After seeing How to Train Your Dragon and The Secret of Kells back to back, I noticed that both films finished with rather elaborate and visually complex climaxes. Such sequences have become commonplace in animated films these days, and can be seen in movies ranging from Astro Boy to  Shrek Forever After, a trend that seems to have been  facilitated by the introduction of digital technologies. It is a development that can most easily be explained by what I call (for lack of a better term) Deneroff’s Law, which is admittedly a variation of Parkinson’s Law and applies to both pre- and post-digital animation and live-action filmmaking.

In 1958, C. Northcote Parkinson, famously stated in Parkinson’s Law: The Pursuit of Progress, that, “Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.” And Deneroff’s Law basically states: Given more powerful and complex tools, filmmakers will inevitably use them to make more complex films.”

This rather simplistic observation is by no means original and in fact was inspired by a comment John Lasseter made during a phone interview about Toy Story 2. If I remember correctly, he said something like when presented with a computer 10 times more powerful, rather than using the added power to produce animation 10 times quicker, animators will usually opt to make their animation 10 times more complex and expensive.

I then noticed something similar in Michael Barrier’s Hollywood Cartoons: American Animation in its Golden Age that

When Disney ordered the switch to rough animation [around 1932], that procedure made it possible to pass down much more work to the lowest — and lowest-paying rungs — and so greatly increase the animators’ output.

In fact … everything indicates that the animators’  footage actually declined sharply as they delegated more work. Although the Disney studio’s staff more than tripled between 1930 and 1932, the number of films changed hardly at all. In 1930, the studio completed nineteen cartoons; in 1931, twenty-two; and in 1932, twenty-two again. … As Disney pursued an ever more refined division of labor, breaking the work into smaller and smaller components, each worker’s output did not rise — as could be expected in a normal manufacturing operation — but fell. (104)

In other words, Disney expanded his staff in the early 1930s for some of the same reasons that companies like Pixar or Weta Digital will add additional computing power. I would also, for instance,  argue that Willis O’Brien, Ub Iwerks, Max Fleischer and Walt Disney adopted the multiplane camera (first developed in Europe by Lotte Reiniger and Berthold Bartosch) in the 1930s for some of the same reasons. (See my earlier post on multiplane technologies here.)

For O’Brien, the multiplane setup he devised for King Kong enabled him to create imagery far more complex than he could previously do using traditional stop motion techniques, as well as more credibly blend it in with live action than was possible with his earlier work on The Lost World.

For Iwerks, Fleischer and Disney, their multiplane systems similarly enabled them to expand beyond the limits imposed by traditional cel animation technology. Up until the introduction of the multiplane camera, drawn animation was constricted by the use of 12 field animation paper (10½" x 13½"), though Disney termporarily trumped his rivals by using 16 field paper (13½" x 16½"), which was over 50% bigger, thus allowing for more detailed drawings.

For instance, the following image from Fleischer’s Popeye the Sailor Meets Sindbad the Sailor (Dave Fleischer/Willard Bowsky, 1936) in which Sindbad’s Roc is about the fly off to kidnap Olive Oyl, was done as a traditional cel setup, though possibly using 16 field paper.

Now compare it with a frame from the next shot using Fleischer’s Stereoptical Process which used three-dimensional instead of painted backgrounds that resulted in a sharper sense of perspective and detail.

But with the introduction of digital ink and paint, multiplane effects were much easier to implement and also allowed the introduction of computer animation into the mix. But in accordance with Deneroff’s Law, one could point to the ballroom scene in Gary Trousdale and Kirk Wise’s Beauty and the Beast as a way of using technology to increase the scene’s complexity.

As time went on and digital imagery became more prevalent, so did the complexity of what passed for traditional drawn animation, as seen in this shot from the climax of Ron Clements and John Musker’s Treasure Planet.

The same effect could also be seen in live-action movies. Once upon a time, studios could boast of films with huge sets and cast of thousands, and actually mean it, as in this recreation of ancient Babylon in D.W. Griffith’s Intolerance.

Visual effects could substitute to a certain extent, but were limited by pre-digital technology (though not as limited as those available for traditional drawn animation). The following shot from Stanley Kubrick’s widescreen epic, 2001: A Space Odyssey, while perhaps breathtaking in its splendor, is nevertheless rather static.

George Lucas’ Star Wars (Episode 4: A New Hope) pushed the technology a bit further and got more dynamic results, creating a greater sense of depth and detail, as seen in the film’s opening shot.

With digital technology, you could create vast vistas and populate them with both people and/or creatures, as seen in the scene where Forrest Gump addresses an anti-Vietnam War rally on the Mall in Washington, D.C. in Robert Zemeckis’ Forrest Gump (the size of the crowd was grossly inflated) …

or in this scene from Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers populated by an endless numbers of alien insects.

Of course, the development of more powerful digital technologies need not always lead to increased visual complexity, but clearly the temptation is there.

(By the way, could the increased number of shots in movies in recent years be related to the introduction of  such non-linear editing systems such as The Avid?)

Raz Greenberg, in a post on the Society for Animation Studies discussion group, pointed out the above Spanish-language clip from a Euronews report on Ari Folman’s new film, The Congress, which mixes animation and live-action. The movie is based on Stanislaw Lem sci-fi novel The Futurological Congress and is follow-up to Folman’s acclaimed animated documentary, Waltz with Bashir.

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Well, the wait is over and, whether one likes it or not, Avatar looks like the game changer that James Cameron, Jeffrey Katzenberg and other promoters of 3D movies said it would be, quieting critics who said the technology would never really work in live action. It also looks like it will be the film which legitimatizes motion/performance capture, especially as a way for live-action directors to enter the wonderful world animation (though sometimes without necessarily admitting it’s animation). It also helps that, despite its occasionally comical mixture of Star Wars and FernGully, it’s a pretty good movie.

As I wrote a year ago, “I suspect 3D will not go away anytime soon; the question , I believe, is whether or not it will go beyond being a niche market.” Avatar’s success certainly solidifies 3D’s place in the cinematic mainstream, though calling it a live action is problematic. (In this regard, do read Brad Brevet’s “Should ‘Avatar’ Be Considered for Best Animated Oscar?” on RopeofSilicon.com here and Steve Hulett’s follow-up comments on The Animation Guild blog here.) Thus, Kristin Thompson’s comments on Beowulf that “It’s still fiendishly difficult and expensive to shoot live action material in digital 3-D, so most projects are animated,” perhaps still seems to hold.

In regards to his use of motion capture, Cameron has been especially boastful about how he has overcome the last obstacle to the technology’s acceptance, that of being able to reproduce not only the reference actor’s bodily actions, but their exact facial expressions as well. As a result we are left with the spectacle of critics gushing over how, for example, Sigorney Weaver’s avatar face looks just like Sigorney Weaver’s actual face (see comparison below). This, as Brevet points out, is something that animators have been doing since Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs (actually since Otto Messmer’s pre-Felix the Cat work on Charlie Chaplin cartoons).

Also, the film really does not fully address the problem of the uncanny valley, as the mocap characters are not meant to be realistic humans, but highly stylized humanoids; a better test would be to see how Cameron would do on a follow-up to Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within.

Cameron also boasts that his work on performance capture technology will eventually lead it to becoming more commonplace and cheaper. I suppose so, but less expensive approaches already exists. For instance, director Neill Blomkamp in an interview about his District 9 with Todd Gilchrist notes:

Pretty much in any shot with an alien interacting with a human, which 99 percent is Christopher interacting with Wikus, there was Jason Cope, who was the actor who plays Christopher and who also plays all of the other aliens in the film. He was always on set in a lycra, light-reflective suit, and he would be interacting with Sharlto. It was not performance capture from a data-recording standpoint; like, there were no motion-capture cameras around. But once our live-action camera was tracked, the animators at Image Engine would sort of trace-animate the motion of Jason, almost literally like tracing him. That rotomation would become the essence of the performance of this digital creature, and then they would paint Jason out and put the digital one in, and you would have both performances and they would both be real and they would both be interacting with one another. It’s just very difficult and very expensive to paint someone out of a moving-camera [image] and then replace them with something, but we factored that in.

And despite District 9’s $30 million budget, it doesn’t suffer much in comparison with Avatar and, I would argue, is the better film.

The comparison between the two films is also interesting in that Blomkamp’s training and experience was an animator and special effects artist, while Cameron’s was not. (True, Cameron can draw, a skill which is often considered the holy grail of qualifications to becoming an animation artist or special effects artist, he never had any particular training in either craft.)

… The idea was breathtaking. Picasso’s love for American comic strips was mentioned in Gertrude Stein’s book, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. He was now thinking about making an animated version of Don Quixote! Since he knew nothing about the intricate process of making animation, Picasso had left it up to his courtiers to find someone who could help him make the picture.

One of those people was a friend of the producer, so here we were sitting over a beer as I faced this mind-jolting possibility. A stream of thoughts were jostling each other through my head. Imagine working with Picasso on a storyboard! … Where could I get an animation crew in France? Would Picasso do more than just draw a storyboard? Could he learn to animate?

— Shamus Culhane, Talking Animals and Other People,  p.385

Fantastic Mr. Fox is the latest example of the recent trend of live-action filmmakers into animation, something that would have been considered an anomaly only a few years ago, or the stuff of Shamus Culhane’s shattered dream. If there is something anomalous about Fantastic Mr. Fox it is not that it is animated, but that he chose to do it using stop motion rather than motion capture, the current technique of choice of former live-action directors like George Miller (Happy Feet), Robert Zemeckis (Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol), and the team of Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson (for their forthcoming Tintin trilogy). (Mocap, of course, is increasingly used for such live-action/animation hybrids as James Cameron’s Avatar, while I suppose the low budget choice would be Flash, as Ari Folman did with Waltz with Bashir.)

Though this paradigm shift is probably all to the good, it has not always been greeted with enthusiasm by the animation community. After all, motion capture is often seen as something other than real animation, which live-action folk seem to latch onto as a poor substitute for “the intricate process of making animation.” Amid Amidi in a recent post on Cartoon Brew, made a similar point with regards to Flash in giving advice to Jonathan Demme about a possible animated version of Dave Eggers’ novel Zeitoun:

…I beg you not to use cheap Flash/AfterEffects-style animation. Don’t Waltz with Bashir this film, and compromise the personal impact of the story with mechanical movement. Maintain the integrity and vitality of the graphic illustration that initially drew you to the project, and bring it to life with the nuance and lushness that only traditional hand-drawn animation can provide.

Though Anderson’s film has been largely given a pass, it encountered some unusual public grumbling from some crew members. Thus, in August, the Spectacular Attractions blog reported on the reaction by cinematographer Tristan Oliver to Anderson’s decision to direct the film long distance from Paris, rather than working alongside the film’s crew in London’s Three Mills Studios communicating via email and sending copies of his favorite films on DVD “to give an impression of what he’d like to see.”

I think Wes doesn’t understand what you can do, and he often wants us to do what you can’t do, and the length of time the process takes … I don’t think he quite comprehends that, and how difficult it is to change something once you’ve started. It takes a big amount of someone’s time to change a very small thing. I think he also doesn’t understand that an animator is a performer. An animator is an actor. And this is the secret to animation: you direct your animator, you do not direct the puppet, because the puppet is an inanimate object. You direct an animator as if you’re directing an actor, and they will give you a performance. So we’ll get a note back from Wes saying “that arm movement is wrong.” But that arm movement is part of a fluid performance. And that has been really quite difficult for the animators.

            Later on, a story in the Los Angeles Times further noted

The move did little to endear Anderson to his subordinates. “It’s not in the least bit normal,” director of photography Tristan Oliver observed at the production’s East London set last spring, when production on “Mr. Fox” was about three-quarters complete. “I’ve never worked on a picture where the director has been anywhere other than the studio floor!”

Moreover, Anderson had no idea that his ignorance of stop-motion … and exacting ideas concerning the film’s look would so exasperate his crew.

“Honestly? Yeah. He has made our lives miserable,” the film’s director of animation, Mark Gustafson, said during a break in shooting. He gave a weary chuckle. “I probably shouldn’t say that.”

Now that the film has been released to general critical acclaim, all seems forgiven. And I must say I found the film quite charming and very much a piece with other Anderson films — perhaps a bit too self conscious but nevertheless likeable.

But the episode brings up the question of how live-action filmmakers will adapt to animation when their knowledge of the medium is deemed less than adequate. The reaction by Tristan Oliver and Mark Gustafson to Anderson’s methods is nothing compared to the reactions I heard regarding director Joe Dante’s handling of the animated segments of Looney Tunes: Back in Action.

In live-action, first-time directors with little or no training pose a similar problem; and over the years, producers have learned to deal with such situations. I believe Elia Kazan once noted that when he went on the set of his first Hollywood movie, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, he didn’t have a clue what he was supposed to do; however, the cameraman, Leon Shamroy, told him he should stage the action and he would handle the camera. Something similar seems to have been the case with Orson Welles on Citizen Kane with cinematographer Gregg Toland. (Welles would acknowledge his debt to Toland by giving him equal billing in the film’s credits.)

A Hollywood cinematographer once confided to me that he was dubious about taking a high-profile assignment because he was tired of the sometimes thankless task of educating first-time directors. As thankless as these sorts of tasks might be, Hollywood has adjusted to the process and not a few of these first-timers have gone on to long careers behind the camera. It would seem the animation industry is in the process of learning to adapt in a similar fashion; the process might not be without pain, but as Fantastic Mr. Fox shows, the results need not be all bad.

P.S. (December 3rd): Another low budget choice for live-action filmmakers doing animation would, of course, be Bob Sabiston’s Rotoshop, a computerized rotoscope process used by Richard Linklater in Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly.

On July 28th,  Daily Variety reported that,

Nickelodeon’s Nick at Nite has given a 20-episode order to “Glenn Martin DDS,” a stop-motion animated comedy series from former Walt Disney Co. CEO Michael Eisner.

Series reps the first to come out of Tornante Animation, a newly formed part of Eisner’s investment firm, the Tornante Co. Eisner has partnered with “Celebrity Deathmatch” creator Eric Fogel to design “Glenn Martin,” which Nick at Nite plans to launch next summer.

“Glenn Martin” revolves around a dentist who persuades his family to embark on a cross-country road trip — in their toothbrush-topped “dental mobile.”

Eisner brought “Glenn Martin” to Nick at Nite after reading how Nickelodeon was readjusting the evening programming service to target young families ….

The story caught my attention not so much because of the involvement of Eisner and Vogel, but because of the series has a dentist as its central character. I’m not sure if it is my imagination, but it seems to me that dentists are more common in animation than physicians, especially in comparison to live-action films and TV shows.

David Fine and Alison Snowden’s TV series Bob and Margaret (1998-2001) and Michael Sporn’s Oscar-nominated short Doctor De Soto (1984) (pictured below) come immediately to mind. After bit of searching, I also found Earl Hurd’s Bobby Bumps at the Dentist (1918), Ben Hardaway’s Buddy the Dentist (1934), and Signe Baumane’s Five Infomercials for Dentists (2005).

While films featuring doctors and even nurses abound, the amount of live-action fare featuring dentists seems sparse; e.g., while there was a Carry on Doctor and a Carry on Nurse, there was never, to my knowledge, a Carry on Dentist. The popular Bob Hope comedy, The Paleface (1948), featured him as Painless Potter, though it was co-written by Frank Tashlin, who had recently graduated from directing cartoons for Leon Schlesinger.

Perhaps the scarcity of doctors in animation is due, in part, to the fact that animated characters are virtually indestructible. Thus, one paper presented at the recent Society for Animation Studies conference by Van Norris (University of Portsmouth), “‘Taking an Appropriate Line’ – Assessing Representations of Disability Within the Popular,” which basically pointed out the obvious, that animated characters are not supposed to have disabilities; there are exceptions, but they are few and far between. (Norris used some Aardman public service announcements as examples, though one might also add the Nelvana TV series Quads! [2001] and the character of John Silver in Treasure Planet [2002].)

Anyway, the comic potential of dentistry seems too much to resist even for a bunch of indestructible toons, drawn or otherwise.

Enchanted, the new Disney live action/animated musical is the latest post-modern pastiche that depends too much on inside jokes rather than genuine emotion. It’s the type of film one wants to work, but despite some delightful moments, soon becomes tiresome.

The story begins in Andalasia, an ersatz 1950s cel animated, fairytale country, where the handsome Prince Edward meets and falls in love with the beautiful Giselle; however, his plans to marry her the next day are thwarted by his evil stepmother, Queen Narissa, who promptly sends the princess-in-waiting hurtling into the real world, i.e., New York’s Times Square, where she becomes flesh and blood. She is then followed by Edward and Narissa, among others, while Giselle is taken in by chase after her; in the meantime, Giselle is taken in by an divorce lawyer who tries to keep his young daughter away from fairytales.

Though much has been made of the opening sequence’s use of traditional animation, it tends to look and feel like the worse Disney had to offer (and that could be pretty bad ). That would not be a problem if Kevin Lima’s direction and Bill Kelly’s script had gone beyond the obvious cliché moments. Ironically, the one scene where the animation does come alive is when the CGI chipmunk, Pip, in a game of charades, tries to tell the clueless Prince Edward about Queen Narissa’s plot to kill Giselle (see above). (Equally good, in a different way, is Susan Sarandon’s turn as the Queen, who milks her brief live-action appearance for all its worth; unfortunately, it ends prematurely when she turns into a Sleeping Beauty-style CGI dragon.)

The film’s appeal may owe something to the way it tries to lovingly parody the Disney family jewels. This is somewhat akin to Julie Andrews topless turn in Blake Edwards’ S.O.B. (1981), though not so naughty. It was certainly done to better effect in Who Framed Roger Rabbit, as well as numerous other films from the era of Looney Tunes to numerous episodes of today’s TV series.

Bee Movie, DreamWorks Animation’s latest effort (directed by Simon J. Smith and Steve Hickner), is a fairly conventional showcase for the talents of comedian Jerry Seinfeld, who helped produce and write it. The plot deals with the ambitions of Barry B. Benson, a bee just just out of school, who wants to explore life outside the hive before choosing a career.

Animated films centered around the personality of a comedian like Seinfeld are nothing new. I recall, with some pleasure, Rover Dangerfield (1991), whose Rodney Dangerfield script and performance helped alleviate the film’s rather slapdash production. However, Bee Movie really owes more to DreamWorks’s Antz (1998), which featured the vocal talents of Woody Allen.

For whatever reason, I never watched Seinfeld on TV and, thus, never developed a strong affection for his brand of humor. Even so, I found Bee Movie a pleasant, if not particularly memorable film.