Animation &Commentary 10 Apr 2006 08:45 am
Talking heads
- Yesterday I visited my mother and met up with one of my brothers there. During the ball game a Chas Schwab commercial came on. Perhaps you know the one: Bob Sabiston did it . That rotoscope animation of a man eating and talking to the camera about investments.
My brother said, during the spot, that the commercial is creepy. My mother said the same; she didn’t like looking at it and couldn’t understand why they didn’t just show the film of the guy eating, why did they have to animate it. I listened amused.
It was just yesterday that I was defending this style of work with Richard Linklater‘s upcoming film, A Scanner Darkly. Of course, there’s a difference – at least to me – between a Bob Sabiston commercial and a Richard Linklater film. Isn’t this the same territory?
I told my family that it had to be animated so that they would notice it. If it had just been a film of the guy eating talking to the camera, they wouldn’t be talking about it now . . . they wouldn’t have even noticed it. (Though I had to admit that it took a half dozen viewings before I realized who it was for, and I consciously looked for that.) It’s funny in that my 30 secs. or research on this spot led me to a site for a guy who rants about things. Sure enough, he has a page devoted to this series of commercials, and I think it’s obvious that a lot of people are bothered by this style. There’s also a good Slate article about it. (They offer two of the spots to view and an NPR conversation to listen to.)
Now the reason I’m so interested in all this is a short film I have in mind. It’s going to cover the same boring territory as this commercial, but with a more animated person. I’m curious to see where it takes me, just as I wonder where it might have taken Richard Linklater if he had actually animated his films (in 2D, of course) .
