Smoke and Mirrors - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 6

admire, was mixing theatre, i lm and brilliantly inventive and witty special ef ects, developing
techniques that are still applicable today. Throw in dozens of leggy beauties and he had
a box-oi ce success. It is hard to say whether Méliès was a i lm-maker, a magician, a great
theatre technician or what, but he was a dazzling showman with a prolii c imagination, using
smoke and mirrors to make money. He developed many ideas and techniques that we still
use in stop motion. We still stop the camera and replace an object with a dif erent one to
suggest something shrinking; we use false perspective; we superimpose and matte l oating
objects against a background, with either invisible black or blue screens. He was a giant
in the development of special ef ects, and brilliantly light hearted and giddy with it. Pure
entertainment, and one day I would like to pay homage with my own i lm.
Before computer graphics (CG) and when postproduction budgets were reasonably realistic,
I used Pepper's ghost many times in animation, mainly to add insubstantial elements such as
smoke, falling glitter or, rather clumsily, in a i lm of Cinderella , where a shimmering ball of light
tried, and failed, to anticipate the appearance of the Fairy Godmother. On shows like The Wind
in the Willows , we used sheets of glass for a variety of tricks, especially for the exhaust from
Toad's car. A simple white chinagraph pencil animated on the glass lined up to the exhaust
pipe beyond would easily pass for smoke if it was suitably lit and out of focus, this latter being
the essential element. An ef ective use saw Toad dressed as a washerwoman (ah, the joys of
animation!) and being conned by a barge woman to wash some smalls, including a rather
fetching corset. I wanted to make it look as if he was unfamiliar with such menial things, and
have the bar of soap slip out of his hand. Toad held a prop bar of yellow soap, but to suggest it
l ying out of his hand, I simply replaced it on the glass with a matching piece of yellow paper,
which being nearer the camera was out of focus, giving a welcome motion blur. Many times I
have animated a falling leaf on glass, and then replaced it for a matching prop leaf as it landed
on a character's head. Leaves, splashing mud, balls, balloons, butterl ies and a million other
cheap tricks. We still use glass shots today, but in general this would be done in CG. It pleases
me to use something developed by Victorian illusionists. It is still used regularly in theatre. It
was interesting to see a legendary stage ef ect of an orange tree bursting into blossom and
then bearing fruit demonstrated in the recent i lm The Illusionist , except the trick, looking
magnii cent as it did, it appeared to be performed through CG.
The great early magician, the elegant Robert Houdin (b 1805-1871), cut back on the
superl uous dressing that had previously cluttered the stage. He appeared simply in evening
dress, with basic stage props, one step away from my naked magician. Against this simplicity,
the tricks read more ef ectively. That's an approach I try to apply. It's all about letting the trick
read, and making the story clear.
All stop motion animators are magicians, or at least we think like magicians. We are working
with a great trick; the impossible trick of the inanimate being animate, of natural laws being
dei ed, has been part of the magician's trade for many centuries. Alongside developing
technology tricks have become more sophisticated, but whether it's a glamorous
assistant disappearing, or a fakir climbing a rope, or Mary Poppins l ying over a live
audience twice nightly, or the most dazzling CG dinosaur, they're just illusions put
before happily susceptible and knowing audiences.
Animation has been part of cinema since James Stuart Blackton made toys move
in 1896 and Georges Méliès' camera accidentally jammed briel y, transforming