Ideas and Storytelling - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 104

and wildness in the gags. At the same time the i lm plays with our perception of what we are
looking at, while also making some comment about interdependence. This is true of the great
Tom and Jerry i lms, the Road Runner series, and Bill Plympton's hysterical i lms. There is seldom
a plot, but there is a relationship or a strong theme, and a series of linked and escalating gags
that play on every combination of these themes. One of my favourite cultural pieces is David
Bintley's heartbreaking ballet Still Life at the Penguin Café . In a café setting, various animals
introduce themselves, dancing their character and predicament with pure elegance and wit.
There is no narrative as such, but towards the end an accumulated theme and connection
emerges that these animals might be endangered species pleading for a place on the ark. On
this occasion all are saved, except for the great auk. This sounds as if there is a plot, but all this
is satisfyingly oblique. A series of characters or gags linked by a common theme appears in so
many animated i lms. Next is little more than that, but hopefully none the worse.
With my obsession about seeing the mechanics of storytelling, it's little wonder that my
favourite i lms are about seeing the stories behind the stories. In them all is some façade, some
iconic exterior, be it personal, theatrical, sexual or artistic, that has to be maintained, even if
the interior is under stress and falling to pieces. The conl ict and tension between this outer
face and the inner face makes for good drama, where the two worlds rel ect and illuminate
each other. Films such as The Dresser, The Red Shoes, Living in Oblivion, Noises Of , Truf aut ' s
Day for Night, Theatre of Blood, Les Enfants du Paradis , Some Like it Hot, Girl with a Pearl Earring,
Amadeus, The Boyfriend, Oh What a Lovely War, Cabaret and Dream Child all have some outward
show to preserve, while the inner show is something totally dif erent. I love this tension and
role-playing. In the Mousetrap scene in Hamlet , Shakespeare uses a short theatrical piece to
bring all the unsaid accusations into the open; he shows the truth by showing it as artii ce. The
point of a piece being distanced can be, in ef ect, to bring it closer. All the trivia is cut away,
and the essence of the situation is brutally revealed. That's what animators do so well. Since
animation is such a painstaking process, we are hardly going to animate the unnecessary. Like
caricaturists who capture a face in a few lines, animators can capture a mood, a movement or a
character in a few economical frames.
This stripping back could be described as theatrical, although that seems to be a derogatory
word, but it does describe how I work. I have developed a dei nitely simplistic style. This grew
out of necessity on Next , but now I revel in it. When I have designed stage productions for my
local Garrick Theatre I've tried to create a visually interesting and sometimes startling space
where the actors are still the centre of attention. I have little patience for literal representations
of spaces, feeling that both theatre and animation should celebrate the artii ce of the medium.
Neither art can ever be realistic, and it seems a futile exercise trying to be so. A more apt word
is 'credible. If the actors and puppets exist in a credible space, a space where their performance
can work, then we will believe them. I'm sure that much of the appeal of stop motion is that we
are aware that these characters are puppets, and there's a handmade element involved. The
fact that we are taken in by them is all part of the satisfying complicity with the i lm-makers.