Directing - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 306

In a line from The Mikado , 'I can't help it, I was born sneering' seemed to sum up Gilbert's
character. He seems to have been a dry, hard man but with the softness to know this, and
I animated him with this in mind, keeping him controlled and tight, allowing only a moment of
humility at the end with the appreciative letter from Sullivan. His exaggerated height helped
him to look down on the other characters. Sullivan I treated as a bit more agitated and less
controlled than Gilbert, and being a conductor, he waved his arms more. A gesture Sullivan
that has when conducting echoes pretty accurately a gesture of the musical director, Wyn
Davies, when he conducts.
Wyn Davies conducting the Welsh National Opera orchestra for Rigoletto .
Carte's body language was the most naturalistic of the three. All of them look pretty startled for
most of the i lm, as they could not blink. The budget allowed for either good hands or blinking
eyes. The beautiful hands won.
There was no budget for ef ects. No real issue, as I wanted as much as possible to be done in
front of the camera. The spotlight on Carte in bed at the start of the i lm was digitally added
(although a similar ef ect I used elsewhere lined up some white chalk on the black velvet
behind the action, and this chalk was lit. Occasionally touching it also gave a bit of life to it.
Oh, I like these cheap ef ects!). All the transformations into the excerpts were done on set,
although I could have found a more imaginative way to change the puppets into their HMS
Pinafore costumes than literally substituting them between frames. Today a bit of CG pixie
dust might help. I tried to give the impression that Gilbert, Sullivan and Carte became those
characters as Gilbert drew them (characters coming to life, being animated, are a recurring
theme for me and so many animators). It would be more ef ective to have a CG
pencil line drawing a quick outline as they moved around, and then i lling it in with
the new costumes. But all these things are dictated by budgets and schedules.
One ef ect, which was done physically on the set, but for all the ef ort could have
been done in postproduction, was the appearance of the Savoy Theatre as a
l ickering vision. The l ickering was a reference to the innovative electric lights