CHAPTER 10
Interviews
Having worked our way through the many facets of animated performance,
it’s time to let some other people have their say. In this chapter, we have
interviewed a range of practitioners in animation to get their views on the
nature of animation acting and what they feel is vital in producing characters
that live on screen.
They all have interesting experiences and work in different areas of animation
so we hope that you will find something that fits with your own experience or
interests!
John Stevenson
FIG. 10.1 John Stevenson: John Stevenson and friend.
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John Stevenson started his career in his teens at Jim Henson Productions
as a storyboard artist and character designer on The Muppet Show. After
going freelance he worked on a variety of productions, including TV series
and advertisements, before moving to the US. In 1999 he joined the story
department at DreamWorks, where he was story artist on the first wave
of the studio’s animated blockbusters such as Shrek and Madagascar. He
was given a chance to direct when the CG TV series, Father of the Pride, was
commissioned and then went on to direct Kung Fu Panda. He is currently in
preproduction on two new CG feature films.
Where did the initial idea for Kung Fu Panda come from? Did the character
come before the story or was it always bound up with the story?
The initial idea for Kung Fu Panda originated in the DreamWorks Development
department. I had absolutely nothing to do with its instigation. I was working
as a story artist at the time on films like Shrek 2 and Madagascar. I was aware
of KFP, dimly, as an “in development” idea for a few years. The artwork I was
seeing on the walls did not inspire me, and I knew nothing of the story.
I asked Jeffrey Katzenberg for my chance to direct a feature and was given
my “training wheels” assignment in directing the pilot episode of a prime
time CGI animated series called Father of the Pride for NBC. I did not screw
up horribly, so was given a few more episodes. Around the same time KFP
became a green-lit production. While I was prepping the season finale for
FOTP I was approached about taking over KFP. It was a project that I knew
the studio had low expectations for, but I hoped we could surprise them and
the audience by making a better movie than the title might have led you to
expect. I made a proposal to the studio of how I would change things and was
quickly assigned.
The character and story were quite different at that point. The basic story
was a “scam” along the lines of Kurosawa’s Kagemusha (and the fact that
the studio and writers had picked a Japanese Samurai movie template
for a kung fu movie set in China is telling) where the Furious Five need
a symbol to rally the Valley of Peace against Tai Lung and his army of
Snow Leopards and the Five pick Po, the lazy panda, and try to pass him
off as a kung fu warrior. Po was the least interesting character, because
he was oblivious to being a dupe for most of the running time. The story
was mostly about the Five and their efforts to fool Po and the townsfolk
that he could actually do martial arts. There were very few actual kung fu
scenes and lots of pop culture references and pop songs indicated in the
screenplay.
The first thing I needed to do was change the character designs. I could not
work on trying to change the story into being something that I believed in
until I could stand to look at my cast of characters and want to work with
them. I disliked the original designs intensely, and wanted a unified vision for
the characters in the movie, not the usual piece meal approach of multiple
designers working on different characters. I picked a brilliant and innovative
artist called Nicolas Marlett. The design of Po up to that point had been a fairly
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conventional cartoon bear design, and apart from looking a little ordinary
he also looked like he could handle himself. He was a brawny bear. That
did not fit with peoples’ impression of pandas, or with what was inherently
amusing about the title—the contradiction of an animal people expected
to be soft and sleepy doing something as hard core as kung fu. I wanted a
bear that looked more like a bag of soup. Nico’s first design for Po charmed
me immediately. It was fresh, funny, aesthetically pleasing, and showed a
very out-of-shape panda indeed. With a little refinement, we had our main
character and the remaining cast fell in line very quickly. After that Production
Designer and Art Director Raymond Zibach and Tang Heng designed a world
that complimented our characters and stayed true to Chinese art.
So to answer the question “did the character come before the story or was it
always bound up with the story?” in our case before we began to re conceive
the story we redesigned Po, and how his visual interpretation would define his
character.
How did you make sure the character remained consistent as the story
developed?
Obviously, before you can be consistent, you need to know who your
character is. I wanted Po to be the best and funniest character in the
movie, and not suffer the fate of most protagonists in animated films by
being less funny and interesting than the supporting cast. Deciding on
how to accomplish this was a different matter. After a few more months
of development, the studio brought in Melissa Cobb to produce and Mark
Osborne to codirect with me. After that we got a chance to really reset the
movie and rebuild the story around Po. Two things inspired us, Jack Black
and the idea that Po would be the ultimate fan boy. We were all huge fans of
Jack’s and he really was the only person we wanted or could imagine as Po.
We also loved the idea of Po being a super geeky fan of kung fu—a “Star Wars”
nerd of martial arts. When we first started developing the story with our team
of story artists we were writing a version of Po that was more snarky, closer
to Jack’s persona in High Fidelity. At our first record session with Jack, after a
few tries at the snarky Po, Jack tried a more vulnerable and insecure version
of the character: someone all too aware of the gulf between their dreams
and the reality of their existence. We all instantly recognized that it was the
smarter and more appealing approach, and we all fell in love with Po because
of it. After that record session, we took what we had learned from seeing
Jack and went back and recrafted our story to support that character. There
was a quote from Buster Keaton that I thought was appropriate for Po and I
printed it out and put it up in my office as a touchstone. “What you have to
do is create a character,” he once said. “Then the character just does his best,
and there’s your comedy. No begging.” I loved the simplicity of this approach
(although as we all know, being simple is neither simple nor easy) and it
helped me keep Po consistent in my mind. He loves kung fu. He gets a chance
to follow his dream. He will not quit. Between the absurdity of an out of shape
panda pursuing his dream of being a kung fu master, while being all too
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aware of his shortcomings and yet never giving up I thought we might have a
character our audience could root for.
How do you avoid clichés and stereotypes?
Clichés are the enemy — unless they are your friends. One of the worst
ways to direct an actor is to give a line reading. Early on in a recording
session on KFP, Dustin Hoffman asked me for a line reading on a line he was
having problems with. I was embarrassed and demurred, and said I was very
uncomfortable to do such a thing. Dustin said “ I am not going to do it the way
you do it, I just want to hear how you hear it in your head so that I can figure
out how I am going to do it.” I gave Dustin my crappy version of the line, and
he listened, internalized it, processed it, and then did it his way and nailed it.
So a line reading is one of the worst ways to direct an actor, except when it
isn’t.
Once you have worked diligently on your story for a while you should reach
a point where if you are quiet and listen attentively your movie will tell you
what story elements it needs and where it needs them. You may be surprised
to find that sometimes what your film seems to want is something you regard
as a cliché, or overly familiar idea. In improv a very common beginner mistake
is to reach for the more outlandish idea over the simple and straightforward
one because you think it will be more original and interesting. Very often
though, what the audience actually wants is the simple and straightforward
idea, because that is where your improvized story has been naturally leading.
Dare to be obvious.
How do you get the audience to believe in and engage with the
character?
Ah, that is the $64,000 question, isn’t it? Before an audience can believe
and engage with a character then first you must as the storyteller. You
cannot Frankenstein a character out of hand-me-down character traits
that you hope an audience will like. If you do this will be a false character,
and every acting choice you make for this character will be false. The
character-good or bad must be someone you have empathy with. I loved
our villain on KFP, Tai Lung. I understood his disappointments and goals,
and admired his strength and skills, his self-confidence, and authority.
I knew who Po was and I really liked him. Mark, Melissa, Jen, and our
entire crew knew who he was and liked him as well. Because of that so did
audiences throughout the world. I am a geeky nerd. I know the crushing
disappointment of confronting the idealized version of myself that I would
like to be true with the lumpen reality. We all do. So we never had to
wonder what Po would do in any given situation in the story. We just asked
ourselves.
Tai Lung, Po, and all the characters on KFP were people I related to and
understood. I cared about all of them. I liked them. I do not know what
anybody else will like. I really have no idea. The only honest litmus test I can
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ever apply to any creative decision is whether I like something, and then trust
that there are probably others out there who will feel the same.
How important is it for the animator to empathize with the character?
I think it is very important not to judge your character. You must be on their
side and see the world as they see it, even if you are animating the villain.
The villain is the hero of his or her own story. They do not think of themselves
as villains, they believe their actions are justified and that they are in the
right. You must believe in their world view as you create a performance, or it
will not be honest. It will not feel organic. You cannot create a performance
that has any depth if you are outside your character. You have to be inside
them; their feelings must be your feelings, their hopes your hopes, their
disappointments your disappointments. You cannot do this without
empathy.
How do you make sure characters are consistent between the different
animators who have to animate them? How do you brief animators and
do you act things out for them?
On KFP we were blessed to have a brilliant Head of Character Animation in
master animator Dan Wagner. Dan and his team of Animation Supervisors—
Alessandro Carloni, Rodolphe Guenoden, Phillipe Le Brun, and William
Salazar—were responsible for ensuring continuity of performance through
a large team of very skilled animators. As directors Mark and my job was to
ensure that the animation team understood our characters and their behavior
in any scene as well as we did.
Our main tools were our “launch” documents and “kick-off ’s.” In our launch
documents we would break every scene down into its essential components,
beginning with the single most important piece of information the scene
contained, the piece of information that if the audience did not understand
the whole story would not work. Robert Zemeckis calls this the “red dot” of
the scene. From there we would go through all the other story information
we considered vital, the central emotional event, the primary P.O.V of the
character we experience the scene through, the turning point of the scene,
the subtext, the emotional context and placement of this scene in the arc of
the whole story, etc. Then we would go through all the technical information
that was pertinent—time of day, screen direction, location, camerawork,
animation, FX, lighting, props (if any) background characters (if any) etc. We
tried to create a document that anyone could refer to and have all of their
primary questions answered.
Then we would have our “kick-off ’s” where we would gather the whole
animation team and walk through the document point by point, elaborating
where necessary and answering all questions. These meetings could
take hours but we would not leave until we were confident everyone
had a thorough understanding of our intentions for the scene and could
begin work.
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I think acting things out for an animator is a like giving an actor a line reading:
sometimes it works but I usually prefer to get there a different way. It is
usually the place of last resort if I am not getting what I want and words have
proven to be inadequate. I would always rather give the animator ownership
of the problem and let them find their own solution. Here is where I want to
go; I need you to figure out how to get us there. I always have my solution
in my back pocket to reach for if we are truly stuck, but I am always hoping
to be surprised. The best thing is when an animator (or story artist, layout
artist, surfacer, lighter, etc.) shows you work that is so much better than
your solution. That is a true gift. I don’t believe you can get these gifts by
micromanaging. Trying to control everything sucks all the joy in creating out
of the process (and I speak from experience having worked in story crews
where we were not allowed to contribute. There is no faster way of losing
the goodwill of your crew). Spending the time to equip your crew to succeed
in solving whatever problem needs addressing and then giving them room
to breathe and find their own solution is a very effective way to work. It is
efficient from a production management standpoint—I have found that the
work that comes back is never less than 85% there and so it only takes two
or three iterative tweaks to get it where I want, and it is a great way for the
crew to feel a strong emotional connection to the film and build up morale.
Their creative problem solving is now part of the fabric of the movie. It is not
“my” movie it is “our” movie. On KFP, I would say that “I don’t have to be the
smartest person in the room, I just have to be smart enough to know who the
smartest person in the room is, and take their idea to make the film better.”
And then say “thank you” and move on.
How do you use body language to develop a character or performance?
How do you tell the story with gesture rather than/as well as words?
Film is a visual medium and animation is its purest expression. Ideally, you
should be able to tell your story visually without relying on dialog (sound
effects and music are a different matter) and have an audience understand
everything. I remember in the late eighties watching a un subtitled Japanese
videotape of Hayao Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro with a group of American
and English children aged around ten years old long before it had a dubbed
or subtitled release in those countries. I loved the film and wanted everyone
I knew to see it. The children watched in rapt attention, laughing and
marveling at every new discovery. After it was over I quizzed them on whether
they had understood the story. They all had understood it perfectly, despite
not understanding a word of dialog or having any knowledge of Japanese
culture. The storytelling was so brilliant, clear, precise, and emotional that
words were unnecessary, the images carried you along. This is true of all of
his films and this is why Hayao Miyazaki is one of the world’s great directors.
Not just a great director of animated films, but a great director-period. He is
a master storyteller whose images communicate universally.
From the Preston Blair book, studying cartoons, and the classic book
on the process of film making at Walt Disney studios The Illusion of Life:
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Disney Animation by Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston I learned about the
importance of a clean silhouette in staging (something easier to do in hand
drawn animation, but the rules are still applicable to computer graphics)
and from artists like Rembrandt, Goya and Dore I began to understand good
composition and the importance of lighting in leading the eye naturally to the
place of primary interest.
I also love silent films, and often rewatch a lot of silent classics prior
to embarking on a project. Whether they are comedies from Charlie
Chaplin, Buster Keaton Mack Sennett, Hal Roach, or the many other great
comedians from that time, to the intense dramas of D.W. Griffith, F.W.
Murnau, Carl Dreyer, Sergei Eisenstein, and others that require intense
emotional concentration, the best of them are perfect examples of visual
storytelling with crystal clear emotional performances. Possibly the
greatest emotional performance ever captured on film is Maria Falconetti
in Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc from 1928. In the
subsequent eighty years, we have never seen another performance so
transcendent.
Or you could just watch Buster Keaton to understand the importance of body
language in creating a performance. From the explosions of frantic athletic
action to the moments of utter stillness in reflection, Keaton’s body tells you
everything that he is feeling.
And in the history of movies nobody has a better run than Buster Keaton.
How do you work with actors?
When I began work on KFP the part of the film making process that I had the
least experience with and was most anxious about was working with actors.
By the time we were finished with the movie, it had become the thing that I
had enjoyed the most. The solution to my anxieties in how to communicate
with actors was found by taking acting classes with a great acting teacher,
Judith Weston (her books Directing Actors: Creating Memorable Performances
for Film and Television and The Film Director’s Intuition: Script Analysis and
Rehearsal Techniques should be required reading for all aspiring directors
doing live action or animation). She gave me practical communication tools
and an understanding of the actor’s process that I did not possess before. The
more I learned the more fascinated by acting I have become. For me it is all
about preparation. An absolute understanding of the story and the character’s
place within it.
Before any recording session I spend hours going over the pages to be
recorded, making notes about motivation, goals, subtext, and emotional
context. I make lists of possible ways a line could be delivered to illustrate
those ideas and the shortest, pithiest instructions to communicate those
ideas to the actors. I make lists of metaphors and “as if’s.” Notes from my own
personal life that might relate to the emotion of the scene. Anything and
everything I can think of. These notes then get put in my binder that I take to
the recording studio. And then I rarely even look at them. We start work and
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I see where we are going and what gifts the actor is bringing to me in their
performance. If we get stuck or the actor has a question I can offer solutions
or answer the question without needing to look up my notes. They have
become so much a part of me that I do not need to reference them directly.
The value in the note-making process is the mental exercise in making sure
you really understand everything in the scene so that you are prepared for any
question, or eventuality.
Doing my homework gives me the secure foundation so that we can explore,
experiment, and be alert to the spontaneous moment that can transform
a scene and performance from the competent and professional to the
magical and truthful. If we can capture an emotion honestly, and organically
in the recording studio, even if it may have some technical imperfections
(a slurred or missed word for instance) then this will inform our animation in
a wonderful way. We will engineer the illusion of spontaneity in our extremely
labor intensive, time consuming, highly technical, and not at all spontaneous
process of animation.
This is just my opinion, but I do not think you can work well with actors unless
you have real empathy and understanding for what they do. The only way
to do this is to do it yourself and see how hard it is. To feel how vulnerable
and exposed you are, to understand the places you need to go inside
yourself to create something honestly. To understand first hand what kind
of instruction or guidance would help you. I think actors are extraordinary
people. Most people cannot do what they do. I know I certainly cannot. They
have my utmost respect and I try to earn their trust by creating a safe working
environment for them where they can dare. Then something wonderful might
happen.
Do you use live action, the acting styles of Stage, TV and Film actors,
other animation or observation as inspiration for a performance?
I think it is always dangerous to base your work on other people’s work, better
by far to create from within and to look inside yourself for inspiration.
Now, of course, I carry a mental Rolodex of hundreds of thousands of images
and performances that have inspired me throughout my life. Things I have
filed away because they had meaning to me, touched me in some way.
Things I wanted to keep in my head because I thought they were important.
But memory is selective and the reality is often different. If I remember
an acting moment that seems to shed light on a particular scene in the
film, I do not try to search out the actual footage and rewatch it. I trust my
memory of the moment and build on that to try and shape the performance.
Occasionally, after the film or project is finished, I may by chance encounter
the source of one of those moments again (a rerun of a movie on television,
for instance) and am usually surprised by how different from my memory
the actual performance is. My memory of the scene is the way I wanted it to
be. I reinterpreted the information to be meaningful to me and retained it
that way. If I access that distorted memory that has been filtered through my
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psyche for inspiration rather than trying to be influenced directly by some
one else’s work it will be honestly mine, and therefore has the chance of being
good and original.
Joanna Quinn
FIG. 10.2 Joanna Quinn.
Joanna was born in Birmingham, England, and completed a foundation
course in art at Goldsmiths College, University of London, before studying
for a BA in Graphic Design at Middlesex University. It was here that Joanna
first discovered the magic of animation, quickly adapting her unique drawing
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abilities to produce beautifully fluid and dynamic animated passages. Her first
film, Girl’s Night Out (1986), won 3 prizes at the Annecy Animation Festival in
1987 and thrust her into the international animation scene.
Joanna moved to Wales in 1985 and founded Beryl Productions shortly
afterwards with her partner, producer/writer Les Mills. The couple have
collaborated closely in the production of animated films and as educators
ever since.
Joanna is now a highly acclaimed figure in world animation. Her fine drawing
skills, wonderful characterizations, and humor mark her out as a unique talent.
Joanna has won a raft of top awards, including Emmys, Baftas, and Jury prizes
at all the major animation festivals. Two of her films, Famous Fred (1996) and
The Wife of Bath (1998), have received Oscar © nominations. Her masterpiece,
Britannia, a brilliantly biting view of British Imperialism, won her the
prestigious Leonardo Da Vinci award in 1996, which, ironically, was presented
by Prince Philip at Buckingham Palace!
Joanna continues to direct commercials and has now started work on their
new film Dreams & Desires—Affairs of the Art.
Joanna, you usually write your own stories for your films, don’t you?
What do you have to think about when it comes to the characters and the
performance?
Because I work with Les (husband and producer Les Mills), the story, the plot
and the characters all seem be happening at the same time. For the film we’re
working on now [the next episode in Beryl’s story], Les is writing the script,
but it started with character profiles he writes which are incredibly detailed,
and very funny, very thorough and full of imagery and very 3D; so then I think
it’s my job as the animator to make sure that all of those characteristics in the
character profiles come through in the animation.
So, I’m looking at the dialog, and thinking: “In conjunction with the
character profiles, is that exactly what they would say, or what would they
be doing at the same time?” Then, if something is being said in the dialog,
maybe you don’t need to animate it, or maybe you animate it but you don’t
need to say it.
Is this the next episode in Beryl’s story?
Yes, at the moment it’s a half-hour film and she becomes a proper artist, and
has a show. We’re deliberately trying to bring in other characters, so we meet
her son and her daughter, and her sister is very, very big. It’s almost her sister’s
film. So, it’s all about family and identity, and about character cause she’s
looking at herself as a character, and exploring herself as a character.
The way that we’ve been working is that Les gives me a page of script and, like
a teacher, I underline key points. So I storyboard those and then I go into the
rest of the script. And we’re doing little animatics of each section, that may or
may not end up in the final film, but they’re certainly helping us feel creative.
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Those little portions are actually more to do with character and exploring
character. So I’ve done one exploring Beryl’s sister and her obsessions with
death and immortality and now we’re doing Beryl’s son, Colin. They’re all
obsessive. And he’s particularly obsessive. So, it’s all him when he was a kid,
and what he used to do.
This is a really interesting way of working. Because it’s as if you’re
work-shopping the thing with the characters.
Yes, but the other thing is that it’s all based in reality because these
characters really exist. Well, Beryl’s sister doesn’t really exist as a person, but
her experiences do, and we’re able to point to different people that this has
happened to. I think being based on a real person enriches the character,
because “truth is stranger than fiction.” Some of the things are so haircurling
that I think we’ve got to use them. And it just makes it so original, so we don’t
know what’s going to happen till the end.
Because I hate doing character designs, but I love drawing, here’s how I’m
working. The Colin character is a real nerd, so I went into town and hung
around one of those computer gaming shops with just a tiny little notebook,
making visual notes, like the way they’ve all got these bags that dangle all the
way down here. And they look sort of like him.
So, you know these characters really well. You know Beryl because you’ve
lived with her for that length of time. Has she grown into herself as
you’ve been doing the films? Has she become a living being?
She’s a stereotype in Girls Night Out, but now she’s multifaceted. She’s still
sort of anxious, and unsure, and underconfident. But there’s something in
her trying to be something else and trying to be strong. Even though she’s
going to succeed and have this art show, she’s still the same underconfident,
“perhaps it’s all going to go wrong (which it does)” Beryl.
But also, to do with animation, say there’s a line of script and she’s doing
something positive; when I animate her, I can have her do that thing, but
then have her do a little twist of the eyebrows, a little anxious look, which will
change the whole meaning of that script. It will make it: “I’m going to do this,
but I’m still scared.” You don’t need to say it in the script, it can just be a little
look in the eye. That’s why I love animating, because you’ve got the basis, and
then you can just elaborate a little bit more and add something. and that gets
the laugh, not what’s funny in the script. What’s funny in the script might give
warmth to the character, an overall warmth, but most of the laughs I think
are got through the nuances in body language and behavior that people
recognize and chuckle at.
It’s interesting that you say that people recognize them. Victoria Wood
said you can’t be an observational comic without an observational
audience. And what she was saying is that you say something that
everybody has recognized, but they don’t realize they’ve recognized
it until you put it into words. And that’s why they laugh, because they
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actually get the connection. You’re dealing with a kind of empathy, and
you’re working with the audience, aren’t you?
Well I had a funny experience in Spain when Family Ties was shown and it
was the opening night of the festival. And you know the Spanish, they love
ceremony. And so they had the Lord Mayor there and the Lord Mayor’s wife.
And all the dignitaries of the council were there. And they were all dressed up
and smelling of lovely cologne and perfume. And I showed the film, and then
afterwards, all of the women, who all looked just like Spanish versions of Beryl,
came up to me, hugging me and giving me big kisses because they’d seen
themselves on the screen. It was the first time they’d ever seen themselves
on the screen and it was really funny, because they really did empathize with
Beryl and they were roaring with laughter. And I thought that was very funny,
because they were quite prim and proper.
Tell me about the process of animation for you.
I enjoy animating so much and doing character stuff, and I believe that the
key poses are crucial, so I spend quite a long time getting those key positions
absolutely right and the nuances. The other thing I do is absolutely making
sure that nothing is straight, so the figure is always slightly crooked or on an
angle and there’s a change in direction in the keys, so that when you go from
one to the other there’s a change in say, a wrist, it’s like that, there, and in
the next key it’s there, so that in the animation it has to switch, which gives a
sort of subtle, mini-flourish. And so I analyze my keys quite carefully making
sure that there is a change in direction and that they’re not straight on. And
I use the mirror, all the time, to get all those nuances and the subtleties, and
then I animate all the way through, from key to key. But if the animation
takes on a life of its own, I might get rid of the key and then that might just
get in-betweened. So you have a pathway, but when the movement actually
works on its own and the key is preventing it from flowing, I’ll change the key
or take the key out. So it’s like a skeleton that you might remove afterwards
and just make it all floppy and flesh.
It’s really important to understand the movement before you animate it,
rather than do the movement and then analyze the line test afterwards. That’s
an easy trap to fall into because it’s so lovely just animating and then looking
at your line test: “oh, I’ll change the legs.” But if your do your research first and
really understand the movement, your animation is going to work. You don’t
need to change it.
I think that’s a really important point. You’ve talked about how much you
understand the characters anyway. So, do you walk through or act out
the actions?
I don’t all the time. Because I feel quite confident with my animation, there
are certain things that I just sort of do, and I know it’s going to work. But then
some things, I think, “How do I do that?” And then I’ll act it out, or I’ll film
myself doing it, or get somebody else to act it. And draw thumbnails. Until I
absolutely understand two things: the whole movement and the shape of the
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movement, the pathway, what every single bit of the body is doing to make
up that movement. Following an arm, then the other arm, then following
the leg, and understanding the pathway of each bit. And then also identifying
the key, important changes of direction, and thumbnailing those keys. So
all the information is there on scrappy bits of paper and also in my head, and
then I animate it. I did a little film, Elles, in Spain and I didn’t have a line tester.
And so I had a little book, and I drew all of the movements; for instance she’s
undoing a napkin with her food in, and of course when I actually did that I
thought, “Oh my God. That’s so hard!” So, I had to work that out. And then I
animated it, and when I got back and tested it, everything worked. And I did
not have to change one piece of animation. Before that I used to do all the
animation and then sit for hours at the line tester, analyzing it, and then going,
I’ll change that bit. That was a real big learning thing for me, so, now I always
make sure I understand the movement before I animate it.
I learned a lot from doing all my line testing I think, and looking at the
movement, and I don’t think I would have even thought about just drawing,
really analyzing the movement before line testing it, at the beginning. The
thrill came from line testing it and seeing it move. But, it all comes down to
being prepared to change your work, and striving for perfection and finding
ways of doing that so that’s the least painful way. It’s all about working rough,
working very fast and doing lots of thumbnail studies, making sure that
the angle that you’ve chosen is the best angle, that the expression’s right,
that everything is correct in your thumbnails before you do the animation.
Because once you’ve animated it all you’re not going to want to start again,
whereas, deep down, you think “Dammit! I should have done it from a
different angle! And I think that’s what I’ve learned to do.” To get that right
first, before getting down to the lovely part. Because we’re all seduced by
doing animation, ‘cause it’s such fun.
To go back to an earlier stage of the process, let me ask you about
working with actors. Are you good at that? Do you enjoy it?
What we tend to do, is that Les directs them, normally. Because I’m not as
specific about what it is I want. I sort of go, “Yeah! That was really good. Now
try it like this.” And they’re going, “Argghhh!” So we work together but I don’t
say anything until I think that it’s not working. We work very closely with the
actors, but we do all the voices ourselves first, and try and get all the nuances,
and the emphasis where we want it, and then we say to them, “Copy this.” I
worked with a director once who said that I was insulting the actors by telling
them, “Do it like this. N’yah, n’yah, n’yah.” And he said, “I don’t know how
they’re putting up with you. That is such an insult.” And I said, “I don’t think it
is an insult. Because, it’s my film, and I know what it is I want; and they know
what I want.” I’ve asked actors and they said that they find that incredibly
useful, to know exactly what it is that is being asked. And so then they can
make it their own by making it better than that. And we also encourage
ad-libbing, and then try and write that into the script.
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I can’t do it through a microphone, because it’s visual. So I suppose by me
doing it visually, I’m acting out the animation. And then they go, “Oh, I see.”
And then they do it. Les is much better at putting it into words.
So, we usually animate to a scratch track, before we finally record. If we can
do it before, so I can adjust the lips, then that’s great, otherwise we just do
it to picture afterwards. Either way my lip syncs always look rubbish. But the
lips, I think, are almost the least important. It’s to do with body language and
acting. It’s all about finding the emphasis in the words and where the stress
is, and then how you communicate that with the body first, and then you just
jam the lips on, you know, last.
Marco Marenghi
FIG. 10.3 Marco Marenghi.
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Marco Marenghi was a late bloomer in the VFX industry. Returning to
animation college at age 30 he was drafted by leading British VFX house
“Framestore” in London where he was hand picked for the BBC’s Emmy/BAFTA
award winning series “Walking With Dinosaurs”. Within a year he was in a lead
position on the project. Following the success of that project, Marenghi was
snapped up by Spielberg’s PDI/Dreamworks CAFE division where he worked
on Ivan Reitman’s comedy “Evolution” and Spielberg’s “Minority Report.” After a
short stint in the video game industry for Electronic Arts, Marenghi relocated
to the Los Angeles area and took a job at Sony Pictures Imageworks where
he attained the position of Animation Supervisor in 2 short years, a post he
held for 6 years. As supervisor on Ghost Rider, Speed Racer, I am Legend, Alice in
Wonderland, and The Green Lantern, Marenghi has forged relationships with
clients and artists alike.
In 2011, Marenghi joined the team at Animal Logic in Sydney, Australia as
Animation Director, to head the creative vision for the movie debut of the
BBC’s global phenomenon Walking with Dinosaurs.
In 2003, he was the subject of a BBC documentary “The Marco Marenghi
Story” which followed his rise through the ranks from humble beginnings. In
2008 he was awarded “The Friz Freiling Lifetime Achievement in Animation”
and in 2009, Marenghi was privileged to receive an Honorary Doctorate from
his University back in Wales, UK.
What are the important elements of story, for you?
Story arcs and emotional swings—I like to go from happy to sad then scared
to euphoric—it stimulates the audience and that’s the core of entertainment
and being entertained.
If someone else writes the script what do you need from the writer and
what does the writer need from you?
Flexibility. Often I’ll have no direct input to a script but I can influence script
decisions by planting seeds that develop into story points. If I suggest
an idea to the director/scriptwriter they’ll twist it around a bit and make
it their own. Iguess that’s just a crafty ploy to getting your own way but
making it seem like it was their idea. Of course, the downside is you’ll never
get credit for it.
How do you get the audience to believe in and engage with the
character?
Performance and integrity. Put the hero in situations where the audience
can relate. Several of the core fundamentals of writing a script and achieving
certain aspects in each act are based on subliminal feelings most audience
members will have experienced at some point in their life, such as death, rockbottom, liberation, journey, camaraderie, pursuit, etc.
How important is it for the animator to empathize with the character?
Vital. How are you going to invest in a character if the person creating that
character’s performance isn’t?
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How do you make sure characters are consistent between the different
animators who have to animate them? How do you brief animators and
do you act things out for them?
This could be a VERY long answer! There are several schools of thought, but
sometimes it is impractical to employ the idea of keeping one character
with one animator—which would obviously be the ideal scenario. I have a
tendency to equally distribute the shots across the team until I see which
animators are hitting the mark with certain characters, then I’ll identify
the ones who excel at specific characters. While it is often impractical to
make them a “character lead,” I will make sure they are the ones who get
the “money shot” for that character and also channel the other animators
through them and their work. I’ll often cite another animators’ character
performance to an animator I’m directing—“Make it look like John’s ##
shot….” for example.
When briefing a shot, I’ll draw, act, show reference, get down on all fours—
whatever it takes to deliver the best possible information. I have no
shame.
How do you use body language to develop a character or performance?
How do you tell the story with gesture rather than/as well as words?
Ah—my personal fave! I always start a brief with “If you didn’t have audio,
what would you do to convey the dialog without words?” Often this leads to
gross overacting but it is easier to pull back from an over-zealous performance
than it is to keep pushing an understated one. I love to see idiosyncrasies
within an animator’s performance; it’s the difference between mediocre and
excellent. It also shows me which animators care enough to add that extra
level of icing to their cake and they are the ones who get publicly praised
and elevated for it. This gets the whole team pushing for the same level of
excellence.
It’s always good to get an actor’s eyes on performance animation tests
before they go into the sound booth. They can get so much from concept
sketches and artwork but when a character moves, it takes on a persona
and this can affect the actor’s performance and perception in a positive
way.
Do you use live action, other animation, or observation as inspiration for
a performance?
Always. It’s the core of every animation brief I give. When training new
animators, the first exercise I get them to do is to roto-mate live action. They
learn about timing, poise, weight and balance and can see how much or how
little things move when creating believable performance.
Is drawing important to you or not?
I wish it was more. I know its value but I must confess that I don’t draw
anywhere near as much as I should. My best animators are always
accomplished artists too.
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Do you get inspiration from the acting styles of Stage, TV, and Film actors
or have theories of acting influenced you in any way?
Yes. I love attending acting classes and hearing what the acting greats have
to say about performances and how to deliver them. I cite Michael Caine’s
acting series whenever I do a lecture on predatory movement. It’s uncanny
the instinctual things we humans still have buried deep in our psyche from
thousands of years of predatory existence.
Mark Baker and Neville Astley
FIG. 10.4 Mark Baker and Neville Astley.
Neville Astley and Mark Baker are the Creators of the preschool animation
series, Peppa Pig and Ben & Holly’s Little Kingdom. They created and directed
the BBC television series The Big Knights (Award for Best Television Series,
Annecy 2001). At present (2009) and have been collaborating since 1994, on
commercials, title sequences and short films, including Jolly Roger, through
their company, Astley, Baker, Davies.
Neville Astley’s short film Trainspotter, codirected with Jeff Newitt, was
nominated for a BAFTA® and won the Edinburgh Festival’s McLaren Award.
Mark Baker’s short films, The Hill Farm, The Village, and Jolly Roger have all been
Oscar® nominated and have won major awards around the world, including a
BAFTA® award and the Annecy Grand Prix (for The Hill Farm).
When I said that I wanted to come up and talk to you two one reaction
from, somebody who wasn’t that well informed, was, “Oh well, you know
Peppa Pig, things like that, I mean is there any performance in there?”
And I said, of course there’s a performance there, how could there not be?
Because it gets over to people so beautifully, and, everybody loves it. I
think what the person I was talking to was thinking about was Pixar films,
or fully-animated stuff; there’s a performance. But, actually, we’re talking
about the performance that you can get from verysimple things.
Mark: I think I’ve always liked the idea of making things which feel like
they’re obvious in a way, where people say that there’s no acting or
whatever. We try not to be too pretentious about it, but we try to hide the
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complexities, so we do an awful lot of discussing and talking, but we’ll try
to end up with something which is so obvious, that actually it appears to
have no work in it in a weird sort of way.
Neville: You just twist it, don’t you? You start with cliché and then you just
twist it and you can take it somewhere.
Mark: One of the lovely things about doing series work is that, the
characters start out as being quite clichéd in a way, but through the
stories they begin to get their own individual character, and then it
comes down to us actually believing they’re real people. So you think of
the situation and the characters running through, and the humor sort of
happens incidentally, but the main thing is the story, and there shouldn’t
be any joke in there just for the sake of a joke. I’ve had the experience
where you make a joke and it falls flat, and the problem is that if it’s
obviously a joke and it doesn’t work, that’s a dead point in the film. So,
my idea was that if all the jokes are also part of the story then it doesn’t
really matter if it particularly works as a joke, it’ll still be telling the story.
I would say, that what makes a good series is it is character-driven,
ultimately it’s to do with the fact that you like the characters, and you go
with them.
Do you take anything from people that you know?
Neville: Yes. Yes.
Mark: Especially when you have to come up with fifty-two ideas, and
with Peppa and Little Kingdom we’re often writing during production.
You’re like a sort of sponge and, especially when you’re tired, it’s almost
like you don’t realize you’re doing it. One moment you are experiencing
a real event, and then that same afternoon we might be having to
brainstorm a script and that real event is becoming the script. But I
think it’s essential, because what can be very dangerous with animation
is that some of those things could just be homages to previous
animation; and so I’m always wary and thinking, “I hope this isn’t
something that we’ve just seen before.” I’m usually reassured if I can nail
what that comes from, like some event, or something funny somebody
said. What was that line about, the T-shirt thing in The Little Kingdom,
someone said?
Neville: I’ve got T-shirts older than you.
Mark: Oh yeah, someone was getting a bit older and he said, “You’re not
old. I’ve got t-shirts older than you.” But it was such a great line that we had
to put it into the series.
Neville: And it helps because you do know the characters. With
Mrs. Rabbit, who has done every job in the Peppa Pig world, her character
came up because she was face painting, and we were working it out. When
kids came up asking for different animal faces, she could only do tigers,
and it suddenly clicked that she was doing all these jobs that she was not
good at, and that was something that we chanced upon and managed to
then develop.
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Mark: With Peppa we were using a particular little girl to do the voice,
Lily Snowden-Fine. She had quite a feisty sort of character, and she was
about five. So it was partly based on the fact we knew that a little girl could
be quite charming if she was also a tiny bit bossy, in the way of bossing
around the parents a little bit, so that gave us a hook again a sort of an
angle on it, if you like.
So you’ve got clues from the actual performance of the actor?
Mark: Yeah, and her in real life.
Neville: Apart from Morwenna Banks and John Sparkes, who do great
character voices, we go for the voices that feel natural, so you don’t have
somebody coming in and putting on a cartoony voice; which you find on
quite a lot of TV. You can turn the TV on and you know it’s a cartoon before
you even see it, rather than just using somebody’s great, interesting voice.
So how do you then take that into the style of animation that you do?
Mark: I think with the styles we work with, quite simple styles, one thing
has to happen after another, and you have to know what you’re supposed
to be watching. Getting people to look at the right point of screen is
actually a real art. And, as animators, we know the basic trick is the thing
that’s moving is what you look at, isn’t it?
Neville: Which goes back to classic mime, doesn’t it? But also we have
something called “Joris eyes,” which our animation director, Joris van
Hulzen, did ever since we started Peppa, where the eyes would just move
slightly, not go right across the eye, as if there’s thinking going on in there.
I was even looking at this new series today, first time I’d seen it on TV and
going, “There’s some great eyes there.”
Mark: I think all animators are aware of the importance of the eyes in
characters and say Holly comes to a stop, we can make her come to a dead
stop and the tiniest little movement of the pupils will be seen, because
nothing else is moving. The lovely thing about doing the digital work is,
because it is so clean, you can actually do the most subtle moves, and it
will actually be seen.
Neville: There’s overanimating the action as well, and with Peppa, Joris,
is just keeping it clean and simple, so every move is considered and is
readable, rather than just constantly moving.
Mark: A good example of that is reaction shots. For example, in Big Knights,
where the king was supposed to just raise his eyebrows, you just want him
to do that. But it’s very hard, for an animator, if they’re animating that shot
out of context, to just do that, because they want to make a great shot. So,
in isolation they might make a great shot, but actually it’s overanimated
and we then have to pull it back, and say, “No, just make the eyebrows
raise.”
Neville: If you remember Basil, The Great Mouse Detective, where
Ratigan is called a rat, and everything just freezes. A Disney film, and it
just freezes. So nothing moves. He’s just so outraged that somebody’s
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called him a rat, and I thought “Wow. That’s brilliant. It’s such an
impact.” More than any bit of animation in that film was him just
freezing when somebody’s insulted him. It felt like it went on for about
five minutes.
Mark: And again, some of the Merrie Melodies used to do that; they would
just stop the character for longer than you expect and it gets a laugh. I’ve
always had this thing that good timing is when things are slightly quicker
or slightly longer than you expect, and it’s keeping that kind of slight
awkwardness that’s funny; but if you do it the correct amount, often it’s
not funny.
I think the other thing is, it’s very tempting for animators to try and animate
every word in a sentence with a gesture and if a live-action actor acted like
that you’d think that’s worst actor in the whole world. If they’re waving their
hands around and ducking their head up and down on every single phrase,
you’d just think that’s the most hammy, awful acting, but somehow, especially
with traditional drawn animation, other animators go, “This is amazing,” you
know, “It’s fantastic.” Coming back to another real example; I was watching
a documentary about Laurence Olivier, and when he wanted to really get
the audience, he would think of a scene he’s going to do, and he’d think of
one gesture that was going to be the gesture for that sequence and he just
works his way to that gesture, and he said that would make the hairs go up on
people’s necks.
With animation, you are trying to help the dialog, but it is sometimes too
easy just to animate every nuance with a gesture, rather than actually
having one simple move, or one key moment. Though the animation in
Peppa is a lot more fluid and full than it was at the beginning, we’re still
trying to keep it really clean. We had an episode recently, and because
each scene had been worked on by different animators, and they’d each
made their scene the special scene, if you like, Joris had to go back through
and simplify some of the mouths down to just simple, expressionless
mouths, in order to make the occasional times that Peppa has a sad mouth
actually stand out, otherwise it was just continuous gloom, you’ve got
nowhere to go.
So how do you work with the animators when it comes to telling them
what you want; do you act things out?
Mark: We do sometimes stand up and act things out, and certainly
the animators do, and there was a moment in the first couple of weeks
of animation when I saw one of the animators out in the room and there
was a whole discussion going on. She was just endlessly doing a wand
spell, stepping back and doing it, and then there would be a bit of a
discussion, and then she’d be doing the wand spell again, and a bit more
discussion. It’s just fantastic to see that level of concentration, of someone
worrying about a wand gesture.
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Neville: It’s what you were saying about believing in characters, and when
we talk to distributors, they laugh, going, “You talk as if she’s real,” and we’re
going, “Well she is real. She’s as real as an ‘Eastenders’ life, you know, or
anything else you see on television.”
Mark: Animation is playacting, isn’t it? And when you’re a child, you have
that ability to lose yourself in a game, playing cowboys and Indians or
something and I think that animators hang on to that. That’s the thing
about being creative, and it is a lovely thing to have.
Billy Allison
Billy Allison has worked in the animation industry in one form or another
since 1983. Starting with an 8 mm Bolex camera, while still at high school, he
FIG. 10.5 Billy Allison.
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went on to study at Newport film school in Wales. Before graduation, Billy was
already working on local TV idents and commercials and after graduation he
found himself working for Siriol in Cardiff. He went on to work on series such
as William’s Wish Wellingtons, Spider in the Bath, and many others. He now
works for big name Game studios around the UK.
How does character design impact on performance? And how does
budget impact on both?
Character design can impact on performance if the “big picture” is not
considered. For example, a couple of years ago, a character was designed
for a game project; he was a great design and in normal everyday animation
terms was great to work with, until a last minute design addition required
that he should be able to hang on to ledges and perform hand over hand
maneuvers on a rope suspended between two tall buildings. Sounds great
and fun; problem was, he was a toon character with a large head and, with
his current setup, his arms could not possibly reach the rope/ledge without
passing through his head. So the rig had to be made that allowed stretchy
limbs, something that, at the time, was not a simple thing to do in game
engines as it involved storing more animation data. That impacted on the
game’s performances and budget, as we needed more time to make this
work. Another thing was huge shoulder armor on a knight character; his
acting and performance was severely limited as he wasn’t able to even shrug
his shoulders without crushing his own head.
How do you get the audience to believe in and engage with the character?
Simple to answer this I think, not so simple to do; you have to make the
character appear to think about what he/she is doing, they can’t simply move
about.
I think it is important for the animator to animate as if they are acting
the part themselves, they really need to “be” the character while they’re
animating.
How do you use body language to develop a character or performance?
How do you tell the story with gesture rather than/as well as words?
I try to develop recurring and consistent mannerisms or quirks for particular
characters, something that the audience can learn about them, so they know
how they are going to react to a specific situation. It may be as simple as
a position of the mouth, say jutting out the bottom lip when they’re not in
total agreement with things.
How do you direct motion capture performers? Do you have to ask for an
exaggerated performance style?
I like to direct the performers as if they’re animated puppets, I use the same
basic animation principals, make action bigger, more obvious, with slightly
longer holds on actions, something that adds a little extra to what would
normally be dull and floaty. I don’t mean melodramatics with the back of a
hand on the forehead etc, just slightly larger actions, same realistic acting.
For physical impacts like firing a gun, I would actually get onto the mocap
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area and hold the gun and make it “fire” so that the whole jolt shows in the
character’s body and doesn’t simply look like it’s them acting the recoil. I
hold the prop and hit it with my other hand to create the recoil effect on the
actor’s body.
On the mocap sessions I’ve worked on, I tried to set up a pipeline that
minimized having to edit the data afterwards; one step was to actually
provide the mocap studio with the actual character and in-game skeleton for
them to target the data to directly rather than them send us “generic human”
captured data. Basically this meant I got the data and imported it into my
scene and after simply making sure the character was pointing in the correct
direction that was it. Planning all this in advance is certainly not time wasted;
too many people want to dive in and fix “in post.”
What are your sources of inspiration, from animation and beyond?
I like to people watch and watch cartoons
Drawing is still very important to me and I draw when ever I can. It’s relaxing
and unrestricted, you can do anything with drawing. I get inspiration from
stage, TV etc, especially acting without dialog, Charlie Chaplin is a great one
for me for example.
Peter Lord
FIG. 10.6 Peter Lord.
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Animator, director and cofounder of Aardman Animations, Peter Lord is one of
the most successful producers of stop-motion, model animation in the world.
Together with David Sproxton, he established Aardman Animations in 1972,
after experimenting with animation in their school days.
Aardman’s first major commission was The Amazing Adventure of Morph,
a Plasticine animation series for children that aired on the BBC in the early
1980s. Conversation Pieces, a series of short films commissioned by Channel
Four and based on recordings of real people, led to the development of
Aardman’s unique style, commercial work, and the growth of the studio. In
1991, Lord animated Adam, a 6-minute clay animation that was nominated for
an Academy Award. Nick Park created the “odd-couple” Wallace and Gromitshorts in cooperation with Lord and Sproxton. All three together worked as
producers, editors, and directors. Other awarded productions by Peter Lord
are Chicken Run (2000), the first feature film from Aardman and the Academy
Award-winning Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005). His
latest feature film is The Pirates, in an Adventure with Scientists (The Pirates,
Band of Misfits in the US) (2012)
Let’s start with the idea of story first. How do you come to a story? Do you
see a character in there that you really like, or do you like the story and
have to pull a character out of that?
I think it’s a situation that appeals to me. With story, the thing I often find
myself saying is, “Ooh. Great setup!” So, it’s something to do with a sense
of character, and a sense of character can be very simple to start with, and
a situation. You can see the meat in it. You feel the potential drama even
before you know where the real drama is. I think, for example, doing this
Pirates film, although the Pirate Captain was written in book form, it wasn’t
terribly strong in character to start with, but the situation was funny, and
character only really becomes obvious when they’re doing something.
You say, “George is a daring, devil-may-care kind of guy, and he loves other
people, but, he’s got secret anxieties,” and that’s what your plan is, but none
of that counts for anything until George is doing something, interacting with
someone or something, or in situations.
Character comes out of action?
Yeah. ‘Cause without it, it tends to be just words on a page, and your ambition
as a writer, or a director. If you know your character is selfish, how can you
know that? Only by his or her interactions with other people.
Going back to quite early on, the things that Aardman became so well
known for and were so good at were the Conversation Pieces, and the
Animated Conversations; taking real dialog and then playing with it,
and you were always really great at getting fantastic characters from
documentary conversations. How did you work with the recorded
voices, in order to make the characters true to what you were
listening to?
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I think that’s a really interesting question; that I haven’t really thought about,
for a long time. They’re short films, they’re five minutes long, and some
of them have two or three characters, and one or two have half a dozen
characters in them, and you need those characters to come across quickly, so
the short answer is, it must come from the voice. It must, because we didn’t
see who was talking. Whether that was principle or cowardice, I don’t know.
But either way, we didn’t see them, all you had to go by was the voices. So if
you have a choice in a project like that, then your choice would always be to
find the voice which is characterful, and the situation which is interesting. You
listen, and you hear it over, and over again, and get very used to it, and you
make assumptions about what the person’s like, what their character’s like,
and how they move. How they behave, how they move, how they act, is all
derived from the voice, and it is interesting how much can be derived from
the voice, how many clues there are in there if you listen closely. If you have
a voice where the speaker is very clear, very emphatic, doesn’t hesitate, very
sure of themselves, that is a big audio clue, as to how they would behave, and
who they are.
So in the Conversation Pieces, you’re recording somebody who exists,
and trying to find the character in that, but if you’re recording an actor,
presumably you’ve already got an idea of the character, and you want to
get an actor that will work for that character, but do you then get more
clues from the actor’s performance?
Yes, absolutely you do. Now that’s another interesting area, because, once
you’re in the studio, you hope and want the actor to be very active in finding
the character and developing the character, and it’s a two-way process. You
give the actor the cues that you have in mind, the things that you want, and
then you hope to receive back in return more. In truth, if I’m honest, I think
you often get precisely what you asked for, but delivered skillfully, which is
important in itself, but it’s great if you’ve got time, and flexibility, to let the
actor find some real character substance. In animation, we seldom get much
rehearsal time, so it’s hard to get that organic process, which I’m sure happens
in theater, and in movies, of getting actors together, rehearsing, playing,
experimenting to find the character. That would be my ideal, but it doesn’t
happen very often.
I think obviously, it should be the case that there are as many options for
acting in animation as there are for acting in any other medium, everything
from, the super-sophisticated to the completely banal, everything from superminimalism, to buffoonery and pantomime performance but personally,
I think avoiding cliché is very important. I think you want, both in the voice,
if it’s voice performance, or the gesture, if it’s purely visual performance,
reality, and reality, what does that mean? It means ideas, gestures, words, that
come from character, that are based in character, that are really influenced by
the world around, that are really influenced by the current situation (in the
movie). So the same line would vary enormously depending on whereabouts
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in the story it is, how relaxed, how confident, how on-top-of-the-world the
character is. I like characters that don’t know what’s going on. I like characters
that are always one step behind the action, struggling, that amuses me very
much, rather than a character in charge of everything, who calls all the shots.
That’s fun to play with, so I like characters, who are, as we say in cricket, “on the
back foot,” they’re, always at a slight disadvantage. I just find that a pleasing,
delightful comedic situation.
So you like the characters experiencing things, having to react to
them?
Yeah. Simply that. I like it when the character is, as I say, at a disadvantage in
the scene, so then you see with them, every new discovery they make about
the scene, every new revelation, every new person that appears in the scene,
you’re seeing it with the character, and that’s empathetic. We’ve just done
a scene in The Pirates! where the hero and his sidekick meet the villain, and,
of course, they all play the scene differently, because the villain is calling
the shots and knows exactly what’s going on from day one, so she doesn’t
react very much, because everything is playing out according to her plan.
Now that’s great for a villain, and it’s simple. It’s not very amusing, there are
not many gags in that because she’s in charge of the scene; and then our
hero, who is a rather special hero, because he has an inappropriate degree of
self-confidence, he feels more in control than he is. The third character in the
scene fully realizes the danger they’re both in, so each of those three people
approaches the scene differently, sees the scene differently and it’s fun to
catch that in the performance.
So, going back to the reality of the performance; in certain cases, like
Going Equipped, the level of reality is that of real life, but when you’re
talking about Pirates! you’ve got complete fantasy-reality, so, is it a
reality that exists just for that film, or are you trying to bring things from
real life into a fantasy environment?
I often think, gratefully about those things that we did based on real
conversations, “Oh, that was great training.” I didn’t know it was great
training at the time, but I think it was, because those real voices, speaking
naturally, were full of cues and clues about performance—pauses, which
actors often don’t do, unless reminded, repetitions, hesitations, inaccuracies,
all those things. The very stuff of life, that when you heard you could sense
very strongly what he was thinking, and extrapolate how he or she would
perform it. So, what I’ve learned is naturalism, which was always interesting
to me, even though I wouldn’t for a moment tell animators that that was
necessary. My favorite moments, the successful moments, I always think,
are real moments, and the pleasure for the audience is in recognition, when
they catch a moment, or a gesture, or a look, and say, “God, that’s just like
me,” or, “God, that’s just how people react,” or, “That’s just how people move.”
There’s a scene in Toy Story 3 where the boy is scooting across the floor on
his chair, he’s working on his computer, and there’s something about the
gesture in which he kicked his way across the floor on a wheeled chair, that
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makes you go, “Oh yeah, that’s just how people do it,” and that’s pleasing,
you know, satisfying. And when I think of the things that I’ve done that
please me, it’s normally that kind, where you’ve just caught the moment
very exactly.
So in those early films I could hear the reality on the tape, nobody was telling
the speaker how to act or when to speak, or anything like that, and that reality
was really important to me. Now, working with a script, I’m looking for the
actor to be smart enough, professional enough, to read a line as if it’s just
come into his head, and to react to developments believably, and to interact
with whoever’s talking to him or her believably, credibly, with good timing.
Credibly, believably doesn’t mean predictably though, because that would be
boring.
And that applies to the animator as well as the actual actor doing
the voice?
Yes, it does, so, then the animator takes over then, they’ve got the voice to
work with, and now their job is to perform that believably. I say that word,
believably, because I guess you as director can set where believable is in your
world, can’t you? So if it’s Looney Tunes, believable is very, very broad indeed,
but it’s still believable.
I don’t have many rules, but one thing I always maintained is that
animation is about simplification and exaggeration; I think that you
simplify real life to its essential elements, because real life is ridiculously
complicated, and then you exaggerate them. So, even when I talk about
naturalism, it’s always exaggerated, and it amuses me when people say,
“Oh, your gestures are so natural, and real,” and I think, “Well, no they’re not,
they’re much bigger, much larger than life,” so that, if a character, a teenage
character, slumps, in a teenage gloom into a chair, then I want them to be
just completely slumped, I want the spine to be really bent, and if he sinks
his head into his shoulders, I need the shoulders to come right up around
his ears. I want to take that idea, and make the most of it, and make it
clear, and exaggerate it. So, you put the character in a strong, expressive
pose, and it does so much for you. If you’ve got the pose right, you don’t
have to do much animation; there’s another rule, not a rule at all, but an
observation.
Obviously, observing people is one thing, but what about other sources
of reference, and ideas for performance?
I think observing people is the most important thing, and hugely important.
I am a great advocate for animators being physical, which is partly why
I have a secret suspicion of CG animation because I think it encourages you
to sit down the whole time, and not hop up, and I want to see my animators
jumping up, doing it themselves, acting it out themselves, to know what it
feels like, to feel how and when your body moves. I think it’s really valuable.
So, let’s have no sitting down animators. Let’s have jumping up, acting
animators. I believe that.
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At Aardman, these days, we use an awful lot of video reference; we take the
line of dialog, or the shot that’s coming up, and then one, or both of us, act
it out, and record it, and then the animator refers to it. I always say, and at
Aardman it’s absolutely true, that they’re referring to it, not copying it. From
my point-of-view, as a director, I probably don’t know quite what the acting
is so, I’m doing it for myself, as much as anyone else. I think that that’s my
rehearsal period, that’s when I get to try the line different ways, to try the little
scene different ways. And what am I looking for? Timing mostly ‘cause it’s the
most difficult thing in animation; getting the poses is one sort of problem,
but getting the pose in the right proportion, the holds in the right place, the
acceleration, deceleration in the right place is really tricky. In the old days, we
did it with a stopwatch and worked it out that way; now we do it with a video
camera. You do several takes to find one which was real, and so you’ve got
the timing from that and then, the other thing that I always look for, which is
rather difficult to get, is subtle things, because some reactions are very, are
small, but crucial. If your character is standing, looking out the window and
somebody knocks on the door behind him and says, ‘The police are here,’
you can have the eyes shoot out the top of the head, he can jump in the air
and get panicked and run around the room. That would be one way of doing
it, and that’s fine, but sometimes, you want the subtle thing. The guy in the
doorway says, “The police are here to see you,” and the guy at the window just
does something with his face, some really small, tiny little thing, which the
guy in the doorway can’t see, which is very expressive, and those things are
harder to get, and it’s interesting to try and record them on video.
Personally, because I was an animator, before I was a director, I hate the
idea of being too all-controlling, because then you turn the animator into
an automaton; also, I don’t think you get the best of them and, with my
video rehearsal game, it might be the animator doing it. That’s one excellent
solution, which often happens. I can also tell you that when you’ve been
working with someone for some time, and you’ve got a proper rapport, I’m
proud to say that some people will do it better on their own than with my
direction, because they got the characters so well. They should be getting
pleasure from it, and so just being my hands, them just trying to do exactly
what I want, frame-by-frame, just seems wrong to me, I think you lose life that
way, and energy in performance.
William Todd-Jones
Todd is a British puppet designer, performer, director, movement consultant,
and writer for film, television, and theatre in the UK and abroad. He trained as
a dancer and actor at the Welsh College of Music and Drama and in the USA,
at Bard College, New York.
FIG. 10.7 Todd the Satyr alone by
Amos.
Todd worked on the Pixar movie, John Carter of Mars, directed by Oscar winner
Andrew Stanton, for which he taught stilt-walking and was the in-camera
reference for the Calot Woola.
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He has performed creatures and puppets on numerous feature films
including; The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, Harry Potter V, Jim Henson’s
Labyrinth, the various Muppet movies, Batman, and Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
In recent years, he has specialized in bridging the disciplines of live
performance and computer graphic animation, developing techniques in
optical motion capture, performance animation, and digital puppetry.
Can we talk a little about your attitude to performance?
Critically, for me, if there isn’t a story, then there really isn’t any point, and
the story doesn’t have to be in a distinct narrative, it doesn’t have to start
at A, go through hiatus, get to catharsis, come to an end in Act III, but it
does have to have a journey that can work in the mind and imagination
of the audience. The story is populated by characters, which is an obvious
thing to say, but all a puppet, or a special-effect, or an animated object is,
is a character, or prop that helps the story. My experience is that while it
might be something very realistic that people are familiar with, it might be
absolute fantasy. It can even be a character as the weather, or the sea, or
something like that, but all these characters populate the story. And that’s
the critical thing.
And when you talk about characters, do you make a distinction between
a character who is doing something in the story, and a character who
might be the sea, or the weather? Where do you make that difference in
your performance if you’re trying to create one of those?
Well, I have played inanimate things like the sea, you know. I will always look
to the part that that character needs to play within the story, and give it a
personality that I think is appropriate for that. I was a killer tree in Brothers
Grimm. Now, what do you do as a tree? Well, actually, the joke is at drama
school, you learn to be a tree. In this case, it was a malevolent, ancient fir with
gnarly roots that crawled across the ground, and consumed people. Drew
them into its bark. Enfolded them with its leaves, and they were gone, and
became part of it. But, there’s a physicality, and in order to give the audience
a sense of its brooding quality then the motion needs to reflect that. There is
a thing that is recognizable from our world, our experience, that I then pick
out and use in order to create the character.
I look at people endlessly. I look at interaction. I will carry those bits that I’ve
seen in the world and it becomes a library of how people can communicate,
and I construct from things I’ve seen humans do to convey a particular thing,
whether it’s in the street, or on film, and then I’ll add it to the physicality of this
other creature.
Is there a difference between the performances that you’ll give if you’re
on a stage, and if you’re on TV or in a performance capture setting?
There’s an interesting thing here for me, in that, I think I do the same thing
each time. I just make it bigger, or smaller according to how far away the
audience is, or what sort of creature I am, but I’m still trying to keep to the
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core of the way this character is. The stage is extraordinarily forgiving, because
if you’re in a theater, you can have quite a personal relationship with the
audience, so you can put in nuances there that you’d never try at a festival, but
you can also be more mimetic, I suppose, than you would be on television,
where just a slightly raised eyebrow in a close-up is enough. That tells you
everything you need to know. You can be more abstract, I think, on stage.
There will be examples that directly contradict this, but as a general assertion,
I’d maintain that the theatre audience understands that their minds are
required to be active, to be attentive, and deduce from limited clues what’s
happening. They are there with their minds open, ready to receive, so you can
really go a lot farther, and be very expressive, and quite dangerous, I suppose,
in the performance that you offer on stage. A really good example is Lion
King, where you can see it’s a person, except they’ve got a mask on that is
representative of some African animal, and you go, “O.K. That’s a lion. That’s a
hyena. That’s a giraffe. Great! Got it! I’m there!”
So, do you think there’s a different expectation for film, given that people
have done the same thing if they’re going to a movie? They’ve actually
bought the tickets, and they’ve bought into it.
I think my experience is that film has created a rod for its own back. It has to
be hyper-real. It doesn’t mean it’s any better, or worse than previous tales,
but, with special-effect movies, which I’ve been very involved with over
the years, people want bigger, and better. Now, oftentimes, that’s at a cost
to story, you know, if you do a Greek tragedy on stage, like, at the Globe in
London, then the guy runs on, “You shoulda seen that battle out there! Oh!
Ah!,” and, he’s got a bit of ketchup on, and he’s sweating, and his clothes are a
bit torn, and his sword’s broken. “Ooh. It’s terrible! Hundreds dead! Elephants!
The clash of armies, and the bright sand glinting off bronze! And their dead,
they litter the ground, and the blood seeps in!,” and you’re going, “Ooooh,
that’s great.” With film you didn’t always need to see it, but pretty much now
you need to see the whole thing, and it’s a bit of a letdown. Frequently it’s
very, very hard to do as much in vision as the imagination will do for you as
you’re told a story.
It’s very difficult to engage when you know it’s a special effect, and obviously
you’ve seen so much. How can you feel anything about the third orc from the
right, who’s just been decapitated? There is an indulgence with filmmakers,
“Great. So, in the last one, we had a hundred. Now, let’s have a thousand. Let’s
have ten thousand. We can do anything with them!,” but what they should be
saying is, “Why?” What in the narrative, in the story requires that? Is it better? If
it’s not better, don’t bother.
So, since what you do is to create these characters that don’t exist, then
the challenge, for you, presumably, is to give them that personality, or
that element that actually connects with the audience.
Yes, this leads me back to motion capture, and motion capture is a really
simple thing, in that, when I move, the vectors of that are captured, and
that data is then put on to some character. It could be a dragon’s wing, or
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tail, a worm, a fish, doesn’t really matter, but it drives the computer graphic
character across space, and time. So, you’re looking for a vocabulary for any
character. Any character that I do, whether it’s meant to be real, or utter
fantasy, I’m looking for something that is the shorthand that allows audiences
to go, “Ah. I know what that is. Off we go!” If they look at it, and go, “I don’t
know what it’s on about,” you’ve lost.
When you establish your characters, then there should be enough visually
there for an audience to go, “I know where that will fit in with everything
else, I know what that is,” and they know what it is not because they
understand Vogons, as in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, or, dragons in
Dragonslayer, or Calots in John Carter. They understand it because they’ve
looked at each other’s faces, they’ve looked at each other’s bodies, and
mannerisms, and they also have been taught by the language of film,
so their expectation just needs to be satisfied. My mentor Jim Henson
suggests that the human face has twenty-six letters to draw upon, an
alphabet, including all vowels, that can create everything, whether it’s the
works of Shakespeare, or Lord of the Rings, or any story. In the human face,
it has all of the tools it needs to show everything. Kermit, at best may have,
four, or five consonants, and a couple of vowels, if you’re lucky, but you have
to construct your whole narrative, you have to do Shakespeare, essentially,
out of that, out of what you’ve got, so you use a shorthand, and you’re
looking for bits that do convey that thing. Find that useful word, and look to
your library of knowledge of what you’ve seen in this world to help you find
that vowel to go with a couple of consonants that gives you that moment
on screen.
So it’s very useful for animators to be able to reach into the store
of things that they’ve seen, but how do you avoid imitation or
melodramatic performance?
I think you just have to be true. You find a truth within it. I’ve done several
talking horses, and it’s a very funny thing, ‘cause, you know, I know horses
really well. I love watching them, but a horse doesn’t talk, so you have to find
something within that that allows you to give it the rhythm of that animal
plus the emotional hooks that allow an audience to know, not only what
it’s talking about, but how it’s feeling about what it’s talking about, and the
critical thing, for me, is less is more. Just pull back. Yes, you can go all the
way, but don’t. Leave spaces for your audience to fill in, otherwise you just
become this sort of ridiculous cartoon, and people don’t engage with it. There
are occasions where that’s appropriate, but as a sort of general rule I will try
to stay true to what I think the character is, having read the script, having
understood it, talked with the director maybe, this is as far as you go on this
character.
On a practical level, perhaps you talk us through what you were doing
on John Carter, because you were actually on set with the other actors
giving them some kind of reference to play off, while you were being the
animal sidekick, as it were.
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The Calot Woola. Yeah. I talked to Andrew Stanton, who directed Finding
Nemo, Toy Story, and WALL·E, about what he wanted for this character, and, he
said he wanted a dog. I went, “Great! I know dogs. I can do dogs,” particularly
since I know the audience knows dogs as well. It’s very much a known
vocabulary, and if I go back to that analogy of the alphabet, there’re quite
a lot of things in there that everyone knows what it means, essentially. So,
Andrew Stanton said what he wanted was a dog, a lovable pooch, and when
I auditioned for the part, what I did was made a cardboard head with eyes
of roughly the right scale. The character stands about four feet to the top of
its head, looks somewhat like a cross between a tadpole and a bulldog, is
very primitive in its wants and needs, pretty much like dogs, and I went over,
I sniffed his crotch, sat down, scratched myself, and farted. It was the shortest
audition I’ve ever done, and was right. It’s all you needed.
In order to create, or build the character, you look for its nuances, and what
gives you the tools to convey things, so, the way it walks, the way it lumbers,
its sort of natural pace, its frightened pace, when it’s happy, all those things
that you should explore, because that will give you the library from which to
draw when you’re in the scene. Woola has ten legs, so that sort of rules me
out, rather, even with the extra bits added on, but essentially, it had a gait and
that was understood by the animators, and so I really only had to focus on
where its head was. We spent a lot of time developing how this thing would
move, laying down a lot of reference videos, doing some data capture of it,
but probably the principle role that I had, on set for roughly five months, was
to provide some reference. The difference in something physical being there,
for an actor to work against, and something that they have to remember
ought to be there, is 100%. And, having done all this work in developing what
the movement should be, with a green lycra suit, and a puppet representation
of its head that blinked, and looked left to right, and a mouth that sort of
slobbered, I was physically there so that if John Carter wanted to scratch my
ear, he could do that, or I could push against him, or I could be embarrassing
to them by doing something that was just spontaneous.
It was sometimes suggested by the director that without letting the other
actors know, maybe I’d do this particular thing sometime during the course of
the scene which would just cause them to look, because when they respond,
or react to something, even if it’s not with language, you believe it’s there. If
they believe it’s there, the audience will believe it’s there. There’s one scene
where John Carter has escaped from the Zadangan city on a flier. He can’t fly
it very well and crashes into the desert. So, it goes, “Crash! Bang! Wallop!,” and
he’s landed, on his back in the desert, and Woola comes up, being very happy
about seeing him again. So, we know that when our dogs are happy to see
you again, and you’re a bit too close they’ll lick you, and you go, “Oh great.” So
Andrew called me aside said, “Yup. Go for it.” Taylor didn’t know this was going
to happen, and so I had, in my full green suit with the puppet head, a bucket,
and a sponge. “Action!” He does the land. The last moment of just settling
down. Dust cloud flies up, and out of the dust is meant to come Woola, and
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I, taking my really wet sponge go from crotch through navel, over chest, up
cheek, and across his mouth, and he goes, “Aaaahhhhhhh!!!” You wouldn’t
have got that reaction in such a primitive, natural way, if you’d just said, “Now
what we want you to imagine…” He’d have done it well, but this was, “Got it.
Moving on.”
That’s a way you helped the other actors by being there, but when you’re
working on your own, and you’ve got to be a character in a film, or video
game, or whatever it happens to be, how do you work if you’ve got
nothing to play to?
When I was a kid I was a cowboy for a few years, and then I became an
Indian, because I thought they were much cooler, and I played out these
imaginary scenarios in my head from as long ago as I can possibly remember.
I think it’s the same as every child’s world; it’s populated with all those
other characters. I can see, and believe those things are there. It can get
very complex, but even in a motion capture studio, for instance, where
there’s nothing other than the red lights around the cameras, and an optical
setup shining into the space picking up my movement, I can, in my mind,
populate the rest of the space with the other characters, and if I’m not doing
it particularly well, exactly as is wanted, then I can always put a tripod with
a bit of tape on the top of it, so that I get that eye line exactly right. When
they say, “Oh, look at that dragon flying in over the fortress just up there,”
all I need to do is find a spot on the gantry, which I look at, and I imagine it.
Imagination is the most extraordinary thing, and what a tool for performers,
and animators, and, in my case, a performance animator, to be able to run
the whole scenario in my head without the physical discomfort of being
torched by the dragon.
How do you approach physical forces acting on you from outside, if you
get hit by bullets or swept away by the storm?
Well, let’s go back to this dragon, you know, the dragon is, is coming in, it’s
gonna torch me, or, maybe it’s just gonna sit there, and I’m beaten back by the
wind from its wings, or I’m swooshed by its tail, any of these things are gonna
have a physical effect. Now, up to a point, I can pretend, you’re back to me
being a cowboy, or an Indian when I was a little kid. I have the gunfight at the
O.K. Corral, I go, “Boom! Aah! Oh!” Throw myself down. Great. That works, up
to a point, and for lots of things that might be absolutely fine, but audiences
have seen a lot of films. They know what it ought to look like, even if in reality
it doesn’t. Death in reality can often be quite banal, not the sort of high-blown
operatic versions that you’ll get in Private Ryan, or in Lord of the Rings, but the
audiences’ expectation is that they will see a physical effect upon you. When
you do the action, then it has to represent the thing of the story, so let’s say
you are being hit by a dragon’s tail, the force comes from in front of you, and
you’re going backwards. Now I’m imagining something in the region of fifty
feet. That’s a lot of force. There’s no way I can just stagger back and impart that
that’s what’s happened to an audience, so we’re talking crash mats, probably
a bungee, you know, on a harness that’s attached to me, possibly even an
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Acting and Performance for Animation
air ram assist, so, when they say, “Action!,” and the tail hits, “Now! Bang!” I go
backwards ten feet onto the crash mats.
The really lovely thing for me about motion capture is anything that isn’t
markered, either with the passive markers that are just these shiny balls that
reflect the light, or active markers that are actually given a reference as to
where they are in space, isn’t seen, so you can have any number of people
there pushing, and pulling you, any bits of ropes, or crash mats, or any of
that sort of thing. I’ve walked on stilts quite a lot, and nobody sees the
stilts. All they see is my legs moving. One of the things that I’ve done when
I need to fly, for instance, is use a shopping trolley. Extraordinarily powerful,
because, I can lie across the shopping trolley on a board. I can flap my arms.
Somebody can push me around, so I’m moving in space. Nobody knows what
the height is anyway, because that can be all adjusted. I can get on with my
performance of being that dragon, and the gravity looks right on the model.
The thing that I think is particularly powerful about motion capture, is not
that it provides everything, but that it provides maybe 60%, which gives you
the time then to do all the rest. What we can do with performance animation,
is in a directed, repeatable way create quite a lot of a character, even though
nuances, twitches, specific things need to be done afterwards, the bulk of the
animation, the gross body movement, can all be got right there and then,
and you can do minutes per day. And you can do things that are really quite
complex, but are rather throwaway, though they add to the character.
And the animator can then take it and scale it to a certain character
that might have an enormous jaw or big brow structure, or whatever it
happens to be.
The retargeting of that data is really crucial. For all those who know birds,
their legs go the other way; the joints are in a different orientation to humans.
I won’t go into the actual skeletal structure of why that is, but, when you’re
looking at it, you can see that it goes a different way. I’ve been a bird on
a number of occasions. My knees don’t go backwards. They go forwards, but
you can take that data as I run, retarget it, so on the CG model it looks like the
character’s legs are going the other way around. It’s possible, pretty much,
with any character, even fantasy characters, to find some sort of physical
representation of it in our world that you can capture, and if there’s no
representation of it in our world that you can capture, maybe make a puppet
of it, and then in that ancient, two-and-a-half thousand-year-old tradition of
bunraku rod puppetry, just capture the performance of the puppet doing the
thing that drives the CG model. They’re just tools. The important thing with
motion capture, and performance animation. It’s just a tool to help you tell
the story, and it has to work in conjunction with all the other tools. When, at
the end, they see the final piece, nobody really knows how it was done, and
nobody really cares. They just want to have the story.
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