This piece was so inspirational, I had to post it. It really speaks in so many levels...and it's so well executed, from the CG to the compositing to the sound/score. All done by the same guy. What a beautiful display of talents.
Now one of the things that really impresses me here is the composition choices as well as the interesting angles he chooses. Definitely something worth studying.
Feedback is quite a delicate part of what we do. Sometimes animators take it well and other times not so well. Over the years, I've come to learn that without feedback, my shots or anything I do would look like complete crap. Getting some fresh eyes on what it is that we do, really helps, especially when you are staring at your same shot for days and/or weeks.
I noticed people give feedback in some ways. I'm not writting here about how to give feedback...but instead, some pointers that may make the process a little easier.
First, does the animator want feedback? Are you confortable giving feedback to a person? If you are not, then don't. However, if the animator is open for suggestions, that's a great quality as it shows he or she wants to improve the shot.
Also, the feedback should be honest. I always go to particular animators at work, that I know will be direct on their feedback, and will not pull any punches. If I want to improve as an animator, I need that.
Not all feedback is about things to correct in the shot. Even if the shot needs a lot of work, it's nice when someone brings up something that is actually working.
Make the feedback constructive. Doesn't help to hear "That looks wrong" or "That area seems off". Instead, find ways to let them know how to fix it. Maybe the up/down curve could be smoothed out...or hold that pose there a little longer so that we read it.
What kind of feedback are you passing? Is it feedback that will improve the shot based on what the animator has in there already, or is it feedback that will make it different? Big differences.
I think it's important to respect the animators idea/choices. I would not want to give a friend feedback that will completely change their acting choices, unless they ask for it. Also, it's important to remember that this is their shot. Not my shot. Helps to keep that in mind.
I think it's important to get feedback from a few people. It doesn't matter how much I like the choice/acting I put in there. If two or more people agree that something in there is not working, then it's important to re-evaluate the shot, and consider to re-block that section.
Something that matters also is when the feedback is given. It's not the same to give feedback when the animator is just starting to work on it as opposed to the day the animator is supposed to final that shot.
If a shot is in the early early stages of blocking, then feedback related to the actual ideas, acting choices or overall staging of the character will be useful knowing a lot of the work in the shot is still very rough, and it's easy to change.
However, if your shot is about to be finaled, you are adding some of the polish...and someone tells you, to have your character walking slowly instead of running, it can really set you back. It helps to show often to get feedback, or if you don't, be ready to get feedback that may change your shot a 180 degrees.
So usually, if the shot is closed to being finaled, most of the feedback I'll offer is related to small polish things that may help the shot...arcs, pops, subtleties, keep alive areas...
It's important to know that getting feedback is about improving a shot, and not judging the animators skills. Some of my early blocking looks very crappy. However, at that stage I can care less about how the curves looks...what I'm concerned about is whether my ideas are good or even worth it.
Ultimately, the Director has the final say in a shot. So you can get all the feedback you want from peers, but at the end of the day, you are working towards helping the Director realize his/her vision.
What makes stuff funny. I'm still trying to figure out with every new thing I watch, that captures my attention. This post is not about animation or film, really...it's about comedy. Something that I'm not capable of explaining what it is, or how to get it. What feels funny to some people may not be funny to me, and viceversa.
Now what I've been observing are certain things that tend to keep us interested from a comedy point of view...and that's great stuff for me as an animator. Can't get enough of it, and continue trying to apply it to my work in whichever way I can.
One of those things is status. Great masters of comedy such as Charlie Chaplin, knew this all along. And they knew how to apply to his gags. Highly recommend studying Charlie Chaplin for this reason, and another million reasons as well. I'm a big Seinfeld fan, and have been learning so much from the show. Some episodes hold up today as much as they did fifteen years ago. So I wanted to use another example from it, this time from actor Larry Miller, who I consider to have great subtleties and a pretty unique and advanced sense of humor. In this clip Larry Miller plays a Doorman, and it opens this Seinfeld episode with the same name:
First, what really catched my eye here was the use of status and subtext. Status is used heavily borderline confrontational. Larry's body language and delivery is played with a much higher status than Seinfeld himself, especially in a role of a doorman. Being used to seeing how in a job like that a doorman treats the client with the most respect, to see Larry Miller cross that line of respect so blatantly and over the top, made the introduction of this character instantly funny. Some areas to pay attention for example is the finger action...he's not even looking at him to begin with. And that body language is more used when someone has a much closer relationship to another person. Which again brings it back to status for me. Also, he takes a while in making eye contact with Seinfeld. Another thing he does status wise, is to scan Seinfeld up and down, walking towards him slowly with a big smirk in his face. Again, somehow seeing someone in a position like that, behaving that way, became very funny to me. Goes back to doing unexpected things from certain personalities or characters....and it is that contrast that brings reactions out of us. Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin both did that.
Second, the subtext throughout the whole scene is something else. What the doorman character is implying by his facial expressions, by his timing...brings comedy to the scene as well. For example, the dialogue goes:
- "Can I help you? Benes. No one here by that name."
The simple fact that he's smiling throughout his delivery, to me adds another layer to his character, and his status in this scene.
Third, Larry's delivery and timing in each sentence is really great. Pay attention to the timing when he says the word "Quickie". He includes a pause in there which makes the overall sentence even funnier. If you cut that pause, guarantee the delivery of that sentence is not as funny. Breaking up the timing in our actions, pauses and dialogue, always adds a whole new dimension to comedy in my opinion.
Anyways, see how it feels to you. Hopefully someone finds this useful.
Been meaning to write and recommend some of this stuff. These are either great work done by friends and other stuff I've found that may be both motivating and inspiring. Some of these people have devoted years of work in their free time, to put these together and that's never easy. So be sure to check these out:
For those in Northern California who are able to get the KQED Arts channel and are interested, they have a weekly show named Imagemakers, where they showcase really great Shortfilms from all over the world. Read more about it here: About Imagemakers
And for a list of films showcased so far and a description of them: Imagemakers Shortfilms
Some of these films are beautifully made. Highly highly recommended.
Since this week I'm taking a small break, as I get ready to get back to work on TS3 for our last few months, I figured I'd write about something I've been reading and studying about a lot recently in terms of planning and shooting.
It's been more than interesting to figure out ways to combine multiple ideas in a shot, and see how it would play out in a full scene. So far until not long ago I kept thinking about one idea per shot, meaning something happens in shot A, then something else happens in shot B...then shot C....and it'd be the juxtaposition of those shots that give meaning to a scene.
However, I started running into the issue of a scene being a little too static, or the scene not being broken up enough from a shot structure point of view. Some stuff just felt plain boring to watch. All of a sudden, when planning animatics I'd find myself having separate shots and a scene that didn't feel dynamic. To put it simply, the scene would lack a lot of interest from a shot structure.
I continued researching different films to see what different Directors and/or DPs would do with their scenes. Also, at one point, Sharon Calahan (Director of Photography at Pixar), a truly wonderful person and very very helpful to me lately, brought up to me the idea of combining separate ideas into single shots. That soon made me want to go back to studying films thinking about that. Not only it would allow to simplifying sequences and be more practical in the number of setups, but also would add a bit more interest when putting the shots together. Easier said than done. When working on the Shortfilm, I found out that time on the set is more than a luxury sometimes especially when working with kids. Because of this, we weren't able to have the flexibility of working out some of the camera setups my DP Tiffany and me originally had in mind. Very difficult stuff.
However, it was still a huge learning experience to plan as if we would be able to nevertheless. So with that in mind, I wanted to show an example I found very useful in learning about combining separate ideas into one single shot by a great use of camera work/leading the eye to where it needs as well as some great character staging choices.
The movie is Hitchcock's "Notorious" (1946). If you haven't watched it, do watch it before to avoid spoilers. Here is a section towards the end of the film.
The middle shot while it may seem simple now, but it was quite eye opening for me. We learn than the bad guy here (Sebastian) just found out that Alicia (Ingrid Bergman) is an american agent spying on him. So him and his mother decide to take some slow measures towards her and start to poison her.
This shot starts out with a relaxed 3/4 MS shot of Sebastian. What starts out as a simple dialogue exchange (where you almost expect to cut to the opposite 3/4 shot of Alicia) all of a sudden brings attention to what's really going on, the coffee. The camera tracks straight to the coffee and holds there. We don't see anyone putting poison on the coffee. But we get it. When Alicia is first talking, the camera is still on Sebastian, not her...for a reason. Then the camera while she's still talking, goes to the coffee, not her. We then see Alicia drinking the coffee, and right away the camera tracks from her face to a profile shot of the mother. Since the mother is in profile, we are pretty removed from her eyeline. I'm guessing this was done in purpose to have her in profile as opposed to an eyeline closer to us.
So in just one shot we get:
Sebastian starts to get Alicia to drink coffee
He's pretending nothing out of the ordinary is going on
This coffee is poisoned
Alicia has no idea what's going on
Sebastian's mother is also in it
Anyways, this series of moving tracks from one character, to the coffee, to the other character to the final character in a way it could almost be a bit too on the nose nowadays...However, for my purposes, it taught me a lot. It goes back to:
What's the point of the shot
How can you say it in an interesting way
How can you add suspense and drama out of the characters
To name a few. Then, back to the combination of ideas into single shots, I'd add:
How can I simplify the number of shots in a scene so that's not too many.
How can I cover more than one story point in a shot without making it too busy/distracting, and instead make the shot more interesting visually?
How can I improve the timing/pacing of the scene by doing this throughout?
Anyways, I hope this stuff is as helpful to you as it's been to me studying them.
I couldn't be more proud of being part of this film. On this trailer I was responsible of a couple of parts. The 3 shots of the little kid about to chew Buzz Lightyear in slow motion, and the shots of Buzz when he pushes all the other toys away, strikes a Flamenco pose, walks towards the camera and talks in spanish. Very very fun stuff to animate for me personally.
It's been great studying movies in different ways. Some days you study the performance, other days you study the composition. It never ever gets tiring. Quite the contrary. I've been studying several movies over the last year for different reasons each. I wanted to do a small post on editing as it plays a major role on what it is that we do, and it's very difficult stuff sometimes.
Editing can enhance a performance or break it. Simple as that. It can add another layer to the pacing of a perfomance, and it can simply add another layer to a scene in general. When you connect three shots together...all of a sudden, you have a whole new bunch of tools to tell your story, and you can tell it in a million different ways.
Simple rough example. Three shots. A shot of a guy walking on the street. A shot of a car in motion. A close up of the guy. As you place each of those shots in different places with different timing, you could get something like:
- A car is coming, and the guy doesn't see it coming. - A car is coming and the guy reacts. - Guy reacts as he's about to get hit by a car.
To name a few. So to show a more powerful example, I chose an example from the film Searching for Bobby Fischer, a wonderful film shot by DP Conrad Hall/John Corso and edited by Wayne Wahrman. Beautiful photography in it by the way, highly recommended. Pay attention how this scene is edited almost as a shortfilm in itself:
This scene I found is a great example of bringing texture/depth to the pacing of a scene, by how each shot it timed out as well as the choices in each of the shots:
The early shots are longer. Less or none is happening.
We don't see what's going on through the early shots. By the framing of the chess game and Ben Kinsgley's performance, information is being held temporarily from the audience to keep us interested. We don't even get to see what Ben is doing in these shots. We just hear the sound of the chess game in the background getting stronger and stronger.
Camera is not necessarily moving as much. Just keep alive.
Slowly we are being let in as to what's going on. Still the timing of the shots is long.
At one point we are thrown in the action. The cuts begin to speed up. Framing starts to have some quick camera pans and tilts, and quicker and quicker timing as we go.
Music is keeping us in the moment as well.
Cuts at this point become twice as quick...and at one point the accelerate to the point of some shots just being a few frames long.
If you notice, some of the shots of the clock being hit don't match the actual sounds. I'd bet this was a conscious decision done by the editor, to add more confusion to the moment. They get in sync after a moment.
This editing ends up with one key story moment with the chess piece followed by a much slower tilt. The shot is held on the reaction shot of one actor, and held again on the kid actor. Not much else going on, not movement, no talking, nothing, just exchanges. This big change in the pacing gives contrast to all the quick shots that just happened.
That combined with the rest of the scene going back to slow pacing, allows us to take in what just happened. If the cutting was always fast with no break, you'd go crazy. If it was always slow, you'd be bored as hell. It's always finding a balance.
The slow (almost still) pacing now has that shot of the chess piece being hit by the actor who's been defeated. If you think about it, there is not only texture to the editing, but also a musicality to it, just like we find in timing.
Ultimately it is finding ways through the editing for the story to be told.
They always make it look so easy. And it's not. Editing done properly takes so long. What's difficult is to find the right reasons as to why you do something. It's not enough to say "I want to edit things quickly". Everything in film should have a purpose and editing is no different than acting, framing, composition, color.
