Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
Film Attendance, Comments, Exam, and Semester Grades. (Gong xi fa cai!)
Students,
HERE'S A RECORD of your final grades in all areas of your class. Look them over carefully and notify me promptly if you see a problem.
I have opened up a Messenger (MSN) chat address (rdca25@hotmail.com) for those who wish to communicate with me in this way.
Students who missed more than 3 assignments did not benefit from the four-point class curve (additional points).
Your class comments on Li'l Abner were an improvement over your previous film comments, focusing more on specific cinematic issues rather than general issues of response. This response has its place, of course, but does not necessarily show involvement with technical issues discussed in your textbook and class handouts and lectures.
I should advise you that, from what I understand, student email passwords have been changed, so you will have to change passwords in order to access your email. As I understand, there's a discussion of this on the student BBS. But you should make certain of the problem, the nature of the problem, or even if there is a problem, before you take action.
Final Attendance, Comments, Exam, and Semester Grades (Gong xi fa cai!)
HERE'S A RECORD of your final grades in all areas of your class. Look them over carefully and notify me promptly if you see a problem.
I have opened up a Messenger (MSN) chat address (rdca25@hotmail.com) for those who wish to communicate with me in this way.
Students who missed more than 3 assignments did not benefit from the four-point class curve.
Your class comments on Li'l Abner were an improvement over your previous film comments, focusing more on specific cinematic issues rather than general emotional engagement with the film. This has its place, of course, but does not show involvement with technical issues discussed in your textbook and class handouts and lectures.
I should advise you that, from what I understand, student passwords for their email accounts have been changed, so you will have to change passwords in order to access your email. As I understand, there's a discussion of this on the student BBS. But you should make certain of the problem, the nature of the problem, of even if there is a problem, before you take action.
Sunday, January 18, 2009
Saturday, January 17, 2009
Thursday, January 1, 2009
A HISTORY OF THE ANIMATED CARTOON: Course Filmography
A History of the Animated Cartoon
Course Filmography
Enchanted Drawing (J. Stuart Blackton, 1900)Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (J. Stuart Blackton, 1906)
Fantasmagorie (Emile Cohl, 1908)
The Hasher's Delirium (Emile Cohl, 1910)
Little Nemo (Winsor McKay, 1911)
Gertie the Dinosaur (Winsor McKay, 1914)
Comicalamities (Pat Sullivan, 1928)
Boop-Oop-A-Doop (Max Fleischer, 1932)
Flowers and Trees (Burt Gillett, 1932)
The Three Little Pigs (Burt Gillett, 1933)
A Dream Walking (Max Fleischer, 1934)
House Cleaning Blues (Max Fleischer, 1937)
The Old Mill (Wilfred Jackson, 1937; Oscar)
Peace on Earth (Hugh Harman, 1939)
Fantasia (Walt Disney Studio, 1940)
The Night Before Christmas (Hanna and Barbera, 1941; Oscar nominated)
Bulleteers (Max Fleischer, 1941)
The Dover Boys at Pimento University (Chuck Jones, 1942)
Red Hot Riding Hood (Tex Avery, 1943)
Yankee Doodle Mouse (Hanna and Barbera, 1943; Oscar)
Brotherhood of Man (Bobo Cannon, 1945)
Cat Concerto (Hanna and Barbera, 1947; Oscar)
Gerard McBoing Boing (Bob Cannon, 1951; Oscar)
Rooty Toot Toot (John Hubley, 1952; Oscar nominated)
Neighbors (Norman McClaren, 1952)
Termites from Mars (Don Patterson, 1952)
Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones, 1953)
Hypnotic Hick (Don Patterson, 1953)
Christopher Crumpet (Bob Cannon, 1953; Oscar nominated)
The Tell-Tale Heart (Ted Parmelee, 1953; Oscar nominated)
The Unicorn in the Garden (Bill Hurtz, 1953)
Good Will to Men (Hanna and Barbera, 1955)
One Froggy Evening (Chuck Jones, 1955)
Scrambled Aches (Chuck Jones, 1957)
Flebus (Ernest Pintoff, 1957)
Huckleberry Hound (Hanna and Barbera, 1958)
Yogi Bear (Hanna and Barbera, 1961)
Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol (Abe Levitow, 1962)
The Flintstones (Hanna and Barbera, 1963)
Pink Phink (De Patie-Freleng, 1964; Oscar)
The Dot and the Line (Chuck Jones, 1965; Oscar)
The Bear That Wasn't (Chuck Jones and Maurice Noble, 1967)
Anna and Bella (Borge Ring, 1984; Oscar)
Even Pigeons Go to Heaven
(Sam Tourneaux & Simon Vanesse, 2007; Oscar nominated)
A BRIEF HISTORY OF ANIMATION (This is a revised version of a previous handout with new hyperlinked references. Students should view all these films.)
A Brief History of Animation
(Revised)
Richard de Canio
THE ANIMATED FILM is sometimes neglected in film studies in order to focus on live-action films. But animation comes nearest to pure cinema, with its emphasis on constant movement, visual metamorphosis (shapes turning into other shapes), abstract patterns, visual communication of ideas, and (after 1927) expressionistic use of sound with minimal use of dialogue.(Revised)
Richard de Canio
Animation quickly became identified with the Disney studio and its real-life models. This is unfortunate, since—so great was Disney's influence—other styles of animation were neglected.
The first animated films are preserved in J. Stuart Blackton's early stop-motion shorts, Enchanted Drawing (1900) and Humorous Phases of Funny Faces (1906). Emile Cohl's Fantasmagorie (1908) and The Hasher's Delirium (1910) show animation in its beginnings, with line drawings that fill the flat space of the screen.
Cohl's animation shows the metamorphic basis of all true animation: shapes morphing as other shapes. This is no different from verbal poetry. Thus a woman becomes a summer's day in a Shakespeare sonnet or a red red rose in a Robert Burns poem.
The first animation star was Gertie, in Gertie the Dinosaur (Winsor McCay, 1914). McCay's short film used more than 10,000 drawings, which he drew himself. No studio assisted him; and he worked in the era before cel animation.
Cel animation uses part of a figure on separate cels, so figure and background don't need to be drawn for each movement. The animator need only move a figure's hand or tail, as required; the background remains unchanged.
The animation director draws the main poses, called "extremes." But cartoons also require a layout artist (the background designer) and a background artist, who adds texture or details to the layout. An inker draws the figures on cels from drawings; a painter adds shades or colors; and an "in-betweener" draws the action of each figure "in between" the poses ("extremes") designed by the "director."
For example, Bugs Bunny is drawn munching a carrot; another pose shows him facing Elmer Fudd. These poses are called "extremes," drawn by the "director" to design the film. The "in-betweener" draws the poses in between the first pose of Bugs munching a carrot until the next pose of him facing Elmer Fudd.
McCay did this all himself. He had to draw each background hundreds or thousands of times. For Little Nemo (1911), McCay not only did the animation and layouts, but colored each separate frame of film to make the first color cartoon.
The first superstar of animation was Felix the Cat. He was created by Pat Sullivan but mainly animated by Otto Messmer, who also drew Felix in comic book format.
Felix had a genuine personality, akin to Chaplin's, or the later Disney characters. His thoughtful pacing became his trademark, along with his movable tail.
Moreover, the cartoons were constantly inventive. Though the early Felix cartoons were silent, Felix's personality, like Chaplin's, was distinctive.
A film such as Comicalamities (the wordplay on "comical" and "calamities" suggests the film's rich vein of visual play) is constant in its formal invention and reflexive play: the cartoon calls attention to itself as a cartoon. (For example, Felix asks his animator to draw his tail and later erases a female cat who exploits him.) Such reflexive animation became typical of the finest animators to come, such as Tex Avery and Chuck Jones, as in Duck Amuck (Chuck Jones, 1953).
Like the silent comic, Felix did not survive the sound era and was replaced by Disney's characters: first a famous mouse named Mickey; then three pigs; finally the repertoire of characters from feature films such as Snow White, Bambi, Pinocchio, and others.
Disney influenced animation for half a century. He has been unfairly called sentimental and corny. But nobody denies that he—more than anyone else—set new standards for animation.
His advances included technology. He was the first to use the three-strip technicolor process for full color cartoons. His multi-plane camera added depth to his images, as in The Old Mill (Wilfred Jackson, 1937; Oscar). His musical scores and songs were tuneful and dramatic. (Many songs became hits.) His expressionistic use of sound was novel. In fact, the word "mickeymousing" (an underscore cue that closely follows an action) is still used as a term for live-action films.
Disney's contribution is evident in his Silly Symphonies, which blended music, sound effects, and the new three-strip technicolor process, first used in Flowers and Trees (Burt Gillett, 1932). (The two-strip technicolor process used only reds and greens.)
Technology could not have helped a less gifted artist. But Disney insisted on true-life characters, seen as early as Mickey Mouse (Plane Crazy, 1927), the three pigs (The Three Little Pigs, 1933; Oscar), and the feature films.
Though Disney's art is called cute or corny, there's real emotional depth in many Disney cartoons, such as Snow White, Bambi, and Pinocchio. Disney's sense of gravity is apparent in the famous "Ave Maria" sequence from Fantasia (1940), with its long pan sequence.
Still, Disney limited the artistic range of animation. Aiming for live-action realism on all levels, he (and his imitators) neglected the two dimensions of the flat plane, with its own artistic validity.
One of the first attempts to move away from Disney's cartoon realism was The Dover Boys at Pimento University (Chuck Jones, 1942). Yet its stylized backgrounds still maintained an illusion of three-dimensional realism.
It was United Productions of America (known as UPA) that fully explored the possibilities of the flat style. So influential was UPA, its style became known as UPA whether the film came from UPA or not.
Examples include The Brotherhood of Man (Robert "Bobo" Cannon, 1946); Gerald McBoing Boing (Robert "Bobo" Cannon, 1951; Oscar); Rooty Toot Toot (John Hubley, 1952; Oscar nominated); The Unicorn in the Garden (Bill Hurtz, 1953); Christopher Crumpet (Bob Cannon, 1953; Oscar nominated); The Tell-Tale Heart (Ted Parmalee, 1954; Oscar nominated); and Munro (Gene Deitch, 1960; Oscar).
These "one-shot" films (only Gerald McBoing Boing had sequels) were noted for their abstract design, simple line drawings (The Unicorn in the Garden, Munro), distorted perspective (The Tell-Tale Heart), splash color areas and symbolic use of color (Gerald McBoing Boing), and stylized (instead of realistic) sets, as well as a more serious subject matter, such as alienation (Gerald McBoing Boing, The Unicorn in the Garden), bureaucracy (Munro), racism (The Brotherhood of Man), or psychopathology (The Tell-Tale Heart).
Often, as in Gerald McBoing Boing and Munro, there was no attempt to draw a floor or wall. This was not due to a lack of skill, but to focus on the essential action and and character outlines.
The UPA style was not limited to offbeat stories. The popular near-sighted Mister Magoo, with his comic misadventures, was animated in the same style. Even the seasonal Mister Magoo's Christmas Carol (Abe Levitow, 1962) shows a stylized use of design with an only partly filled-in background or floors in some scenes, such as at Bob Cratchit's house.
Of interest in animated films are not only ideas, layouts, and backgrounds, but also gags and characters. Here the Warner Brothers studio was influential from the 1940s on.
Not only children, but adults knew and loved Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Pepe Le Pew, Porky Pig, Sylvester the Cat, Tweety Bird, and Elmer Fudd hunting "wabbits," not to mention Road Runner and Coyote. These films (apart from the Road Runner shorts) also used vocal style in an expressionistic way. All (apart from Elmer Fudd) were voiced by Mel Blanc.
These voices show a marked distinction from that of Mickey Mouse (voiced by Disney in the early years) or other characters outside the Warner Brothers style. The Warners characters sound like split personalities, half-child, half-adult, their speech impediments (Sylvester's and Daffy's lisps; Tweety's baby talk; Elmer Fudd's soft r's) suggest their stunted social development, the basis of their antisocial behavior.
They are not drawings, but characters as real as Charlie Chaplin's Tramp or Dickens' Scrooge. For example, Bugs always wins, while Daffy always loses. Yet Daffy's ego remains intact in the next scene. Although not capable of change, neither are many real-life people with similar character disorders.
The Road Runner cartoons, directed by Chuck Jones, rank among the masterworks of animation and visual design. Using simple abstract layouts and a basic plot device (the Coyote chases Road Runner but never catches him), these cartoons sum up the human condition: Coyote tries to reach his goal but fails, which only increases his ambition. His pride in the technology of his Acme products (used to catch the Road Runner) has something of Greek tragedy in it, with the same tragic end.
Chuck Jones also mined surreal ideas in his cartoons, such as in the classic, One Froggy Evening (1955), where a frog sings only before its owner, driving the owner (who wishes to exploit him for commerical gain) mad. In Jones' The Bear That Wasn't (1967; co-directed by Maurice Noble), abstract design illustrates the alienation of a bear from its natural communion with nature. This cartoon seems heavily indebted to the earlier, Munro (Gene Deitch, 1960). Abstract design takes center stage in Jones' geometric romance, The Dot and the Line (1965; Oscar).
Tex Avery mined the vein of visual metaphor in the extreme and extended the subject matter of the cartoon with his erotic revisions of the Red Riding Hood story in Red Hot Riding Hood (1943) and others in this style. Here the wolf becomes a metaphor of sexual obsession.
There were other attempts to extend the range of subject matter. The insanity of war was animated in Hugh Harman's, Peace on Earth (1939), remade in CinemaScope by Hanna and Barbera as Good Will to Men (1955). (Both titles were ironically taken from the Gospel of Luke's message of the birth of Jesus.)
Neighbours (Norman McClaren, 1952; Oscar), with formal ingenuity, uses pixilated live-action to show peaceful "neighbors" killing each other and their families over ownership of a flower. The film was so violent it was only restored to its original cut decades after its release.
On the other hand, Anna and Bella (Borge Ring, 1984; Oscar) shows, in carefully selected color schemes, the whole range of emotions shared by two sisters. More recently, Even Pigeons Go to Heaven (Sam Tourneaux and Simon Vanesse, 2007; Oscar nominee) used models to animate a story of greed, deceit, and ironic justice.
This is the briefest summary of a hundred years of animation. Also noteworthy was Betty Boop, the first sexual cartoon character (Boop-Oop-A-Doop [Max Fleischer, 1932]. As a great innovator, Fleischer used toy models to create a 3-D effect in some of his films, such as House Cleaning Blues (1937).
A Dream Walking (1934), with the popular Popeye and Olive Oyl, makes clever use of visual design for exciting effects. Fleischer's Superman cartoons, such as Bulleteers (1941), are admired for their three-dimensional art design.
Tom and Jerry, the cat and mouse antagonists of the Hanna and Barbera animation team, were superstars for the MGM Studio in the 1940s, winning seven Oscars in nine years. Yankee Doodle Mouse (1943) and Cat Concerto (1947) are two examples of their Oscar-winning cartoons. The Night Before Christmas (1941) was their first Oscar-nominated film.
Though the Tom and Jerry cartoons generally receive praise among film scholars, they seem, to this viewer, more limited in their appeal. Tom's face lacks the expression of the great cartoon animals; while Jerry (the mouse), though beautifully drawn, seems merely cute, without character.
Direction (pacing) in these cartoons seems slow and the gags are staged for laughs rather than to reveal character or destiny. Unlike Warners' Sylvester the Cat, for example, Tom has no hostile design on Jerry; he simply chases the mouse, without obsession. The chase elicits laughter without defining character or proving psychology as destiny. Where the Warners cartoons were marketed for children but made for adults, the Tom and Jerry cartoons seem (to this viewer) to be both marketed as well as made for children.
The same might be said of Woody Woodpecker (Termites from Mars [Don Patterson, 1952; Oscar]; though Hypnotic Hick (Don Patterson, 1953), filmed during Hollywood's brief 3-D craze, has superb 3-D effects.
A popular character of the post-studio era was the Pink Panther (The Pink Phink [De Patie, Freleng, 1964; Oscar]; while the Disney Studio shows it has not lost its competitive edge with its periodic releases of popular feature-length cartoons.
William Hanna and Joseph Barbera had influence beyond their Tom and Jerry cycle. Using limited animation, they popularized many television cartoon characters, such as Huckleberry Hound (1958), Yogi Bear (1961) and The Flintstones (1963). But these cartoons seriously undermined animation as an art, abusing limited animation for commercial reasons.
In limited animation, only parts of the cartoon figure are animated, and animation is reduced from one frame for each drawing to several frames. This reduced the cost of production, but also the quality of the animation, without the artistic purpose or design of UPA's limited animation, which may more properly be called "selective animation."
However, animation is not limited to drawings. As shown, pixilation uses live-action in stop-frame images, animating people. Claymation uses clay figures shot in stop-motion frames. CGI (computer-generated imagery) has advanced the technology of animation.
But the goal of all animation is the same: to find poetry in movement and thought in design, which it can do better than any other film genre.
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