Production - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 267

The boy from Suzie Templeton's Dog (Royal College of Art, 2001).
The most expressive eyes I have seen are in Suzie Templeton's Dog . The story of a father and
son, and the suf ocation of the family dog, is replete with strong silences and looks and pauses
and is a testament to less being more. It is hard to say exactly what happens, but the missing
mother is clearly recently deceased and the father has a fear of whatever lurks outside. The plot
is not necessarily what the i lm is about. It is only a few minutes long, but I've never seen any
i lm generate such a powerful atmosphere so quickly. The design of the sets is essential to the
feel of the i lm, as you can almost touch the mildew and the brickwork. The texture belies the
scale of these puppets and sets, and the i lm is lit to make the most of these textures. But it's
the performances of the three characters, the father, the son and the dog, that amaze. There's
very little action as such, save for the brief, violent suf ocation of the dog, but the i lm is full of
subtle movements. It's rare to i nd puppets, especially in a student i lm, with armatures that
allow such movements, let alone being able to animate such minuscule delicate movement. It's
as if Suzie has just breathed on the puppets. Some of the gestures are so slow that you are not
sure they are even moving. This takes enormous control when animating, as sometimes a move
needs to be sui ciently large to register, but then be too big to be appropriate. Such moves
may not have been too clear on the video playback, so Suzie must have relied on
the tactile nature of the animation. This feeling of the movement is such a skill that
can often atrophy with technology. In her half-hour i lm of Peter and the Wolf , Suzie
has managed to keep these subtleties, even when working with other animators.
There's an astonishing shot of the cat on the grandfather's chest, with a lovely
touch of the grandfather twitching briel y in his sleep. An emerging trademark of
Suzie's work is the characters' eyes. Their delicate colour makes them stand out,