Shaping Ideas - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 108

Nola Rae's brilliant Handlet , Hamlet told with
gloves (courtesy of Nola Rae).
There is something very animatable about gloves, although maybe hands bringing hands to
life is an odd idea … . I saw a beautiful i lm where a stop motion glove played the piano in an
ef ort to bring a live-action couple together. So much expression can come from a glove; well,
the hands. Most life forms seem to be constructed of a body with i ve limbs for locomotion
(head, two arms/i ns/wings and two legs, sometimes with a sixth, a tail, thrown in for good
measure), of whatever degree and arrangement. A hand is merely a variation on this. Another
i lm spoofs various i lm genres, from the western to the Hollywood musical, just using gloves.
Of many surreal moments in animation, one was watching The Lion King on Broadway, with
Charles Addams' widow. We had been introduced by a i lm company wanting to take the
Addams Family i lm franchise into a dif erent direction after the death of Raul Julia. Animation
was one possibility and I was asked to come up with any ideas. For me, the hand in the series
was always one of the most interesting characters, as I loved the performance potential, with
digital ef ects giving him a new mobility. Seeing the hand, I thought it would be quirky to base
the i lm around its quest for the other hand. This quest could have easily led us through history
with the ancestors of the Addams Family, giving an opportunity to reinvent great moments of
history seen from the perspective of the hand. I managed to get the Addams Family in some
strange places, but it culminated in a reworking of a Busby Berkeley routine performed just by
hands and legs and other disconnected limbs. The twist was that the hand was only ever just
one hand, with a moral about being content with what you are. He walked of into the sunset,
hand in hand with another hand. I love animation - that you can write such sentences and they
mean something. The i lm was never made, but it reinforced my belief that hands, along with
eyes, are the most expressive of features, and in Next Shakespeare uses his hands constantly.
Entrances and exits
I had wanted Shakespeare to start the i lm by walking on, but that was too literal,
apart from being time consuming, in both shooting time and too many seconds in
an already short i lm. I love characters emerging into the light, much as lights go
up on a screen, or a day begins. It's a good start, and a quick and dynamic way of