Shaping Ideas - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 118

followed by thirty seconds of that. Music, like good movement and gestures, depends on what
precedes and follows, with the shape of the whole piece more important than individual notes.
With Rigoletto , the music director and I broke the piece down into about twelve substantial,
almost complete sections, but because the narrative had to race along, I couldn't allow a song
that was traditionally a solo to be just about one character for three minutes. Other strands of the
plot had to overlap. It's not hard to communicate several things at once in the same shot, as long
as you tell the audience where to look. Adapting the music was a lengthy but hugely rewarding
process. Well, it doesn't get better than Verdi. I'm ready to tackle a full-length opera now.
One reason for making this i lm was the chance to deal with some pretty heavy emotions, not
usually associated with puppet animation. This meant focusing on the three main characters,
giving them as much screen time as possible. Even so, I would have liked longer to explore their
troubled stories.
Achilles
The fi rst page of the Achilles storyboard and the same scene on fi lm.