Gerald McBoing-Boing

Director: Robert Cannon
United Productions of America (UPA)
© 1950
06 minutes 56 seconds


Gerald McBoing-Boing: a little boy who speaks in sound effects rather than words.

Gerald McBoing-Boing: one of the cartoon classics and winner of the 1950 Oscar. The visuals are highly stylised, as is the rhyming script by Dr. Seuss. This is an animation that makes the most of being animated: it revels in the freedoms not possible in live-action film-making. Backgrounds are empty, props are minimal, and characters are drawn and animated to reflect their personalities. Young Gerald walks with a boing-boing in his step. His terrified father is petrified into acting as a hat stand for Doctor McCoy.

There’s a short scene where a lonely Gerald – rejected by other children and then by his father – climbs the stairs to his attic bedroom. It’s rich in pathos: the simple backdrop makes sure the viewer concentrates on poor little Gerald.

The minimalist style and simple, flat colours create a believable fictional world without the need for visual realism. Every element helps to tell the story.



View Gerald McBoing-Boing at YouTube.

The Magic Lantern, October 2008

I was in Glasgow last Tuesday evening for The Magic Lantern’s launch of Scottish Digital Shorts 2009. Before the launch presentation was a programme of short films, plus a Q&A with Richard Smith, director of Mono, and Peter Mackie Burns, director of Milk.

Only one animation – so it’s just as well it was the lovely Over the Hill.

The full programme: Trawler (dir. Johnny Barrington), Trout (dir. Johnny Barrington), Lady Margaret (dir. Deborah Haywood), Mono (dir. Richard Smith), Over the Hill (dir. Peter Baynton) and Milk (dir. Peter Mackie Burns).

Oktapodi

Directors: Julien Bocabeille, Francois-Xavier Chanioux, Olivier Delabarre, Thierry Marchand, Quentin Marmier and Emud Mokhberi
Gobelins L’ecole de L’image
© 2007
02 minutes 25 seconds


This student film is of professional quality at every level. Story, characterisation, animation, lighting, rendering and music work together to create a near-perfect short. Oktapodi has been winning awards all year, most recently Best of Show at SIGGRAPH.

The story has everything: it’s a romance expressed through a car chase. The lovers are six-legged octopi (I’m not sure why they’re two tentacles short, but six limbs makes for great hugs). A commis chef in search of fresh seafood purchases one of the pair, leading its mate to embark on a desperate rescue mission and the film to swing into action-hero mode.

The chase sequence is set in the streets of a Mediterranean town. The light is glorious, the colour scheme evocative, and the design of both characters and sets effective. The camera work uses a range of viewpoints, including octopus-eye, to good effect. The music captures the tone and includes a lovely comedy silence. One particular shot, showing the octopi making their way towards the sea one swimming pool at a time, stands out as being particularly beautiful.

As for the ending: it’s not quite the happy ending the viewer can’t help hoping for, but it’s much more satisfying. Don’t ever get in the way of an octopus and its love.


View information and making of on the official Oktapodi site or watch the whole film on YouTube.

Love Letters and Live Wires

We caught the BFI’s programme of highlights from the GPO film unit at the Cameo on Sunday. It was fabulous – hilariously funny (both intentionally and accidentally), full of interesting social history, and including some beautiful and well-crafted films. My personal favourite was The Tocher, a Lotte Reiniger delight, although Norman McLaren’s Love on the Wing had a glorious energy and Night Mail deserves its classic status.

Here’s the calendar for the touring programme: I’d recommend catching it if you can.

The full programme: N or NW (dir. Len Lye), Love on the Wind (dir. Norman McLaren), The Fairy of the Phone (dir. William Coldstream), The Horsey Mail (dir Patrick Jackson), Trade Tattoo (dir. Len Lye), A Midsummer Day’s Work (no director credited), The Tocher, (dir. Lotte Reiniger) and Night Mail (dirs. Harry Watt and Basil Wright).

Weiss

Director: Florian Grolig
Panopticum
© 2007
05 minutes 07 seconds


On purity of concept alone this film is a winner. It's an idea that seems both obvious and simple, causing us to wonder why we haven't seen anything like it before. Grolig's study in shadow, Weiss, examines how light and shade allow us to make sense of what we see. It is one of those pieces where, having watched it once, we think we have a clear memory of what happens - but the mind plays tricks. I saw it first at its UK premiere at last year's Encounters festival and I would swear that both character and background were white, the former being visible only by virtue of clever shading. There is a kind of visual ventriloquism taking place here that I quite like. The ability to make the viewer believe they have seen something they have not is valuable indeed.

The story starts off literally at walking pace and cleverly captures our attention by building up levels of anticipation. It is easy to see what is happening and we begin to believe we know what is going to happen next, although we are never quite sure enough to lose interest. Strangely, for an entirely visual subject, the sound designer works just as hard as the animator, if not harder. The sound ties in beautifully with what we see and achieves a perfect balance between the just perceptible and the self-conscious that defines the atmosphere throughout. I struggle to think of an animation where weight and the danger it presents in motion are conveyed so convincingly almost exclusively by sound.

The climax becomes a little too chaotic for my liking. The sense of peril and claustrophobia are handled well but the visuals take on an air of randomness and confusion. If anything though, this gives the ending greater impact. Again, we are allowed a delicious moment of believing that we can guess what is going to happen at the exact moment it is revealed and we are left to ponder how our protagonist will cope in the altered state his brief moment of recklessness and frustration has seemingly brought about. This one will stay in the mind for a long time, its simplicity, gentle humour and philosophical outlook are a delight.

Grolig has posted Weiss on Myspace but for a clearer (if not completely weiss) view I would recommend watching the QuickTime version on Grolig's own website.

Emily and the Baba Yaga

Director: Clive Tonge
LYNCHPIN and 19hertz
© 2005
09 minutes 30 seconds


Isn’t memory odd? I saw this short at the Edinburgh Festival several years ago (2005, according to the Baba Yaga website) and have been looking for it since – without success as I could remember neither title nor director. I finally came across it this week. I would have sworn that the rhyming narration continued throughout the film, but in fact it only bookends the action.

Anyway, this is the story of an extremely competent young girl called Emily. She lost her mother in a DIY disaster – the details of which remain a mystery – so her father has taught her how to handle tools. This turns out to be useful when, following the arrival of a potential stepmother, Emily needs to cut her way through a spooky forest, perform emergency surgery and sharpen a knife for an elderly neighbour. The neighbour turns out to have a fantastic house on legs – and the tenacity of the Terminator. Fortunately Emily and her trusty chainsaw are a match for anything.

This looked great on the big screen three years ago, but the CGI now looks a little clunky in places. It’s the character of Emily that shines through. She’s fairy-tale princess capable of saving herself – and the man she loves – but the cost is high. Her transformation from smiling, bubblegum-coloured poppet to knowing goth teenager means that there is no return to childhood even after the wannabe stepmother has run screaming from the scene.


View Emily and the Baba Yaga at YouTube.

Artificial Worlds v3.0

Director: Richard Fenwick
onedotzero
© 2006
7 minutes


Animation Critic was conceived, in part, to give an opportunity to reflect on what makes a good short. Richard Fenwick's work, Artificial Worlds v3.0 (RND#16), provides such opportunity. Strictly speaking this is an effects flick, not an animation, but it posesses enduring inspirational quality and deserves some analytical mulling over.

I first came across this piece on the experimental film pages of the BBC Film Network's site. I was drawn by the wireframe poster shot of the jumping figure (below) and guessed there'd be copious helpings of gorgeously rendered CGI imagery on offer. As it turns out, the CGI imagery is rather plain and functional, but not in a bad way. It provides the perfect foil to the gorgeously shot live footage. If you have the bandwidth, you should definitely treat yourself to the h480p viewing experience on Fenwick's website. The extra widescreen format suits this film perfectly. From the derelict industrial wastelands to the bleak and barren beachscapes, Fenwick masters a vision of menacing desolation. Portentious zooms into empty space and clever action glimpse-cutting combine to create a lot of tension in the opening sequences. The camerawork in the forest is stunning, as is the choreography of the chase. The camera lingers just long enough after the last frantic runner has passed to elicit a real sense of dread. And in this way it continues. Tension gives way to panic and the action floods down through the dramatic setting to the sea, the pace dictated by a very delibrate rhythm and recorded by a series of remarkable camera techniques.

The narrative is clear. There is no need for dialogue. All we hear is the spare, functional soundtrack by Cathode. In fact, the piece would read as a music video were it not for a frenetic intensity that would overwhelm any song.

If I have a criticism it is the apparent lack of temporal continuity. The momentum the piece gains is occasionally impeded by the expectation that our protagonists should surely have met their doom by now. Their doom, it seems, does not approach uniformly. That said, this is a very fresh idea, well-executed and a real inspiration. You might be interested to see other works by Fenwick in his RND# (random number) series, many of which can be accessed from his website or the onedotzero site. Be prepared for some surprisingly different but no less accomplished stuff.


View Artificial Worlds v3.0 at the BBC Film Network.

Procrastination

Director: Lev Yilmaz
Ingredient X Entertainment
© 2004
01 minutes 20 seconds


I saw Yilmaz’s Procrastination before the previously-reviewed Procrastination – it screened before a feature at Filmhouse early this year. (I think it was part of a FutureShorts initiative, but I’m not sure. Whatever, it was great to see a short at the cinema outside a film festival. There seems to be a trend towards promoting shorts: I saw Operator a couple of weeks ago before Man on Wire. It’s a good trend!)

Back to Procrastination. The voiceover is a stream of consciousness masterpiece showing how it’s possible to justify almost any type of procrastination as a direct contribution to getting your "stuff" done. Again, we’ve all been there. The simplicity of the narrative works well; there’s no melodrama, just the slow, depressing passage of an entire wasted day.

The animation technique is unusual. Each shot starts with a static line drawing. Embellishments are then added: drawn in real time, on translucent paper on glass, and filmed from behind. Yilmaz explains his inspiration in this interview:

I actually completely lifted the technique really from an obscure old arthouse movie called The Mystery of Picasso where the filmmaker [Clouzot] spent a few days with Picasso in his studio. Picasso painted on transluscent canvases and [Clouzot] shot him from the other side, shot the canvases from the other side. I sort of took that and just added narration to it.

The drawings are simple, but clear. In many ways this is a classic example of “illustrated radio” (a description coined by Chuck Jones). In fact, if you watch with the sound off, you get a completely different film: one in which the protagonist has an extremely productive day. However, there’s a quirky charm to the drawings which enhance the low-tech voiceover. Procrastination, in this case, is definitely greater than the sum of its parts.



View Procrastination at YouTube.

Procrastination

Director: Johnny Kelly
Mickey and Johnny
© 2007
04 minutes 36 seconds


I’ve seen two shorts called Procrastination this year. Do animators procrastinate more than others? I wonder... I may never have descaled my kettle, but my shelves are beautifully colour-coordinated.

This one is Kelly’s RCA graduation film, screened at the EIFF. It goes with a simple "Procrastination is..." theme. Any viewer will find something to empathise with, and feel guilty about, but it’s when things get wonderfully surreal ("procrastination is playing imaginary computer games with your furniture") that the film really takes off.

The palette moves from black and white to bright colours. There isn’t much in between. This makes the short feel graphic-designer-y, as does the use of icons throughout. In the case of "...checking your emails" the icons come to life as stop motion manila envelopes, with Russian-doll-like recursion, which is rather pleasing.

The animation uses a variety of 2D styles – with a couple of brief ventures into 3D via architectural CGI and stop motion. This eclecticism emphasises the sometimes frenetic nature of procrastination. It also sets Kelly up for a nicely judged joke at the end.


View Procrastination at the BBC Film Network.

9

Director: Shane Acker
©2005
11 minutes


Shane Acker's 9 is a remarkable piece of animation. It documents the rite of passage of the young protagonist, 9, in his quest to avenge the demise of his mentor, 5. Set in a curious, post-apocalyptic landscape of indistinct scale and history, we glimpse the cunning and resourcefulness of a race of sackcloth-clad beings in their bid to survive in a harsh environment and evade the terrors it holds.

I recall that enchanting moment upon first finding the trailer online and the craving for more that ensued. Full viewing of the piece only confirms Acker's talent for story telling and generating an atmosphere. Although I didn't get exactly what was happening until I'd watched it through several times, the work's mystery and tension are haunting and demand second and subsequent viewings. Acker cleverly combines the present with flashback sequences to heighten the suspense and reinforce a deep sense of camaraderie, risk and loss. The animation of the characters is exemplary. A wealth of expression and emotion is conveyed throughout. The backgrounds and sets are meticulously thought out, shot and lit, not only enhancing the narrative but providing a visual feast. The action mostly takes place in twilight or near darkness. Glowing light plays an important role in the piece and makes for some gorgeously intimate close-ups. This is a sure hit from the animator who earned his stripes at WETA on Lord of the Rings.


View the trailer on Shane Acker's site or view the whole film on youtube.

If the plans heralded on his website come to fruition, Acker will be the worthy recipient of the interest and support of a certain Mr T. Burton and 9 will be transformed from short to feature. I, for one, hope that they do.