Puppets - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 23

from watching an orchestra play a glorious, complex piece of music that takes me somewhere
sublime, or a piece of dance that has me marvelling at the stamina and agility of the dancer while
a narrative or idea engages me. I can see the physical mechanics of the pieces, the orchestra
i ddling away, the dancers sweating, but it doesn't stop me enjoying them. Both music and dance
are a celebration of artii ce, using sounds and movement in ordered deliberate structures, and
none of what I'm watching or listening to is meant to be an exact replica of real life, but that is
its appeal. I like seeing the craft, the construction, and then marvelling at how it manages to
communicate with me. The best review I've had came from Allison Pearson in The Independent
on Sunday, who summed up by saying about Screen Play, ' ... out of balsa came something
ini nitely weighty, ini nitely sad. Now replace the word 'balsa' with any word like movement,
song or colour, and you have the appeal of arts such as animation. In spite of, or because of,
knowing that it is a marvellously crafted trick, it manages to convey all manner of emotions.
Even if I don't understand the theories and technicalities behind performance and
performances, I know when they work, and what makes them good or bad. I have seen my
share of performances, and often my pleasure is derived from watching the craft. So it is
with animation. I do not know about the theory of animation, or its political signii cance or
resonances in popular culture, but I do know how to let a gesture read, and why to move a
puppet at a certain moment and where to put a camera to make the most of a certain staging.
I know how stop motion works, and what it is good at and, equally, what it is bad at. To spend
thirty years working with puppets, and still be passionate about the craft, is an odd life.
Is animation a strange job for an adult? Has it affected your life at all?
JD - My friend Roger Dicken said, when someone derided his work because it was for children: 'yes but
children can't do it'. Animation has affected my life, but I don't know if it's enriched my life or not. Some
backaches. I sometimes enjoyed doing it, but received enormous abuse for my interests, even from those
who were employing me to apply those interests. I got to travel a little. I received some notoriety, I rarely
made any money to speak of, and I experienced personal gratifi cation from my mastery of various skills,
yet found that same mastery or awareness set me apart from others.
TB - Accounting is a rather strange profession. Is playing with dolls a strange profession? It depends
on what is being done to the dolls. Each time I study a new character, I learn about another person.
Learning about human behaviour is one of the most fascinating things about life, and should be for
the performance animator.
KC - I've not met a pessimistic animator. Frustrated, yes, but always there seems to be optimism in their
outlook on life. There seem to be no inhibitions when it comes to having a bit of fun.
RC - Strange? In the sense of compared to saving lives, I suppose so. As an art form, it's superb.
Animators look at the world differently ... we seldom view anything without analysing it or being
fascinated with its motion. It's affected my life by allowing me to perform and still stay 'behind the
camera'. You can't hide all that much; your work is on the screen. You can't sit there and say, 'Yeah, that
character should have had more punch in that action', as if the character was responsible instead of
me. When I question students about something which isn't working, they often answer 'Yeah ... it seems
to be doing this', as if they hadn't created the motion, and the character wasn't performing right on
his own.