Michael Sporn Animation – Splog

Thurs. night on TCM the Miyazaki films scheduled to air include:

Nausicaa of the Valley of Wind (1984)
12 Thursday 8:00 PM & 13 Friday 12:15 AM
A warrior princess fights to keep
two warring kingdoms from destroying their planet
Cast: Voices of Alison Lohman, Edward James Olmos,
Mark Hamill
C-0 mins, Letterbox Format

Laputa, Castle in the Sky (1986)
12 Thursday 10:00 PM & 13 Friday 2:15 AM
A boy and girl race pirates to find
a legendary floating castle.
Cast: Voices of James Van Der Beek, Anna Paquin,
Mark Hamill
C-0 mins, Letterbox Format

Ramblings three:

The storyboard thoughts keep growing, so I’ll keep going on entertaining myself and boring you.

Essentially, in our studio, I think we have two basic types of storyboard:
- there’s the kind which are done for clients who aren’t quite so familiar with our work and probably don’t really trust us. Everything has to be drawn, indicated, and articulated in the board, and it has to be locked down for the client. Recently, we had a client who judged the drawings at the beginning and end of each scene and judged the animated scene on the basis of the approved storyboard drawings. They also wante a lot of text under the storyboard pictures telling exactly what would happen. It didn’t make for a fun task, nor did it make for the best film in the end, but it did satisfy the client who was paying the bill.

These are also the type of storyboards that are done for overeseas studios who are going to animate from the boards. Basically, animation studios don’t trust the outsource studio and try to control everything, just as my client did of me.

- Then there are the type of storyboards which are more comfortable to me. These are more alive and flexible. The closer they are to what will be the final film, the better it is for the film and the director. But it has to be expected that there will be changes even in the best board. I like to see layouts grow beyond the storyboard; animation grow beyond the layouts, and even the coloring/compositing add to the animation. It’s all about making a successful film you’ll be proud of.

Pictured are boards from The Man Who Walked Between The Towers. The clip for this section can be seen on our main site. The storyboard for this film just fell into place. The client is one I’ve worked with for years, and we trust each other well. I can be as loose or as tight as I want, and it will work. There will minimal changes to the board once it was done, though the film kept growing in ways we couldn’t detail on the storyboard.

Ramblings too:

As I started to express in yesterday’s comments, Clare Kitson’s book on Tale of Tales has had me thinking a lot about storyboards. I must say my studio has a unique way in dealing with storyboards in that there is no unique way in dealing with them. All aspects of the film are organic; the film continues to grow and develop until it’s completed. Since mine is a small studio, I can easily oversee any aspect I want. Since I have a large part in the animation, I can even alter things at that phase. I also work with animators I trust, and I like to give those animators a large say in what they want to do.

When I did the film CHAMPAGNE, I had the chance to play. The film’s soundtrack was an interview with a young girl who had been raised in a convent. Her mother had committed murder, and the girl travelled back and forth to the prison to visit her mother. We recorded more than two hours of interview, cut out the questions and saved the answers. We shaped a track into a 15 minute piece (ultimately adding back some leading questions). There was no script except the finished track.

I decided the next phase should be to start animating. I’d made a lot of decisions – based on the track – in my head, and I had designed a character. There was no storyboard. No storyboard reel/animatic. All there was was a soundtrack (which I had, by this time, mem- orized.) I simply started animating and coloring as I went through the soundtrack. Midway through the film, jobs intervened, and I had to put down my pencils. I asked my background artist, Jason McDonald, to continue what I had done by storyboarding the last half of the film.

The first half of the film – the completed half – focused on the physical aspect of the girl’s life: how she got where she was. The second half would be about the emotional part of Champagne’s life. Once Jason had finished his board, I animated it sticking closely to what he had done. If I changed anything it was to pull out the meaning of the scene more or to play on the action in the soundtrack. Jason dealt with the girl’s emotional life in a more abstract way than I would have, but I made it my own and followed it.

Once the film was finished, it was impossible to tell where the storyboarding had started. Unless I refer back to the board, I couldn’t tell you today. Of course, my experience in all phases of the production allowed me to construct the first half of the film in my head and put it on paper as I animated. I knew whether the scene would work or not, whether the construction of scenes would work.

Of course, this was an experiment for me. It was a way to make a challenging film more exciting. It also shows the nature of the storyboard in my studio: some have a lot of flexibility; some are tightly rigid. I try to make the end product not feel any different, but it often does.

Rambling:
A number of the live-action shorts I saw this past weekend have lingered in my mind and have grown there. That’s usually how I judge any work of art, if I can’t get it out of my thoughts (and I usually don’t want to). Grizzly Man, Brokeback Mountain, A History of Violence and, to a lesser degree, Crash all stayed with me long after I saw them on screen. A couple of images from Princess Mononoke have haunted me since seeing it last Thursday. As a matter of fact, since viewing it in the dubbed version, and having missed the first third, I think I’ll watch some of it again in its original Japanese – endless are the possibilities dvd affords us.

There’s quite a choice section in Clare Kitson’s book on Tale of Tales discussing Yuri Norstein‘s thoughts on storyboards. I’m reading this as we’re adding a section to the website on the POE film developing in the studio. As such I’m reviewing a number of the storyboard sequences to post, and it’s revealing to me. Whole sections suddenly don’t work, while other sections work better than I originally thought. This is not a product of Kitson’s book, but a validation of Norstein’s (and her) comments. Any film locked at the storyboard stage becomes like a brick and cannot grow. Woody Allen gives himself a short period during the post-prodcution stages of his films to reshoot and re-edit a small percentage of the film. This phase has supposedly saved a number of his films – including Annie Hall. Shouldn’t animation, at least, be allowed to rework the storyboard?

There was a respectable group of regulars who turned out yesterday to see the shortlisted live action shorts and vote to make some of them Oscar nominees. This, for me, is always a great event; I love the day. It sometimes gets grueling watching a 40 min short late in the day, but that wasn’t the case yesterday. All of the films were good; some of them were great. The screening took a full four hours but felt shorter than some of the feature films I sat through this year.

One of the highlights of the day is a lunch break set up by Patrick Harrison, of AMPAS, who arranges a feast for us to munch around the conversation. Lots of comparing this year to others, live action to animation, and a small bit of talk about the features. It’s all very civilized and enjoyable.

Today is Sunday. For me it starts with political talk shows. Hence, I continue the Daumier theme by posting his most famous etching, Gargantua. Louis XIV swallows up the money of the poor. The big difference between then and today is that Daumier was incar- cerated for his cartoon; I can post it without problem (though my phones might be tapped as a result.)

Today there’s scheduled the longish screenings in NYC for Academy voters to vote on short films. Since New Yorkers were allowed – for the first time – to cast a say in the initial votings, to help select the short list of animation films, those films aren’t returning for another screening. I would have liked to have seen the animated films again before voting, but I’ll settle for what I can.

4 hours of live action shorts. I usually enjoy these films, and I look forward to the screening. I also look forward to seeing how many animators return to view only the live action films. It’ll make for an interesting day.

I’ve been a fan of Daumier’s work most of my life. The paintings have particularly influenced my work. There isn’t a lot of time for writing today, so . . . a Daumier etching.

The caption reads: “O Moon, Inspire Me . . . .”

Last night I came into the last 2/3 of TCM’s airing of Princess Mononoke. It’s probably my favorite of the Miyazaki features. The design is different from his others in that it isn’t quite as hard edged; it feels more a transluscent medium than opaque.
Perhaps I also like the spirituality behind the whole film. As a Westerner, I don’t know a lot of the Japanese mythology, yet it seems that Miyazaki carries us along with him and carefully helps us to understand who and what these characters represent. It’s a lovely film.

However, those voices! Minnie Driver is a magnificent voice actor. Her readings have been consistently good, from Tarzan to South Park and ending here – in a very different characterization. It doesn’t seem to matter that she is trying to loop the mouth actions; she still gives us a character. Billy Crudup doesn’t fare quite as well. He is hit and miss in his readings, though his voice quality is perfect. Clair Danes is a poor choice for the character. She’s a good actress, but her voice doesn’t work well when separated from her body. This is just poor casting. Her name wasn’t enough to help the film. She also shouldn’t be playing the wild Princess Mononoke. Billy Bob Thornton, however, is completely miscast. His acting sounds as if he’s concentrating on the lip movements. Couldn’t the director have asked for a second reading from him? Many of the incidental characters are also pathetic. The voice dubbing constantly keeps us out of the film; viewers watching a badly dubbed movie. It’s too bad; this is such an enormous epic of a film.

Turner Classic Movies continues to support quality in animation by showing some beautifully restored MGM cartoons on a program they call, Cartoon Alley. It airs, primarily, on Saturday mornings. For January, they have the following cartoons scheduled:

Cartoon Alley #1
07 Saturday 11:30 AM & 12 Thursday 5:30 AM
Features three Clark Gable caricatures: CooCoo Nut Grove (1936), Malibu Beach Party (1940), Hollywood Steps Out (1941).

Cartoon Alley #5 14 Saturday 11:30 AM
Features three Tex Avery Cartoons: Red Hot Riding Hood (1943), Batty Baseball (1944) and Swingshift Cinderella (1945).

Cartoon Alley #6 21 Saturday 11:30 AM
Features three early color shorts from Warner Bros: Honeymoon Hotel (1934), Beauty and the Beast (1934), I Haven’t Got a Hat (1935).

Cartoon Alley #7 28 Saturday 11:30 AM
Features three MGM shorts from The Captain and the Kids series: Cleaning House (1938), Petunia National Park (1939), Mama’s New Hat (1939).

Varied Notes:
I was enthralled with the program of Emily Hubley’s work at MOMA last night. She has a unique voice in animation, and she takes it and runs with it as few animators are doing. Her presentation was designed to focus on collaborations but seemed to highlight music in animation. How thrilling to hear one piece to the music of Yo Lo Tengo, and the see the same piece reworked to music composed by Sue Garner and performed live against the film. The energy of the live music changed the film completely; it became more haunting and poignant – a very different film utilising the same imagery. Don Christensen has composed the music for a number of Emily’s films, and he adds enormous effect to all he’s done. It was a great show.

Attending a lot of animation events in NYC, one sees a varied mix of animation peoople at different events. Those who go to Emily’s films, generally aren’t the people who’d go to a Warners show, and Bill Plympton brings out a very different mix. It’s an entertainment in itself, watching the varied faces. Eventually, I’ll have to get a camera to add some photos. How pleasant to be ushered into the crowded MOMA lobby by Will Rosenthal and son, Max. Janet Benn and Thelma Schenkel were also among the early arrivals. Inside, I saw John Canemaker, Biljana Labovic and Candy Kugel. At the gathering, afterward, were Jeff Scher, Jeremiah Dickey and MOMA coordinator, Charles Silver.

A Christmas Card posting I missed turned out to be one of the most interesting for me. On Jen Lerew’s Blog, Blackwing Diaries, she posted two cards from the 50′s Disney: a 1955 Christmas card featuring the Mickey Mouse club and another from 1956 showing Mickey welcoming us into the magic of Disneyland.
Back in the mid-Fifties, I sent a fan letter to Joshua Meador. I had to have been 10 years old. What came back was a postcard, a largish postcard of Disney standing with an airbrushed Mickey on his Disneyland TV desk. It wasn’t the airbrush they do today trying to make everything look like real dolls, but it was an airbrush that just added highlights. I quickly learned that I could get more and different cards by sending more letters, and I did. I kept them for years, but somehow lost them in a move.
My favorite postcard was one with about fifty drawn picture frames. Within each was another Disney character. All of the images were tiny, but somehow Brer Fox stands out in my memory. He was coming out of his frame. I’d love to see that card again. Anyway, I did receive that very same Christmas card welcoming me into Disneyland, and I have to thank Jen for posting that card and bringing back some pleasant memories.

By the way, speaking of Blackwing Diaries, maybe if we all joined together we could get Eberhard Faber . . . er . . . Faber-Castell to produce Blackwing Pencils again. It’s amazing to learn that people other than animators swore by these pencils – including a lot of celebrities. The pencils sell for $250 a box on ebay.

As has been noted on other animation sites, Miyazaki films have been scheduled to appear on the Turner Classic Movies on Thursdays (repeated Fridays) during January. All versions screened are the newly dubbed English language versions. Airing tonight:

Spirited Away (2002)
4 Thursday, 8:00 PM & 6 Friday, 1:00 AM
A young girl escapes her family to a world of witches and monsters.
Cast: Voices of Michael Chiklis, Lauren Holly, Suzanne Pleshette
C-124 mins, Letterbox Format

Princess Mononoke (1999)
4 Thursday 10:15 PM & 6 Friday 3:15 AM
A woman raised by wolves leads forest animals in a fight to save their homes.
Cast: Voices of Billy Crudup, Claire Danes, Minnie Driver.