

With few exceptions, they are aimed at the family audience.  That audience is now being courted by two other major franchises, Marvel and Star Wars, that will compete for box office dollars.  While many animated features have budgets significantly lower than those from the big studios, they still need to earn enough to make their releases worthwhile.

With so many films hitting theatres so frequently, marketing is going to be extremely important.  Films that have poor opening weekends are toast.  There will be no time for word of mouth to build before the next animated feature arrives.

Many who have jumped into producing animated features are destined to be disappointed.  That's when this bubble is going to pop.  Audiences may not care.  A dozen high profile animated features a year may be more than enough to satisfy the family audience.  But what is this going to do to employment?

People who have been in animation for the last 20 years (except for those who worked in hand drawn animated features) have not seen lean times.  The increase in TV animation, videogames and animated features has mostly been a continuous upward curve.  Those who have been around longer remember that the animation industry was not always so robust.  I can't believe that all these features are going to be profitable enough to keep their producers starting new projects.  Should producers walk away, there are going to be people looking for work.  Maybe TV and games can absorb them, but TV is experiencing its own potential bubble, with streaming being added to broadcast and cable.  Is there enough money in that system to keep everything going?

The Disneys, DreamWorks, Blue Skys and Sonys have deep enough pockets to stay in the market for animated features, but they're a minority of those 47 films.  There will always be features made for local markets in Europe, Asia and South America, but getting a North American release may become harder in the future.  Even the Ghibli films have not pulled major box office in North America, which casts doubts that many of the freshman features coming will be successful.

I could be wrong, but how many animated features a year can the market sustain?

101 Dalmatians: Give the Lady a Hand

Above is an early section of 101 Dalmatians that I regularly show my students when talking about walks.  The three women are great contrasts in design and movement and we analyze how the visuals form our impressions of these characters.

There are variations in timing.  The first woman walks at 15 frames per step, which is a relaxed gait.  The second at 10 frames per step, showing more urgency and the third woman walks at 8 frames per step and is clearly in a hurry.  There are variations in body shape.  The first woman is gangly, the second stout and the third svelte.  There are variations in dress which imply what class the women belong to.  The first woman wears an ill-fitting coat and is bohemian, the second woman wears a smartly tailored outfit and is middle class and the third woman wears fur and is upper class.

While I've seen the film many times and I've shown this clip easily dozens of times to students, there was something I didn't notice until this week: the way each woman holds her leash.

The first woman is the most casual of the three.  Her hand is in her pocket.  The second woman is quite rigid in her arm motions and she holds the leash in a fist.  This implies that she's very guarded and not willing to take chances.  The third woman holds the leash with an open hand.  That shows her confidence that nothing will go wrong.

Then there's Anita, the woman who Roger will eventually marry.

She holds the leash in a fist, but isn't holding the leash by the loop.  She's not as rigid as the second woman, but not as confident as the third.  Also notice what she's carrying.  The first woman, we see later, is a painter.  She's carrying her supplies.  The second two women are carrying purses.  Anita is carrying a book, implying intelligence.

At this point in the film, the women, including Anita, are just vignettes.  The audience is only given brief glimpses of them.  Yet it's clear that the artists have worked hard to visually differentiate the women and to give the audience clues as to who these women are.  Even something as potentially trivial as how someone holds a leash has been thought out to be consistent with what the artists want to communicate.

The credited animators for the walks are Frank Thomas and Blaine Gibson.  It's impossible to know what came from the designs and what was added in animation, but these walks are a testament to how much information can be compressed into a short amount of time.  That's the power of good design and expressive movement.

Sorry, I Couldn't Resist

Animation in Havana

Click any image to enlarge.

I just spent a week in Havana, Cuba, a city that is interesting for many reasons.  One of the highlights of my stay was a visit to Estudios de Animación, the state run studio that is part of the Instituto Cubano del Arte e Industria Cinematográficos.  The studio is run by the brothers Juan and Ernesto Padrón and they generously toured me through their entire facility.

The studio is located in the Vedado section of Havana in a modern, multi-story building.

Inside is a full service animation studio, where work is done on paper, in stop motion, with 2D and with 3D software.  The lobby has a mural showing many of the studio's projects.

The studio does a variety of work.  There are educational films on Spanish grammar, how the body changes during puberty and Cuban history.  There are shorts made for festivals.  There are commissioned films and TV series for children.  They recently completed their first cgi feature that was a Cuba-Spain-Venezuala co-production entitled Meñique, directed by Ernesto Padrón.

I always feel at home in animation studios.  The artists there were like animation artists everywhere: friendly, happy to show off their work, and enthusiastic about the medium.  One artist I talked to talked about how much he loved working on paper and how superior he felt it was to software.  I shared complaints with another artist about the limitations of certain software packages.

As in most studios, the artist's desks were surrounded by toys, many of their own making.  The planes above this 3D animator were his own work, crafted from paper.  He also had built a replica of a rifle that appeared authentic until you touched it.

Ernesto and Juan showed me some stop motion shorts with tools as characters.  The puppets were amazingly lightweight.  There was a thin wire armature inside and the outside was a light, flexible foam.  They could be supported simply using pins to hold them to the stage surface.

Here are Juan (at left) and Ernesto in one of the 3D production rooms.

Juan has also done cartooning for print.  Here are some examples.

 

Here are some posters of recent work

By coincidence, I was there on July 1, the day that Barack Obama and Raul Castro announced that they would reopen embassies in each other's countries.  President Obama has moved to improve relations between the U.S. and Cuba, but some of the restrictions, such as the embargo, are acts of Congress and can only be repealed by Congress.  I hope that relations are eventually normalized.  It will make it easier for this studio to get the supplies they need and will make their impressive work more readily available in English-speaking countries.

I am grateful for the opportunity to see this studio and speak to the artists.  I was impressed with the quality and variety of their work. 

Below is a series of spot gags directed by Juan that I believe is from the 1980s.  I'm sorry that the resolution is so low.  Below that is the English version of the trailer for Meñique, directed by Ernesto. 

Inside Out

(Mild spoilers below.)

I'm in in the minority on this, but I was disappointed with Inside Out.

There is no question that Pete Docter has the ability to emotionally affect an audience.  My problem with this film, and on reflection with Up, is that he focuses too much on invention, and it gets in the way of the characters and the story.

In Up, everyone remembers the montage of Carl's life with Ellie.   Nobody talks about the absurd age and inventions of Charles Muntz.

In this film, what people will take away is the characters inside Riley and the ending, but the world they inhabit is overly complicated.  There is an lengthy journey for two of the characters inside Riley's head and there are all sorts of rules of the world that are introduced too conveniently.  Characters and props appear during the journey that change the audience's sense of what is possible and what is not.  It's hard to generate suspense when you never know when the equivalent of a magic wand will show up to help the characters. 

The problem is structural.  The film makers had too many good ideas to fit in the beginning, and so by introducing them mid-film, the world was continually redefined to the detriment of the story.

Here's a spoiler.  If Joy can be sad and cry, why can't the other characters inside Riley's head go beyond their dominant characteristic and grow as well?  The problem is that if you have characters who are incapable of change, you have no drama.  But introducing change into one character reveals the other characters as nothing more than stereotypes, no matter how entertaining.

The solution would have been to spend more time outside Riley.  Because she contains conflicting emotions, it's natural that the drama should have played out there.  But Riley is a puppet who can't experience emotions outside of what the characters in her head allow.  While her experiences moving to a new city, entering a new school and screwing up in front of peers are all easy for the audience to empathize with, they are done in a perfunctory manner.  We never see her interacting with the others in her school and so her experiences are left at the level of the generic.

Inside Out contains a lot of good character comedy, inventive concepts and striking design.  However, the dramatic logic of the film often gets broken under the weight of those things, and that's why I find the film unsatisfying.

Hairy Nuts

Click to enlarge

I was neutral regarding Peanuts being done in cgi.  Now, seeing this poster, I shudder at a bad design choice.  Putting photo-realistic hair on top of characters whose eyes and mouths are squiggles is ridiculous.  It looks like they're all wearing wigs.  I don't know if the hair is made of individually generated strands or done with textures, but the detail and the specular highlights are overkill.

I'm curious to see these characters in motion.  I wonder if the hair will have a lot of follow through, as that would be even more of a distraction than the way it looks in this poster.

Bye Bye PDI

When I started in computer animation in 1985, there were five studios that dominated the field: Robert Abel and Associates, Digital Productions, Omnibus Computer Graphics, Cranston-Csuri Productions and Pacific Data Images.  Three of those five companies didn't make it to the '90s.  I can't remember when Cranston-Csuri closed, but it was a long time ago.

PDI was the company that survived.  It was formed in 1980 by Carl Rosendahl, who was joined shortly by Glen Entis and Richard Chuang.  At that time, all software had to be home brewed.  There was no off-the-shelf software.  Every company that existed at the time had to invent (forget about re-invent) the wheel before they could do any work.

Take a look at this demo reel from 1983.  This was cutting edge stuff at the time.

PDI stayed at the forefront of the computer animation business.  It did many flying logos for broadcasters.  It moved into TV commercials, animating the Pillsbury Doughboy.  It created morphing software used in the Michael Jackson video Black or White.  It produced shorts like Gas Planet, and contributed computer character animation to the TV special The Last Halloween.

After Pixar got computer animated features off the ground and drawn animated features were suffering at the box office, Jeffrey Katzenberg of DreamWorks knew he had to get into the cgi game.  His way in was by partnering with PDI.  Initially a minority owner, DreamWorks eventually purchased the entire company.

Antz was the first film made by the studio, followed by Shrek, the film that really put DreamWorks animation on the map.  The PDI facility continued to create some of DreamWorks most successful films, such as the Shrek sequels and the Madagascar series.

Now, it's closing.  It's no secret that DreamWorks has been suffering financially of late.  The company has worked hard to diversify, buying existing characters and creating TV work.  However, it still needs to cut expenses in order to stay healthy.  Five hundred employees are expected to lose their jobs across all the DreamWorks facilities, but PDI is being closed. 

The last of the '80s companies is gone.  It held on longer and had a greater impact than its original competition.  With the closing of PDI, a chunk of living cgi history vanishes.  A lot of top talent passed through PDI through the years, and now it's just a memory.

Song of the Sea

Song of the Sea is director Tomm Moore's follow-up to his first feature, The Secret of Kells.  Once again, he delves into Irish culture for his subject, this time with the legends of Selkies, humans who are able to turn into seals. 

Song of the Sea is one of the most beautiful animated features ever made.  While the recent flood of cgi features all start with brilliant pre-production artwork seen in dozens of "The Art of" books, the films themselves homogenize that art into a faux--'50s Disney style.  Because the techniques used to create pre-production art for Song of the Sea are consistent with the techniques used to make the final images on screen, the film is able to take advantage of its foundational art in ways that cgi features either can't or won't.  Each shot of Song of the Sea is worthy of framing.

The story resembles The Tale of Princess Kaguya in many ways.  Both films are about mystical creatures living in human families and the members of those families are insensitive,  thinking they know best for everyone else.  In both films, the conflict arises from people's blindness rather than from stock villains.

The Irish mythology is a little thick.  It may be that the writers took in this mythology with mother's milk and it's second nature to them, but the film's two main stories are not tied together as clearly as they might be.  One story is that of a family where the youngest child is a Selkie.  The other is a tale of character who steals her son's emotions and those of others, turning them to stone, so as to relieve them of the emotional pain they feel.  The Selkie's song is the key to fixing this situation, but it's something of a distraction from solving the Selkie's own situation.

It is refreshing to see a film true to the filmmaker's ethnic roots, as opposed to American films like like Aladdin or Kung Fu Panda, which appropriates other people's roots.  And Moore and art director Adrien Merigeau are to be commended for the look of the film and for maintaining consistency though production occurred at studios in several countries.

Any year that has given audiences The Tale of Princess Kaguya and Song of the Sea has to be counted as a good one.  Forget all the upcoming awards that will probably overlook these two films beyond the nomination stage, assuming they are recognized at all.  These are the ones to see.  They are both deeply felt and personal to the filmmakers.  I've grown increasingly bored with North American feature animation in the areas of design and story and it's satisfying to see that the rest of the world is willing to go its own way.

25 Years of Ghibli Music

Joe Hisaishi is as closely associated with Studio Ghibli's musical scores as Carl Stalling was with Warner Bros. cartoon scores.  Here is a two hour concert featuring his music from Nausicaa, Princess Mononoke, Kiki's Delivery Service, Ponyo, Castle in the Sky, Porco Rosso, Howl's Moving Castle, Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro.

If you want links to specific selections in the video, go here.

At 1:36:40, there is a brief clip of Miyazaki and John Lasseter singing together.

(link via Boing Boing)

The Tale of Princess Kaguya

Isao Takahata's The Tale of Princess Kaguya is a thematically rich and artistically beautiful film.  As it may be the director's final feature and the last feature to come from Studio Ghibli,  the studio exits on a high note.  This film and Miyazaki's The Wind Rises are both landmark films that challenge accepted notions of what an animated film should be.  Only time will tell if they serve as inspiration for other artists or remain outliers.

It is impossible to talk about Princess Kaguya without discussing key story points below.

A poor bamboo cutter discovers a child within a tree.  She grows unnaturally fast.  The bamboo cutter later discovers gold and fine fabrics in a similar manner and takes it to mean that heaven wishes the girl to be brought up as a princess.  His wife is obedient to his wishes, but more sensitive to the child than he is.

The child revels in living in the woods, playing with other poor children and being surrounded by nature.  However, her father and mother move her to the capital, where she may no longer act as she likes but must conform to society's expectations for a young woman of nobility.  She respects the wishes of her parents, but as she gets increasingly immersed in the society's ways, she becomes more unhappy.  She is desired by high status suitors, including the king.  She is able, by her wits and some magic to elude marriage.  She seeks to escape back to her childhood environment, but the world has moved on and she realizes that her chance for happiness is over.  She is called back to heaven against her will, regretting missed opportunities and sad at what she must leave behind.  Her father finally realizes his mistake as he loses her.

The central question of the film is what constitutes happiness.  For the bamboo cutter, it is being able to give his child what society says are advantages.  For her suitors, it is taking a special wife to add to their status.  For the princess, it is obeying her parents.  All of them are wrong.

The bamboo cutter learns that the advantages he has showered on the princess have gone against her  nature.  The suitors are unable to keep their pledges to the princess in order to win her hand.  Two face embarrassment, one the loss of wealth, one the loss of his illusions, and two have their lives endangered, all for a woman whose face they have never seen.  The princess learns that the natural world is superior to life in the capital and that acting according to her own wishes is more satisfying than obedience to her parents, especially when the result is to reduce her to a mere ornament. 

All of these characters are burdened with regrets due to poor choices and paths not taken.  When heaven comes to reclaim the princess, a clear metaphor for death, there is much pain for the characters who can no longer avoid acknowledging their mistakes.

Social class is a great divider in this film.  When the princess and her mother spend time in the mansion kitchen and garden as an escape from the rigid behaviour expected of them, the father cannot understand why.  When the princess journeys to the countryside to see the cherry blossoms, a young child, as excited by the sight as she is, bumps into her.  Instead of them being able to share their happiness, the child is snatched away by its mother, who prostrates herself in front of the princess and begs forgiveness.  Sharing joy is forbidden across class lines.  When one of the princess's childhood friends is caught stealing a chicken, he is brutally beaten, but when one of her suitors fails to pay some artisans, he escapes without punishment.

The characters in this film don't understand where happiness lies.  Society has created divisions and rules that stifle people while claiming to exalt them.  Nature is more beautiful than anything people have created, yet people choose to leave nature behind.  People are blind to each others' needs.  Awareness comes only in retrospect, when it is too late to correct poor choices.  In short, the characters are fully human, doing what they think is best but unable to see their mistakes.

The artwork, especially for the scenes in the countryside, is exquisite.  The animation varies somewhat; early scenes with the bamboo cutter and the children seem to be the strongest overall, but Takahata's direction is capable of getting dramatic impact from minimal movement in some later scenes.  The softness of the linework and the watercolour backgrounds are refreshing after so many years of computer animation.  The hands of the artists are visible everywhere, not just in the pre-production artwork.

The Tale of Princess Kaguya, like The Wind Rises, is more dramatically sophisticated than animated films made for North America.  The willingness to embrace characters who are flawed and to acknowledge the existence of tragedy separates these films from the feelgood fantasies churned out by Hollywood.  The term "family film" really means "we won't do anything to upset your children."  By limiting itself to this genre, North American feature animation has neutered itself, spending fortunes to divert audiences from real life instead of helping to illuminate it.

I am deeply grateful for Studio Ghibli's existence.  While the level of craft in their films doesn't always conform to what North American audiences expect, the intelligence in them surpasses anything animated that Hollywood offers.  Ghibli's films, in particular The Wind Rises and The Tale of Princess Kaguya, set a standard that Hollywood will most likely ignore.  But if feature animation has a future beyond amusing parents while babysitting their children, it doesn't have to look any further than what Miyazaki and Takahata have accomplished.

New from Nina Paley

Nina Paley, the creator of the animated feature Sita Sings the Blues, has released another segment from her current production Seder Masochism.  Music is by The Duke of Uke and His Novelty Orchestra with sound effects by Greg Sextro.

The Boxtrolls

The Boxtrolls is a visually elaborate fantasy that is built on an extremely weak foundation.  While the art direction, cinematography and animation are excellent, the story is deeply flawed and the direction isn't able to overcome the holes in the story.

There are spoilers coming, so be warned.

The town of Cheesebridge has a class system indicated by the colour of a person's hat.  While the hat is hardly a great idea, I'll let it go as it's a convenient way of visually establishing status.  The problem is that a class system only has dramatic weight when it's clear how low status affects a person's life; the lower class needs to be treated poorly by the upper class in order to motivate the film's villain.   What do we see as the difference between classes besides the colour of hats?  The privilege of tasting cheese.  I have not read the source book, Here Be Monsters by Alan Snow, but even if this idea is from the book, it is flimsy at best and too reminiscent of Wallace and Gromit.

The boxtrolls themselves are also unmotivated.  They eat bugs, so their physical survival is guaranteed from a nutrition standpoint.  But they spend the nights foraging in people's trash bins for various mechanical bits.  Why?  While their home cavern is full of mechanical doodads, they don't seem essential to the boxtrolls' existence.  If this is what they do, why not make it necessary for their way of life?

While fantasies require a leap of faith, it still helps to be as consistent as possible within the rules of the world.  Unfortunately, the film falls short here as well.  Why would the boy raised by the boxtrolls speak a human language instead of theirs when he has no contact with humans?  The boxtrolls are naked beneath their boxes.  Why is the boy wearing clothes and a too-small box?  The villain has a food allergy that causes his face to swell to grotesque proportions.  How could he not be aware of this when it happens repeatedly? 

The villain's plan to demonize the boxtrolls and then eliminate them seems enormously complicated and takes a decade to enact.  Surely, there had to be a better and faster way to raise himself into the upper class.  Why should the townspeople believe that he's destroyed all the boxtrolls just because he dumps a pile of crushed boxes in front of them?  If they do believe it, why is it necessary for the villain to kill the last boxtroll in public?  Why does the villain need the large machine he rides in for the climax?  What motivates the villain to be a cross dresser?  Or is that just a result of Laika being praised for the gay character in Paranorman?

With the exception of a girl character, the film has no other females developed to any degree.  That includes the boxtrolls, who seem to be asexual.  Does a boxstork deliver them?

The film ends and ends and ends and ends.  Instead of wrapping things up neatly, the film makers don't know when to get off the stage.  

I have seen all three of Laika's films and this is definitely a step down from Paranorman.  While this film has potentially strong themes of class, race and even genocide, it treats them so superficially that they are missed opportunities.  The film is visually inventive and, truth be told, the stop motion is so slick it might as well be cgi.  But the artists at Laika fell in love too quickly with the visual possibilities of the story without nailing the dramatic backbone.

I know that there is a bias against scripts in feature animation.  The conventional wisdom says that stories should be drawn, not written.  However, there's a lot to be said for working on an outline to structure the story, work out the plot points and clarify the motivations before any designs are done.  Drawing is sometimes a distraction; the appeal of a good design can sometimes draw attention away from holes in the story.

While all of Laika's films have been visually attractive, they have yet to have a major hit.  My limited knowledge of their income leads me to believe that if it wasn't for the Knight millions (or is that billions?), the studio would have gone bankrupt by now.  Laika has a deal for another three features so it isn't going away anytime soon, but I'm sure everyone would be happier if a future film would gross Pixar-like numbers.  Without serious attention to their stories, it's never going to happen.