Documentary mixed media
Category: 3_Animation and Non-Fiction
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Ng’endo Mukii
Commissioned project for the Danish Refugee Council and RMMS in Nairobi. This Migrant Business, shows the systems that exist that enable and exploit African migrants seeking better lives in the Middle East and Europe. The system creates a cyclic force that ensures that demand and supply will continue to to feed into each other, indefinitely. This is a lucrative trade with vulnerable people as its currency. Really effective digital compositing of photography overlay, rotoscoping and puppet animation of drawing/painting. -
Research 3.3: Landscape animators
Ataru Sakagami, A Place to Name (2015)
Jane Aaron, Set In Motion (1987)
Jane Aaron, Traveling Light (1985)
Jane Cheadle, Sharks (2008)
Anne Harild, Tobacna Mesto (2017)
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Research 3.2: Animated documentaries
Watch some animated documentaries and consider the relationship between image and voice-over and the creative decisions the animator has made to help reinforce messages or meanings within the pieces.
Write short reflections for two animations with accompanying screenshots,
making comparisons between the two. As a starting point watch the animated documentaries below, or find your own examples:Ainsley Hendersen, It’s about Spending Time Together (2010)
Broomberg and Chanarin, Bureaucracy of Angels (2017)
Broomberg and Chanarin’s animated video is narrated by the hydraulic jaws of the digger that was used to destroy migrant boats that had arrived in Porto Pozallo, Sicily carrying refugees from North Africa. The artists filmed the rescue missions by the Migrant Offshore Aid Station (MOAS) foundation off the coast of Libya as well as the destruction of the boats left to decay once the migrant journeys have been made, in a vast shipping graveyard in Porto Pozallo. The film is narrated by the hydraulic jaws of the digger charged with the job of destroying these boats, tearing them apart into their constituent parts of timber and metal, a process that took forty days to complete. The digger appears in the narrow corridors of the boat yard, on the open sea and in the midst of a rescue operation off the coast of Libya, as a Cantastoria or ‘singing storyteller’, recounting the Sicilian ballad Terra ca nun senti. The song speaks of the fear and pain associated with immigration to and from Europe’s most southerly territory over the last 150 years. The commission was shown within King’s Cross St. Pancras station in a location close to the exit of the Eurostar, a passageway between the UK and greater Europe, embedding the work within the station and enabling it to be shown to a transient audience. In order for the film to be powerful, it seems important that the digital reconstruction of the digger is meticulously accurate and that the boat yard and rescue operation in the film uses documentary footage rather than constructed on a film set. The ‘footprint’ of the camera or digital image becomes more complicated and seems to gain more power as it plays with our knowing disbelief (that the jaws of a digger can sing) and our belief in the reality of the scene (rendered visually seamless using 3D animation software, lighting and editing).
Tim Webb, A is for Autism (1992)
Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman, Last Day of Freedom (2015)
Christoff Steiger, Jeffery and the Dinosaurs (2017):
A nostalgic male voice over and atmospheric music drive this narrative about time and death. High contrast, soft focused and textured black and white still images are sequenced as action footage. There are occasional dissolves and zooms, but mostly cut with movement between black and white shapes in opposing parts of the image. Throughout these images shake very slightly to give the feeling of movement.
‘Deep State’ Karen Mirza Brad Butler 2012. commissioned by Film and Video Umbrella. Funded by Arts Council England and London Councils. Courtesy of Waterside Contemporary, London and Galerie Non, Istanbul.
brings together and juxtaposes video and film footage of protests in different parts of the world with the reading of protest manuals and narration. And what seem to be pairing of primal human vocalisations and gestures of warnings and sitting back. Asking questions about what protest is and what we expect from it.
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Research 3.1: Evaluating Rotoscoping
‘Rotoscoping’ is the process of frame-by-frame tracing of recorded movements of actual humans or events.
The technique was developed in 1915 by animator Max Fleisher who used this technique as a way to create a seemingly more ‘realistic’ (or photorealistic) style of movement. Disney and other studios used this technique as one way of enhancing ‘realism’ in animation through the mimicry of live action.
However rotoscoping is not necessarily a satisfactory alternative to drawing freehand:
- it limits possibilities for creating imagined worlds and narrative
- real actors and objects do not have line, so tracing often results in lines being too prominent and sharp, too flaccid or too stiff.
Rotoscoping techniques
Digital rotoscoping: Filmed or live media are used as a reference point for the creation of digital animated movement: motion capture, interpolated rotoscoping, mattes and frame by frame rotoscoping.
Motion capture: Uses live actors and the signals of their movement is
interpreted by a computer. (See Part 2 of this unit??).Mattes/Masks/Stencils: Similar to motion capture but uses two dimensional sources to create a silhouette (called a matte) that can be used to extract that object’s shape from a scene for use on a different background. This extraction is often aided by green screen technology, motion-tracking and/or digital onion-skinning. Then images are composited in layers these in much the same way as a stencil or cut out shape would work in analogue collage/layering. Digital rotoscoping plays a large role in the production of visual effects and animation.
Interpolated Rotoscoping: the digital equivalent to the pose-to-pose approach. The animator sets a particular style, line weight and colour. They then link key drawings to anchor points in the source footage. The computer then ‘interpolates’ all the in-between movements according to the action on screen. The first software to do this, ‘Rotoshop Software’, was developed by computer scientist Bob Sabiston in the 90’s which he used to make his film “ Snack and Drink ”. Subsequently this software was used by director Richard Linklater for the production of his feature films Waking Life (2001) and Scanner Darkly (2006).
Digital Frame By Frame Rotoscoping does the in-betweens by hand – either in physical or digital media. Each frame of the video footage is drawn or painted over, one by one. Done digitally the technique requires import of the source video, but can be done in most professional animation programmes. In physical media every source frame is printed out and manipulated before being rescanned and played in sequential order.
Look at a range of animations that use rotoscoping as a technique and compare the results.
As a starting point, view the animation links below and use Vimeo or other online sources to find other examples of animations that appear to have used the rotoscoping technique.
Choose examples to analyse and express your opinion of their use of
rotoscoping. How has each animation used copying/rotoscoping and to what effect? Is it always effective as a technique and are there any pitfalls?‘Rotoshop Software’, was
developed by computer scientist Bob Sabiston in the 90’s which he used to make
his film “ Snack and Drink ”. Subsequently this software was used by director
Richard Linklater for the production of his feature films Waking Life (2001) and
Scanner Darkly (2006).Babiston
Elizabeth Hobbes, Finding My Way (2014)
Dee Hibbert-Jones and Nomi Talisman, Last Day of Freedom (2015)
Tommy Pallotta, Snack and Drink (1999)
Elizabeth Hobbs & K T Tunstall, Layman, Shaman, Dreamin (2010)
Jane Cheadle & Cobi Labuscagne, Swimmer (2005)
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Lisa Pau
MFA Experimental Animation
California Institute of the Arts
available for work inquiries – loupau@alum.calarts.edu
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Jerzy Kucia
Scriptwriter, artistic director, animated film director, artist, producer and university teacher. He was born on 14 January in Sołtysy near Wieluń. He earned his degree from the Painting and Graphic Arts Department of Krakow Academy of Fine Arts (1967). He was a student of the same Animated Film Studio that he began to run in 1981. Jerzy Kucia has taught at a number of film schools including those in Vancouver, London and Mumbai. He is also a graphic artist. Since 1970 he has been associated with the Animated Film Studio and in 1992 he started to produce his own films. Professor Kucia co-organizes and runs the International Animated Film Workshops in Krakow. In 1994 – 1997 he was the Vice-president of Association Internationale du Film d’Animation (ASIFA). Jerzy Kucia has won many awards, which include the First Prize of the Wiosna Opolska Festival (1970), the Award of the City of Krakow (1982), the First Degree Award of the Minister of Culture and Arts in Animation (1985), Krakow’s Governor Award for artistic achievement in animation and educational activity (1993), MTV Bronze Award (1994), the Prize of the Holland Animation Film Festival in Utrecht (1996), the Award of the City of Krakow for achievement in culture promotion (1996), the Special Golden Dinosaur for the ability to combine artistic and pedagogical activity awarded at the Etiuda International Film Festival in Krakow (2003) and numerous festival prizes.
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David Lynch
Six Figures Getting Sick (Six Times)[edit]
Main article: Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)
Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times) (1966). Originally untitled, “Six Men Getting Sick” is a one-minute color animated film that consists of six loops shown on a sculptured screen of three human-shaped figures (based on casts of Lynch’s own head as done by Jack Fisk) that intentionally distorted the film[1]. Lynch’s animation depicted six people getting sick: their stomachs grew and their heads would catch fire.
Lynch made this film during his second year at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Art. The school held an experimental painting and sculpture exhibit every year and Lynch entered his work in the Spring of 1966. The animated film was shown on “an Erector-set rig on top of the projector so that it would take the finished film through the projector, way up to the ceiling and then back down, so the film would keep going continuously in a loop. And then I hung the sculptured screen and moved the projector back till just what I wanted was on the screen and the rest fell back far enough to disappear” (Chris Rodley, editor of Lynch on Lynch). Lynch showed the whole thing with the sound of a siren as accompaniment. The film cost $200 and was not intended to have any successors. It was merely an experiment on Lynch’s part because he wanted to see his paintings move.
The Alphabet
The Alphabet (1968) combines animation and live action and goes for four minutes. It has a simple narrative structure relating a symbolically rendered expression of a fear of learning. The idea for The Alphabet came from Lynch’s wife, Peggy Lentz, a painter whose niece, according to Lynch in Chris Rodley’s Lynch on Lynch book, “was having a bad dream one night and was saying the alphabet in her sleep in a tormented way. So that’s sort of what started The Alphabet going.” Based on the merits of this short film, Lynch was awarded an American Film Institute production grant and became a minor celebrity.
Ghost of Love
Moby ‘Shot in the Back of the Head’
I touch a Red Button Man
Six Figures Getting Sick 1966
The Grandmother (1970, 33 minutes).
The short film combines live action and animation. The story revolves around a boy who grows a grandmother to escape neglect and abuse from his parents. It is mostly silent with only occasional vocal outbursts of gibberish and soundtrack cues used to convey story.
The music in the film was provided by a local group known as Tractor, and marked the first time Lynch would work with Alan Splet, who was recommended to the filmmaker by the soundman of The Alphabet. Initially, Lynch and Splet intended to use a collection of sound effects records for the film, but after going through them all they found that none of them were useful. So, Lynch and Splet took sixty-three days to make and record their own sound effects.
The Cowboy and the Frenchman (1988, 26 minutes)
Slapstick, made for French television as part of the series The French as Seen by… by French magazine Figaro. It stars Harry Dean Stanton, Frederic Golchan and Jack Nance.
Lumière: Premonitions Following an Evil Deed (1996, 52 seconds)
Originally included as a segment in the 1995 film Lumière et compagnie. Forty acclaimed directors created works using the original Cinematographe invented by the Lumière brothers.
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Jonathon Hodgson
Jonathan Hodgson is an internationally renowned animation director based in London, he has twice won BAFTAs for Best Short British Animation in 2000 and 2019. He studied animation at Liverpool Polytechnic and the Royal College of Art. After spending 25 years directing commercials he moved to academia, setting up and leading the Animation degree at Middlesex University where he combines teaching with making personal films. He is the animation director of Wonderland: The Trouble with Love and Sex, the first full length animated documentary on British TV.
