The technique, for better and for worse, has been taken over by technology. It's the simplest method of animation and can be accomplished with minimal skill in any number of digital applications: anything from Final Cut Pro, a high end Discreet Logic/Autodesk (Flame, Smoke, Inferno, etc), Commotion, AfterEffects, Flash, and on and on.
One of the issues Norstein brought up with his technique is how "things come out in animation". A shot which was planned to be 3 seconds (OK 6 seconds, he's Russian) might go on twice as long.
We were given about ten days from first phone call to broadcast to produce a two minute concert opener for The Barenaked Ladies. The assignment was open, but they wanted us to incorporate the cover art from their album. They may have also said "kung fu", I don't remember.
This film was produced at Maciek Albrecht's place on Bedford Avenue. It was a tight crew, Maciek and Ellie, Matthew Salata and Megan Whitmarsh. Alex Reshanov may have helped out too.
The first step, as always, was the storyboard. We then created the art. Pieces were made in Photoshop, printed, affixed to bristol, cut out, edged (coloring the side of the board to match the color of the face) and attached into puppets. Many fingertips have been severed in the service of cut out animation.
A few days into shooting, Maciek pops out from his camera area and exclaims: "I am making a three minute film!"
"Maciek," I reply, still getting my "producer" sea legs, "it's only supposed to be 90 seconds, and it's due in three days."
"Some things come out under camera..."
He wound up filming a little more than three minutes, which Dave Courter edited down to 2:15.
One of the things that "came out" under camera was a missing right hand. The back up was also destroyed, but we had an extra left hand.
Maciek came up with the split second decision to backlight the characters into silhouette so you couldn't tell the hand was wrong. This also made the whole piece more dynamic. That's just one example of what a brilliant guy he is.
The piece was shot in color, but it looked better in black and white (another unconscious nod to Norstein, perhaps), so we drained the color in the Avid and made a hand delivery to backstage at Madison Square Garden. Thousands of screaming teenagers whooped at the film which wasn't even a dream less than two weeks earlier.
3 comments:
A video for a Barenaked Ladies concert set to Elvis Costello music? Odd. Was this the track of the piece they used at the concert?
They were supposed to perform live to it before the curtain went up.
I selected this piece as a track to cut picture.
They liked it so they kept it, at least at the MSG show we were at.
I've always liked that song too. Good choice.
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