Different Techniques - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 139

cheating. Although a puppet can be reskinned during a shoot, reskinning a puppet outside the
i lm is dif erent. It's not the same puppet that had life breathed into it and was captured on i lm.
Cut-outs
Another technique that marries various forms of animation but still revels in the tactility of
dimension is cut-out animation. When I joined Cosgrove Hall I did a lot of cut-out work for
Thames TV's Rainbow that featured animating paper cut-outs. This was basic, but getting
expression out of simple lines and shapes was tremendous experience and a great exercise.
Finding it i ddly, I have huge respect for such artists as Lotte Reiniger and Michel Ocelot,
whose i lms have used paper cut-outs in dif erent ways. Reiniger used delicate jointed cut-
outs silhouetted against a bright background, often using dif erent levels at the same time,
creating enormous depth. Michel Ocelot's early i lms used equally delicate white paper cut-
outs lit from the front against darker or coloured backgrounds. Both artists' work is incredibly
beautiful, and like working with puppets, they exist in a dimensional space, but once the
frame is taken, that moment is gone. Working with hands, or with tweezers, the process has to
be incredibly precise. I found it hard to isolate a movement without accidentally moving the
whole character. I'm not sure I had the right thickness of card, as the characters were usually
curling up under the lights, giving distorted shapes and unnecessary shadows. I didn't master
an ef ective jointing system. As with puppets, there is the dilemma of needing the characters
to move smoothly and freely, but also having them stay rock solid when you are moving other
parts. Yuri Norstein has taken these skills to sublime levels. It is hard when watching such i lms
as the poignant and evocative Tale of Tales and Hedgehog in the Fog to work out exactly what
techniques are going on. There are cut-outs involved on many dif erent levels, giving some
lovely soft-focus ef ects, and there are many layers of mist and fog, giving a lyrical softness.
The animation is exquisite and delicate, and the i lm full of surprising textures.
Such techniques give a i lm a unique quality. There is depth to them, but the fact that the
puppets can usually only move from side to side (running a character to camera would be
tricky, but not impossible) provides a graphic feel as well. One of the joys of tabletop puppets is
their ability to move in space so freely.
My favourite scene - Anthony Farquhar Smith
I attended a presentation by the Russian animator Yuri Norstein. I was new to his work and was treated
to several exclusive extracts from the fi lm he was working on at the time.
Norstein's world is one of ephemeral beauty. It is an intricate, multilayered tactile world. When you look
at it you feel you can reach into the screen and touch the roughness of its inhabitants. If the scene were
sunlit you would feel the warmth of its rays, or if it were windy then you would experience the breeze.
Two sequences I remember vividly. In the fi rst a leathery old man, bundled up against the weather,
traverses the snowy streets of an anonymous town. In the second the same man sits at a candlelit table
in a cold room and sets about composing a letter. Even out of context from the rest of the fi lm I felt drawn
into these short scenes by the realism of their rendering. The half-light glow of the snowy street, the old
man's movements impeded by the cold and the depth of the scene from the falling snow to the fronting