Getting Personal - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 70

It surprises me that all animators don't necessarily have a passion for exploring anything new
and artistic. I feel some guilt, embarrassment, rebellion and a need to apologise for artistic
leanings. That's absurd. I risked unpopularity at school by receiving a house tie for directing a
play (Ionesco's The Bald Prima Donna !) rather than getting one for scoring a century at cricket.
That rather sums me up.
Film was not something to be studied. Only a trip to Aldeburgh cinema, a beautiful dilapidated
building on the beach, to see Cabaret , came near to being educational, but a dazzling light
switched on over me. The juxtaposition of the nightclub scenes and the real world, the
choreography and violence mirroring each other made such sense. I responded to the music
growing out of the story and situation, and to the idea that the artii ce could say something
more real than the real life. This coni rmed thoughts raised by the Lonely Goatherd and Olivier's
Henry V . Cabaret remains one of my favourite i lms. It is l awless and brilliantly structured, and its
sleaziness was not unenjoyable. It whetted my directorial appetite, but animation was probably
awoken by the music side of school, where the teacher endeavoured to make music interesting
for the uninterested by the accompaniment of some rather basic illustrations on an overhead
slide projector. Peter and the Wolf had obvious drawings, but with the Firebird we had little more
than abstract splashes of colour, seemingly thrown across the paper, with real vibrancy. I wanted
these colours to move to the music, and I still want to animate Stravinsky's Firebird . It's not the
most powerful or dramatic of stories, but the music and emotion are breathtaking. When I heard
the music it encapsulated everything I love about animation: a perfect, exotic marriage of music,
movement and design, all used to illuminate an idea or story. This seemed a mighty interesting
way to approach a story. This gloriously artii cial combination excites me more than anything.
Animation can do this extremely well, and it saddens me when animation goes through all the
necessary ef ort and comes up with something literal and staid, and often frankly dull.
In thirty years there have only been a handful of days where I have not looked forward to
animating and directing, even if the reality of the shoot sometimes disappoints in its potential.
This potential is what keeps me excited, and the hope that I can contribute something to make
a story or character more interesting. There have been days where I have been breathless with
excitement about a scene. Creativity is a powerful drug.
When you animate is there a tactile pleasure, or even something more
spiritual? Is some sort of life created through our performances - or is it
just a job?
JD - Tactile pleasure, yes. Spiritual at times (but not often). Aware of creating life, yes. Creating
characters and giving a performance, yes (some work has been perfunctory - such as spending a week
animating butter pats doing an Indian dance around a tom-tom). I suppose my initial 'need' was to tell a
story and give a performance.
TB - Human beings enjoy touching, so it's natural that stop motion animators would enjoy touching a
tangible object such as a puppet, particularly breathing life into it. If not spiritual, then it is defi nitely
something quite emotional. When I connect to the character, and crawl inside its head, becoming the
character, then the performance will germinate. The creation of a successful performance is pure magic,
regardless of whether done on stage, scene or fi lm.