Commentary 08 Jul 2010 07:51 am
Shorts
- About two weeks ago I started thinking about the state of animated short films. This was the result of my viewing the most recent Pixar short, “Day & Nightâ€. This film had a lot of the problems most Pixar shorts have, and I came to realize that it’s the same problem most shorts being made today have. The word is sophomoric.
The stories, to my taste, are just too lacking in real intelligence. Early shorts from Pixar seemed to be trying to advance their hardware; for example, “For the Birds” was pushing the envelope on cgi rendering of feathers. (As it turns out, this is one of their better short films; the story is well written and timed.) Later shorts from them are trying to push some other limit, but they just are not.
I’m not concerned with the technique used in these films or the quality of the animation. After all Pixar is paying millions of dollars for these tiny films; they should be well animated, designed and produced. And, for the most part, they are. Pixar tags them onto a blockbuster effort like Toy Story 3 and is able to recoup the investment – something the average Independent will probably never do.
In this film, “Day & Night”, the two principal characters, drawn in 2D animation, are surrounded with a black matte. The interior coloring of the characters is filled with computer animation images of day, for the first character, and night, for the second. One is jealous of the other – until, of course, midnight passes and Day becomes Night, and vice versa. Over the last minute or so, we’re given some pompous narration to make it sound like it’s an important theme and film. The whole enterprise feels lifted from other, more original films done many years ago. The only difference, really, is that this is in gorgeous 3D – a nice package.
“Day & Night†utilizes character designs that seem to come out of the groovy seventies. This is a Hollywood version of Zagreb, which was a Yugoslavian variation of UPA, and the filmmakers try to attach a story that also feels redundant of some of those many seventies student films.
Teddy Newton, the director, seems to like the “moderne” style of animation. His past directoral effort, Boys Night Out (co-directed with Bert Klein), and his character designs all push toward what I call the CalArts style, an angular take on mid-Fifties animation styling. Basically, to me, this style has nothing to do with art and all to do with regurgitating the work of other artists who reworked art. It’s all too intermural – there’s nowhere for it to go.
I can’t just stop with this Pixar short; many other shorts made recently have this same feeling as though they’re pushing some limit. In fact, what they’re all doing is limiting themselves with the past history of animation, and not always the best animation.
When the Lasseter/Disney troupe decided to rework Goofy in a Hollywood short a couple of years ago with Goofy How to Hook Up Your Home Theater, to me there was more honor in the workman-like effort as they purposefully borrowed from some mediocre shorts. It might have been a more complex effort had they tried doing a good Mickey short, but they pulled this film off.
Hundreds of short films are being made quickly via the new media. We can see them all over YouTube these days. Student films glut websites; one or two of them actually are well-realized. I just wish there were more concern for story. More attention has to be paid to this part of the film; it’s more imortant than the animation, the design or the music.
Day & Night makes me feel as though they started with the style and tried to work the story into it. It really doesn’t work on any intellectual level. I wonder how many young people actually go about making their films this way. Start with the look and the design, then wrap a story into it. Yet, the reason to see a film has nothing to do with the design; it’s all about the story. What do you have to tell me?
Actually, I’m not sure it ever was a better time for the short film. It always seems to come down to one or two films, every year. They dominate the market and Festivals everywhere; those are the one or two films that create the conversations after those Festivals. In fact, it’s the one or two smart artists that come up with these shorts, and there will always be these infrequent artist among the many.
Here are a handful of random shorts and filmmakers (off the top of my head) I’ve liked recently:
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The House of Small Cubes by Yojiro Takita, was a beautifully constructed, animated and produced short that deserved its Oscar. It gave us several ADULT themes that were finely developed and executed.
Skhizein by Jérémy Clapin was a well crafted film with an idea that, at first, seemed to clever for its own sake, but turned out to be a short piece of genius that held up viewing after viewing. The use of cgi to creat a mix of flat and 3D surfaces just added to film’s depth.
Andreas Hykade‘s most recent short, Love and Theft, is a beautifully graphic free flowing paean to animation and linear art. Like all other Hykade shorts it turns to rich primary colors that seem to be all his own style. He seems to be entering the master class of animation film makers.
In Rains by David Coquard-Dassault, a sudden rainstorm initiates a lovely and poetic piece that simply gives us delicate images of those reacting to the weather. It’s so quiet, witty and original.
Aardman seems to have perfected the animated short film. Their last Wallace & Gromit film was so well-tuned, one almost took it for granted. Yet, in most of the shorts seen last year, this one stood out for extraordinarily high filmmaking standards. Even their more experimental shorts, such as the The Pearce Sisters Directed by Luis Cook does 2D animation using cgi and creates a dark mood with simple and effective means. All of their shorts are well written, well cut and intelligent; always crafted at the highest possible caliber. This includes every one of the films they’ve done for television. Pixar should study their films a little closer.
The Simon’s Cat series by Simon Tofield are beautifully done shorts featuring the same cast, beautiful linear design and well animated characters. The films are wordless, yet they all have a love of humanity and observation of the world around us that comes across as funny and touching, both at the same time. These shorts are made using Flash, yet don’t have that tedious cut-out feel of the tiresome pop from-pose-to-pose animation that the medium seems to engender.
Word is out that the next Pixar feature will also be preceded by a short. Cars 2 will have a Toy Story short accompanying it. How appropriate. Hopefully, they’ll get it right with the stable of characters the whole world loves. Perhaps it’ll give them the chance to show us what really happened to Bo Peep.
By the way, a good place to see shorts that are more challenging is at Ian Lumsden’s Animation Blog. It’s worth paying attention. The videos he features and analyzes often don’t show up elsewhere.
on 08 Jul 2010 at 8:05 am 1.richard o'connor said …
Great essay.
I guess I felt kind of offended by everything at my “Toy Story 3 Night Out”.
This short was a fitting counterpart to the feature -a glorification of kitsch and style over substance.
I nearly walked away humming the scenery.
on 08 Jul 2010 at 9:22 am 2.Ray Kosarin said …
An excellent and important post!
This should be required reading for everyone at CalArts or Pixar, everyone who imagines they want to be at either of those places, and basically everyone making films that could be better (and whose couldn’t?).
on 08 Jul 2010 at 10:04 am 3.Elliot Cowan said …
The evolution of the Pixar shorts reflects, I think, the Pixar features.
Originally they were small and charming enough and there was a feeling of adventure that came with the advancing technology.
The more ambitious they became, the less charm there was to be found.
It makes sense I suppose that the company would like to move beyond “quite charming” to “meaningful” and despite the fact that I don’t personally think they’ve managed this, it would seem the rest of the world would disagree.
I’m sure you’ve noticed that the Pixar shorts, for the most part, are about the same thing – underdog makes good.
A reflection of the studio itself.
Pixar is no underdog anymore, or at least they don’t play that role.
Maybe this is why I’m responding less and less to their films.
Maybe it’s because I continue to be out of touch with broad commercial tastes…
on 08 Jul 2010 at 10:37 am 4.Daniel Caylor said …
You’ve backed up your commentary with solid examples of great films.
on 08 Jul 2010 at 11:39 am 5.Artie said …
I just watched “Boys Night Out”. I don’t understand why one would commit so much effort to creating an animated punchline; and an old one at that. Unless it’s just an excuse to indulge their fetish of drawing sirens.
on 08 Jul 2010 at 2:29 pm 6.Dave Levy said …
It’s an odd thing in this biz. Some people at the level of Teddy Newton’s talent (and he’s got a lot of it), really just want to revel in what they love, what has inspired them, and the films they make are really just an extension of that. It lets them live in that place for a while, sort of like a person who’s into mid century modern furniture surrounds themselves with such decor.
I agree that one should start with something to say, whatever it is, and build the film around it.
on 08 Jul 2010 at 5:52 pm 7.Stephen Worth said …
Henry Syverson was a great cartoonist and is a much better model for animation character design than most styles used today. Will Finn has done some great posts on him, and it’s likely that his championing this little known cartoonist inspired the designs for the short.
on 08 Jul 2010 at 10:53 pm 8.Neal said …
Couldn’t disagree more (except maybe the narration is unecessary). It’s a great idea, beautifully executed. And just like every other studio–large or independant–the films vary in ambition, intent, and quality. Imagine making the same film over and over and over (and not particularly well) like Paul Driessen. Now THAT is boring and unimaginative. And most of those are pure crap–mainly because they all say the same old thing and look exactly the same. BORING.
I admire Pixar for keeping up their short film division. And I thoroughly enjoyed Mr. Newton’s new film–the one to beat next awards season.
on 08 Jul 2010 at 11:30 pm 9.Michael said …
I’d trade all of the Pixar shorts for just one of Paul Driessen’s films. We obviously disagree. There’s more intelligence in any one of his films than in all the stylistic machinations of the Pixar lot – even if the feathers are perfect.
on 09 Jul 2010 at 1:06 am 10.Neal said …
Well, you just made my point for me—seen one of Driessen’s drab films, seen them all. At least Pixar tries different things, are more entertaining, and ALWAYS look better.
on 09 Jul 2010 at 2:02 am 11.alex k said …
I think Pixar has demonstrated their prowess with story driven material and their skill at handling intellectual concepts in their feature films (at least relative to the rest of mainstream feature animation past and present). Why can’t a short be purely a visual experiment, especially if it’s brisk, entertaining, and already attached to a weightier, more challenging film?
Revisiting the Disney material on dvd, I find many of the the story-heavy (and gag-light), star-driven shorts yawn inducing (with notable exceptions of course). My taste in Disney gravitates towards the material that is almost purely animation for animation’s sake: Skeleton Dance, Pink elephants, bald mountain, all the cats join in, bumble boogie, after you’ve gone, etc. The findings these experiments would later be applied in various ways to many of the narrative films, but honestly, I adore the experiments themselves, and wish there were more of them.
Anyway, “Day and Night” reminds me of one of these. Animation is, at it’s essence, a visual medium, and using a visual conceit as a starting point seems perfectly valid to me.
Also baffled by the characterization of this style as “angular”. I’m hard pressed to find any angles in the images you’ve posted.
on 09 Jul 2010 at 2:21 am 12.alex k said …
By the way, I very much appreciate that you went through the trouble of recommending specific shorts.
on 09 Jul 2010 at 3:28 am 13.slowtiger said …
It’s a relieve to learn that we share a certain canon of films. I just saw one film which definitely will make it on this list (it has on mine): “Ente, Tod und Tulpe” by Matthias Bruhn (see http://www.trickstudio.de). It has just started the festival route, so watch out for it!
on 09 Jul 2010 at 8:15 am 14.Pierre said …
Much like Toy Story 3, I liked Day and Night much more then I’ve liked much of Pixar’s previous offerings. I thought the concept was clever and strongly executed and with 2D animation to boot. I was quite enthralled with it and even enjoyed the visual styling for once.
on 09 Jul 2010 at 8:21 am 15.Elliot Cowan said …
Neal – Clearly there is a matter of personal preference going on here.
A dead end debate, to be sure.
I would however argue that for the most part (as I mentioned above) that the Pixar shorts are the same theme over and over again.
As for the visual style – well it’s slick, high budget CG which again, for the most part, looks the same.
on 09 Jul 2010 at 10:33 am 16.Michael said …
Slowtiger, I’ll look forward to Ente, Tod und Tulpe!. Like someone searching for a great meal, we have to dive through all the fast food hoping something rich will turn up. And be thankful when it does.
Neal, I’ glad you enjoy the Pixar shorts. They’re making them for you and your $15.00 theater admittance.
on 10 Jul 2010 at 2:06 pm 17.Mike said …
That’s a real show of bitterness, combined with a shallow, snide response here in comments. I don’t see Neal making childish judgmental digs at your character, Michael, though he may dismiss the films you presented.
I’m admittedly a fan of Pixar’s work, though I don’t buy it wholesale. (The only scene worth watching in Cars is the credits.)
I don’t see much point in arguing content, but I cringe at a couple of indefensible positions. One can’t claim that a film doesn’t work on “any intellectual level.” This meaningless overstatement screams petulance, wounded insolent child. It insists that the film has no ideas at all, no coherence. Come on.
And the second insistence that a short film should be first and foremost about story is ludicrous. The short story and the short film have long been the perfect formats for exploring ideas without the restrictions of the longer narrative forms. If you know your animation history, the early experiments in hand-painted and scratched film were among the first experimental films, toying with visual imagery in a medium still new to the world.
I’m not lumping Pixar in with the experimental filmmakers, and I agree that the narration at the end of the new short was a surprisingly on-point bit of dreck coming from the same folks who let Wall-E wander wordlessly for half a movie, but they still contribute more to design, concept, and story than any major studio. Also, the quiet in Wall-E, the brutal montage in UP that spans an entire life and death, and the moment in Toy Story 3 where the toys have a brief, tranquil moment where they accept the possibility of imminent death are all examples of daring storytelling rarely found in any modern films, including the breadth of foreign and arthouse fare. That it comes in the package of animated films meant to bring in all the kiddies is only more remarkable.
on 10 Jul 2010 at 2:58 pm 18.Michael said …
Mike your examples of story construction in UP and WALL-E is accurately on target. Excellent work by Pixar for that part of the films. However, I was writing only about their short films, not the feature work.
All films (past 1930) have stories, regardless of whether they’re experimental or commercial. Even if they’re actively anti-story, they’re story. It just depends on what you call story.
on 11 Jul 2010 at 2:04 am 19.Paul Trott said …
Did we watch the same short? Maybe you had your 3d glasses on backwards?
Day & Night is a fantastic short film.
As you get older Mr Sporn, it’s easy to forget the true purpose of these productions… to entertain, which Day & Night does; and well.
When you start peddling words around like “Sophomoric”, you start to sound old and bitter. Smile sir, the world is a beautiful place.
on 11 Jul 2010 at 8:06 am 20.Michael said …
Paul, maybe I’m not old and bitter, maybe I’m just more discerning. Regardless, I’m glad you enjoyed the short. I didn’t.
on 11 Jul 2010 at 11:03 am 21.Josef said …
I really loved the concept of Day & Night, but I feel too that it was lacking in story. I think they could have done more with it. As for student films, I think it’s a give and take. Not all student animators are great story tellers. In the end, they will be hired for their animation skills. Maybe animation schools should focus more on creative writing?
on 12 Jul 2010 at 8:37 am 22.Peter said …
I didn’t mind so much that the message of Day & Night was explicitly stated through that radio broadcast. What bothered me the most was that both sunrise and sunset took place over the very same spot on the horizon! Don’t tell me it was “poetic license”. The story came to a climax with an image that was essentially a lie.
on 13 Jul 2010 at 7:27 pm 23.Joe said …
The short left the whole audience cold when I saw it in theaters. This awkward silence could be cut like a knife. I’m sure audience response differs, but to see a whole crowd of people just wanting the movie to start was quite an experience.
At first I was ecstatic to see some hand drawn animation, but quickly let down by the story. When the preachy part kicked in, a chorus of crickets could be heard. Oh well.
on 22 Jul 2010 at 11:17 am 24.Elchinodepelocrespo said …
I might be wrong, but I think “The house of small cubes” is a Kunio Kato film.
on 22 Jul 2010 at 9:28 pm 25.Michael said …
Elchinodepelocrespo, of course you’re right.
on 23 Jul 2010 at 10:25 pm 26.Cameron Koller said …
“Paul, maybe I’m not old and bitter, maybe I’m just more discerning.”
I don’t see how having a minority opinion makes one more discerning. I’ve had quite a few of those, but I won’t claim they make me more “informed” or anything like that.
I think the problem here is that you’re judging a cartoon which is clearly aiming to explore the medium itself and castigating it merely for not having higher intentions. It reminds me of the critic character in Fellini’s 8 1/2 who constantly judges Mastroianni’s character’s script for not having a clear theme. It also seems to cast aside artists like Jean-Luc Godard and Natalia Goncharova who actually strove to create work that WASN’T burdened with a particular message. Must everything be striving to shove a message down our throats?
Good call on Kunio Kato’s masterful short film, but can you technically claim it had “something to tell us”? It clearly hit on some big human anxieties, but there’s nothing to say it necessarily told us anything at all. It’s a matter of what the viewer brings to it as to it’s ultimate message (which goes for Night and Day just as much).
on 24 Jul 2010 at 7:37 am 27.Michael said …
House of Small Cubes talked to us about humanity. Something we all take part in. This is also the “message” of every Goncharova or Godard film (though he also talks about film, itself, in everything he does).
My point on Day & Night is that it’s a small idea that’s been done better in the past. I’d prefer they do a Toy Story short than pretend they’re going high brow.
Aside from that, is it a crime to want something larger than the tiny feature films that Pixar and Dreamworks have been feeding us? Lately, I have my eye out for ART and that is all. Kato, Godard and lots of others are artists, and they deserve the little time I have to spare anymore. If I’m in the minority, who the hell cares.
on 24 Jul 2010 at 8:46 am 28.Jim said …
Cameron, I think there are two separate ideas here. The first is whether Day and Night succeeded as a short film. The other is the standard critic conundrum: whether to judge a film for what it is, or for what it could have been.
Although I find myself agreeing with Michael’s post, I do agree that cartoons made for cartoons’ sake should probably be judged as such. No matter how much I love films like Don Hertzfeldt’s I’m So Proud of You, there is not much point in criticizing Presto for being a cartoon. I can still wish Pixar did more with its short films, though, and I think that’s Michael’s point as well.
However, Day and Night is not a cartoon. Despite its exaggerated animation style and interesting exploration of 2d/3d, there is a clear attempt at “higher intentions” by the director… so clear, in fact, that it is reinforced with a literal “pause and tell the theme to the audience” moment toward the end. Because of this, any discussion of the film’s merits should probably talk about the theme and whether it was presented effectively.
Unfortunately, Day and Night’s theme was reinforced in a cringeworthy manner that reminded me of many awkward student films (the “sophomoric” comment feels accurate). Film as a medium is so powerful when directors show instead of tell, which is why the first part of Wall-E and the montage in Up affected so many viewers. But Day and Night comes nowhere near those moments in terms of storytelling prowess, and to ignore that point in a discussion of the film would be the very opposite of discerning.