Directing - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 310

TA - 'You must have a lot of patience'. This makes me feel like the most impatient man alive! Telling
someone you're an animator automatically produces this 'ooh, patience' response. Talking to someone
unfamiliar with animation, it seems an unwritten law - you have to answer this comment, before
discussing anything further. The next most asked question is 'don't you have to make lots of different
pictures for just one second?', followed by the dreaded 'and how many minutes do you make per day?'
Not good when it's a two seconds per day project!
JC - I don't think the process of animation is tedious and I have little patience. I can be calm and
methodical. 'How do you know how much to move it?' 'Do you have a lot of patience?' 'Do you make
the puppets?'
FL - Most people I talk with - the ones who haven't made stop motion ever - think that stop motion is in
fact laborious and tedious. I don't think it is tedious at all, and is just as laborious as anything else you
do seriously.
DS - Dumbest and almost most asked is 'where do you get you get your ideas from?' Most asked is the
Patience Question. I answer it talking about the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and how long that took,
or any great achievement come to that. If you're driven by the idea it'll take as long as it needs and the
time will pass quickly. I can't think of the most profound question - 'Can you make a living out of doing
animation?', but someone must have asked us about something deep once ….
BP - On seeing the puppets on set: 'yes, but where are the real ones?' 'Where do you put your hands?',
even 'but I can't see the strings'.
Favourite fi lms
The one i lm that stands out more than any other is Zbigniev's Ta n g o . This short i lm of
people entering and departing a room (doors again!), becoming more linked as the i lm
progresses, leaves me speechless every time. It's hugely entertaining watching the dif erent
stories, wondering exactly what signii cance links the incidents (I'm sure there is signii cance,
as all aspects of life are there). Watching the i lm l ow so beautifully and easily belies the
Herculean task of the meticulous preparation. The stories weaving in and out are just as
complex as a piece of Bach or Rossini, where numerous melodies build up and play against
each other with a million variations and harmonies, still hearing the individual tunes, while
something much larger emerges. Ta n g o is an extraordinary i lm, not just for its bravado,
but there is something very moving going on, especially in the last few seconds when the
bouncing ball that has been the driving rhythm of the i lm sits sadly on the l oor. That this i lm
was worked out by hand is extraordinary. A computer would have made things easier today
and probably given the i lm a much slicker feel, but it would have robbed the i lm
of its pleasure. The cut-out photos technique shows of the human hand behind
the i lm. It's the dancer battling gravity in thirty-two fouettés, yet making it look
easy and sublime at the same time. I get huge pleasure from witnessing such ef ort
disguised as simplicity, and while stop-frame animation may not be as complex,
it involves many hours of intricate work for something deceptively simple. This
obsession with labour-intensive work is worryingly satisfying.