Using the Body - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 251

whose eyes only watch the puppets. Each time I've seen Bunraku, I have had the satisfaction of
being engrossed with the puppets but also disappointed that I didn't notice the puppeteers.
I love those moments when something obvious becomes invisible. There are moments in my
i lms when the animation becomes invisible. I'm pleased that the audience doesn't always
notice my black i gures in Screen Play , nor do they assume that the lifeless characters in Next
and Achilles are actually animated. These characters seem to fall with appropriate weight and
react naturally to being picked up. There is one shot of Achilles cradling the dead Patroclus that
I clearly did not get right. As Achilles lets his dead lover's head fall, the head bounces back too
far and with the wrong timing, suggesting that it was a motivated move rather than a natural
reaction. Just one frame can ruin the timing of a gesture, and that's a hard skill to master. To
counterbalance the duf shot in Achilles there are some decent shots where it looks as though
Achilles is lifting a heavy object. Gilda also l ops quite naturally in her death in Rigoletto . A i lm
I have written features one very much alive puppet, and one very much dead, although both
of them have to be animated with equal detail. I like the irony of putting as much ef ort into
making something look lifeless as it does to make it look full of life.
In the major dance treatments of Romeo and Juliet , Romeo dances with the supposedly dead
Juliet, during which the ballerina is thrown about, limp and lifeless. The reality is very dif erent
as the ballerina is working hard to look dead, and all with her eyes shut. I cannot imagine the
trust involved and the total complicity between the two dancers. To the audience it just looks
natural.