Books &SpornFilms 09 Jan 2006 07:54 am
Claire Kitson
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?
on 09 Jan 2006 at 1:28 pm 1.Brian Kolm said …
Michael, Do you find that some trouble spots do not show up until you use the storyboards in a story-reel/animatic or can you tell before that.
Love the site and splog!
on 09 Jan 2006 at 2:48 pm 2.MS said …
Absolutely a lot of changes happen after the animatic is put together. Suddenly things are crossing the 180 or scenes are totally unnecessary or dialogue becomes unimportant. Even today after watching a reel of my film in progress, we cut out about a dozen lines – they weren’t necessary, and the action told the same story.