by BARRY J C PURVES
STOPMOTION . Animation (Cinematography)
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| Stop Motion - Passion Process and Performance |
Barry started his involvement with model animation at Cosgrove Hall in 1978, then went
freelance in 1986, working with Aardman and others. With producer Glenn Holberton he
worked through their company Bare Boards from 1990 to 1995. Since then he has been mainly
freelance, animating, designing, directing, writing and teaching. He was involved for a period
on Mars Attacks! and King Kong. His own fi lms have won over sixty awards, including Oscar and
BAFTA nominations. A lively website – www.barrypurves.com – is run by his brother-in-law, Peter.
Mackinnon Saunders
Of the many artists from Mackinnon Saunders, Graham Maiden, Pat Brennan, Stuart Sutcliff e,
Noel Estevan Baker, Joe Holman, Colin Batty, Darren Marshall, Georgina Hayns, Caroline Wallace,
Michelle Scattergood, Mark Thompson, Christine Keogh, Emma Trimble, Jonathan Grimshaw,
Ruth Curtis, Richard Pickersgill, Kevin Scilitoe, Graeme Hall, Dave Whiting, Carrie Clarke, Claire
Elliot, Bridget Smith, Geraldine Corrigan and Rose Hopkins have particularly contributed to the
success of the above fi lms.
The Garrick Playhouse, Altrincham
The Ritz, Communicating Doors, Snake in the Grass, The Turn of the Screw, Habeas Corpus directed
and designed by Barry J.C. Purves; Jekyll and Hyde designed by Barry J.C. Purves; acted in Lady
Windermere’s Fan and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
Foreword
It’s hard to deny that cinema is the most signifi cant artistic innovation of the last century.
While we’ve been telling each other stories since our ancestors lived in the caves, the ability to photograph a living event as a succession of still images and then recreate that event by successively projecting those same images has changed the way stories are told, and altered the very nature of human communication. A rich cinematic language has evolved, spoken eloquently by dramatists, documentarians, poets and propagandists alike. It’s not a language of words but of images; images which can be juxtaposed in myriad combinations to divert us, educate us, enrage us, or stimulate our noblest, most human emotions.
All this from a simple, brilliant optical illusion.
The process which fools us into believing that these still pictures are alive has given birth to a parallel art, one which can only be perceived through the magic of the motion picture camera. It’s come to be known by the deceptively simple word ‘animation’.
Animation brings still images to life, too, but not just images which photographically record an unfolding
real-world event. Hand-drawn characters or sculpted fi gures spring to counterfeit life and allow us to
immerse ourselves in their imaginary worlds; characters and worlds limited only by the skill and inspiration of their creators.
Hand-drawn animation – cartoons, if you insist upon that too-dismissive term – has brought us the
phantasmagoria (and breathtaking draftsmanship) of Winsor McKay, the heart warming fables of Walt
Disney, the hilarious anarchy of Tex Avery. Stop motion animation has given us the sly surrealism of Ladislas Starevitch, the poetry of Jiří Trnka and Lottie Reiniger, and the thrilling, primal monster clashes of Willis O’Brien and Ray Harryhausen.
While the history of drawn animation has been heavily documented by scores of books, stop motion has
received far less attention. In fact, many ‘history of animation’ texts seem only concerned with the cartoons, giving stop motion scant (and sometimes inaccurate) attention: an oversight probably attributable to a generation of animation historians who spent their childhoods snuggled up with Jiminy and Dumbo and Thumper and that crowd. But Barry Purves seems to have spent his boyhood hanging out with the puppets, and he’s written a book which, at last, gives stop motion its due. Barry is uniquely qualifi ed to hold forth on the subject: not only an historian, he’s one of stop motion’s premiere practitioners, both as animator and fi lmmaker.
He not only writes passionately and digressively about his infl uences and inspirations – the why of his
art – but holds intermittent colloquies with a panel of stop motion artists who off er their own insights into
animation’s intricacies. Among these is Jim Danforth, whose brilliant mind and seemingly limitless array of artistic talents bring him closer to genius than anyone I’ve ever known. Barry writes from the heart, and his book isn’t a typical ‘how-to’ craft manual, but rather an ardent valentine to an art form he truly loves.
This love of stop motion is one which demands abundant devotion, as the creation
of even a simple stop motion shot is a laborious and emotionally intense process.
A posable fi gure, fabricated to the most exacting standards, is set before the camera in a
static attitude. Since the puppet will doubtless be required to move into postures which defy
balance, it needs to be affi xed to the stage securely and invisibly, through screws into its feet
from below, or on wires, or on a mounting rod. The puppet is posed for the beginning of the
scene, and a frame of fi lm is exposed. Frame One: one 24th of a second’s worth.
If the animator is performing a ten second scene, that’s 240 separate movements of the
character. These aren’t just movements, but incremental components of a performance, a
performance – pose, timing, expression, acting – which the animator must keep in his head
until the shot’s completed. A shot may take four hours, eight hours, sixteen hours, and all
the while the animator must stay ‘in the moment’ if the performance is to communicate the
animator’s message and intentions.
Screen Play, one of my favourite Purves fi lms, has multiple characters, complex staging and
lighting eff ects, moving stages, moving Japanese screens (illustrated with animated birds),
billowing cloth, even gushing blood - all in one beautifully conceived and executed shot.
A shot which runs, uninterrupted, for about nine minutes.
And tells a story, beautifully.
Obviously, this is the work of a man who loves his art. We are privileged indeed to have him
discuss the love of that art with us.
Randall William Cook, October 2007
Screenshot
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Product details
Price
|
|
|---|---|
File Size
| 28,996 KB |
Pages
|
370 p |
File Type
|
PDF format |
ISBN
| 978-0-240-52060-5 |
Copyright
| 2008 Barry J C Purves Published by Elsevier Ltd |
Table of Contents
Barry J.C. Purves ix
Principal credits ix
Stills xii
Foreword xiii
Introduction xv
Section 1: Passion
1 Smoke and Mirrors
The animation trick 3
Pepper’s ghost 4
2 Evolving into Stop Motion
Messing with time 10
Physicality 12
Texture 15
3 Puppets
Response to stop motion 21
The puppet family 26
The puppet and puppeteer 33
4 Recurring Images
Birds 46
Swan Lake 50
Puppets elsewhere 51
5 Getting Personal
Early animation 59
Attempts at acting 72
Section 2: Process
6 Ideas and Storytelling
Starting somewhere 91
A diff erent perspective 97
Narrative structure and artifi ce 102
7 Shaping Ideas
Next 105
Screen Play 112
Rigoletto 116
Achilles 118
Gilbert and Sullivan 123
8 Diff erent Techniques
Replacement puppets 131
Pixilation 136
Cross-over techniques 138
Cut-outs 139
Sand 142
Claymation 142
Personal approaches 148
9 Preparation
Storyboards, animatics, previz 156
Sets and design 158
Using the camera 170
Water 173
Props 175
Gilbert and Sullivan – The Very Models 178
Colour 180
Costume 180
Visual concepts 186
Section 3: Performance
10 Getting Moving
Being an animator 193
Film grammar 194
Acting 196
Scale 199
Walking 202
Body language 204
Pushing the puppet’s laws 207
Hands-on 210
11 On the Set
Securing a puppet 217
Letting a gesture read 221
Shape of movements 222
Physical quirks 223
Hard things to animate 225
On the studio fl oor 228
12 Using the Body
Silent comedy and mime 231
Falls 235
Jerky movements 236
The illusion of movement 238
Dance 247
The role of puppets 250
13 Production
Designing puppets to act 253
Voices 257
Eye acting 265
Shakespeare 269
Puppets for Screen Play 269
Puppets for Rigoletto 272
Staging 275
Rushes 277
Editing 281
Music 283
Series 284
Feature fi lms 286
Framing 295
14 Directing
Directors 301
Directing Gilbert and Sullivan 305
Favourite fi lms 310
15 Widening the Scope
Animation in a bubble 317
Festivals 321
Theatre work 325
Eff ect on people’s lives 331
Extreme puppets 332
Transference 333
16 Finale
Career 336
Index 345
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