Masterclass with Richard Haynes

A good friend of mine came down to Wales to do a three day stop-motion masterclass with students at International Film School Wales at the end of May. Richard Haynes is an animator and director who spent a great deal of time at Cosgrove Hall up in Manchester and is now at Aardman on the feature Pirates after having worked as an animator on the Shaun the Sheep series. I met Richard at Annecy festival a few years back and it was nice to catch up as he took us through an intensive character performance course.

Due to time constraints and resources we didn't have 3d puppets but were instead working with paper cut-outs and clay, focusing on movement, gesture and timing. The crash course included acting and performance workshops, timing exercises, walks and even pixillation so was a nice well-rounded opportunity to brush up on skills. There was a small group of us from BA and MA and I think everyone got a lot out of it. Richard was a helpful mix of both critical and enthusiastic and the masterclass was a nice end to the second year at the film school.

Jason and Medea

A quick piece of pro-mo visualisation I did for Jason and Medea (working title) a new show from Bristol Old Vic Young Company, directed by Tid. The piece will be a large ensemble production and is currently in development. The treatment transposes the greek myth to the crooked underbelly of 1960s London.

Pencil and digital collage.

Metropolis

After much anticipation, Kino International has announced the release of The Complete Metropolis. Fritz Lang's sci-fi masterpiece is in my opinion one of the most important films ever made; it broke new ground and took cinematic storytelling to a new level. The film was made in Germany in a fruitful period in-between the wars; around the same time as other classics such as The Cabinet of Dr Caligari. The film pioneered some incredibly complex special effects calling upon photography tricks, mirrors, miniatures and stop-motion animation. At the time, all of the arts in Germany were richly connected and very much fed-off of each other and Metropolis drew heavily upon the aesthetics of abstract expressionism. The production values are simply stunning for the time and the influence of Metropolis reaches out across contemporary cinema from Tim Burton’s Batman to Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner and a more obvious homage in the recent La Antena by Argentinean director Esteban Sapir.

Above: the crew casually prod toy cars along the false-perspective roads for a stop-motion scene.

Fritz Lang’s wrote Metropolis with his wife Thea Von Harbou and the films epic production techniques were inspired by American working methods he was exposed to on a press tour for his previous film Die Niebelungen. Lang was fully aware of the films colossal ambition from the beginning, in fact it was his intention to create the biggest film to be made in Europe. It was shot outside Berlin on a huge lot belonging to UFA (Universum Film Aktiengesellschaft) and featured an incredible 36,000 extras. The story of Metropolis is a tale of two worlds, of class and rank and of a man and a woman whose love bridges the gap in society. It also features an underground factory, a mad inventor, a bitter father and a huge flood. I’m hesitant to talk too much about the plot, just watch it, it’s brilliant!

The film has changed shape and form continually throughout its lifetime. Metropolis premiered in Berlin in 1927 after which the film was re-edited by German and American studio execs in a hope to make it more commercial. Despite the tampering, and Lang disregarding the new cut, it went down in cinema history. Strangely after this initial release it disappeared for several years. Next, in 1984, it was re-discovered, re-mastered, re-coloured and re-scored with disgusting bright colour-washes and a cringe-worthy 80s score. Finally in 2001, with help from film archives all over the world, Martin Koerber supervised a restoration which was thought would be the final, most comprehensive version. Missing footage was replaced with explanatory title-cards and the film was reunited with its original stirring score by Gottfried Huppertz.

However in 2008, the Museo Del Cine, in Buenos Aires, found a negative copy of Fritz Lang’s original vision containing the missing 25 minutes of footage. The new scenes, which make sense of the film’s staggered plot, were carefully restored and added to the 2001 renovation by the Murnau Foundation who deal with all Lang’s works. This new 2010 restoration took about a year to complete and we now have a print which is a definitive version of Lang's original film, an ultimate director’s cut if you like.

The Complete Metropolis, Lang’s comprehensive, fantastical epic, is now enjoying a tour of theatrical screenings before heading to DVD, the film’s final resting place in its full form for all to admire.


All images © 2010 Kino International

Fact

New Things

Here are my newly pressed and printed showreel DVDs, just in time for FMX festival in Stuttgart, Germany this week.

Plus I have a couple of new showreels on Youtube.
My Animated Film Showreel can be found here,
and my Character Performance Showreel can be found here.

Jan Pinkava

In other vaguely Czech animated news, Jan Pinkava is working on a feature film with Laika (presumably stop-motion as they shut down their CG department). Pinkava has had a very interesting career and is a truly international artist. He was born in Prague in 1963, a time when Švankmajer was making his first films, and the Czech film industry was active and fruitful with artists like Frantisek Vlacil and Milos Forman leading the way. Pinkava’s family moved to the UK in the late 60s and it was here that he was educated and started to play with animation.

He won an award for a short film of his on the BBC show Screen Test which brought him a lot of attention. Interested by the potentials of new technologies, he then went over to Wales to study computer science in Aberystwyth and stayed until he got a PhD. After a brief stint in London he was picked-up by Pixar in 1993 and made some award-winning commercials as well as working on their features. Geri’s Game, Pinkava first short at Pixar won the Oscar, as well as numerous other awards and really established him as a director. This gave him the impetus to begin developing a story of his into feature film. The story was about a rat on the streets of Paris who dreamed of being a chef…

Ratatouille (2007) © Disney / Pixar

This would of course later become the brilliant Ratatouille, but not without some turbulence. It’s unclear what really happened, and the Ratatouille DVD Extras provide little answers, but Pinkava was replaced as Director by Brad Bird, hot off the success of The Incredibles. Jan stayed briefly, demoted and then quit Pixar. Brad Bird is currently working on a live-action adaptation of the 1906 earthquake in San Francisco called …1906. The exciting news regarding Jan Pinkava is that we should soon see more work from this skilled craftsman with the Laika film. I’m not sure if this is anything to do with the new features that Henry Selick is directing as I understood he had left Laika and was now working with Disney/Pixar and John Lasseter on creating at least three new stop-motion feature films. Many British animators over here are already packing their bags getting ready to go to the states for something. Time will tell.

Henry Selick with Coraline. Image. © Syfy 2010

Czech Adventure

I recently stumbled across the blog of Zoe Brooks, a community regeneration professional, who divides her time between the UK and Czech Republic. She writes about life in both countries, the culture etc. Inevitably she had touched on puppet animation and the cinematic traditions. But it was a post about an old castle that reminded me of something that happened to me a while ago…

I was in the Czech Republic a few years back and was keen to see if there were any museums or exhibitions displaying remnants of the rich puppet animation scene. This is a part of animation history that has long fascinated me and the works of Karel Zeman, Jiri Trnka, Břetislav Pojar, Jan Švankmajer and more recently Aurel Klimt, have proved a huge influence on my work.

After some lengthy research in internet cafés and the lobby of my hostel in Prague, I found out about the Museum of Czech Animated Films at Kratochvile Chateau or 'Pastime Castle' as it roughly translates. This was a permanent exhibition of works including a screening room, artwork, designs, puppets and sets from the past to the present. It sounded incredible and I got highly excited about what was going to be the singularly most inspiring trip of that year. The only problem was that this castle was quite far away… and by far away I mean it was outside a small village called Netolice literally in the middle of nowhere.

Slightly lost

The train journey, or rather three train journeys were set to take 6 hours to get there from Prague central station. Unfortunately I missed a connection and it took 9 hours. Never mind, I was too eager to care. I arrived at Netolice after having taken a train where I was the only passenger and had some difficulty explaining to the driver what an Inter-Rail ticket was as he spoke no English.

The chateau

I looked to the back of my hand where I’d drawn a map from Google… After a trek through a field in slightly the wrong direction I spotted the Italian-looking chateau down in the valley. I arrived at the entrance and the gentleman at the desk looked blank at my Czech greetings and presented a girl who spoke English. The conversation went a bit like this:
“Hello! How much is does it cost to go to the Museum of Animation?”
“Oh, that closed down a few years ago”.
*Stunned Silence.*

Apparently it had gone to a private collector and was now in storage. Very disappointing and unfortunate but it was still a beautiful guided tour around the castle. You can see a write up of the exhibition when it actually existed over on Animation World Network.

Illustrations

I've just done a few quick, little portraits of some of the Animation Sans Frontières participants for the new brochure. This is a course in Animation Production that I have recently completed. These illustrations were done over night and the others will be by Péter Vácz.

Animation Sans Frontières participants 2009-2010

Below is a bit of character design for a piece of puppet theatre for children I'm working on with Bristol-based artist of many talents Christopher Collier.

As you can see it's about Pirates and is currently in development.

Animation Lesson at Calon

A few weeks back I went to Calon’s stop-motion studio for the day to do some animating under the brilliant supervision of my mentor, the animator and director Ben Halliwell. Ben has animated all over the country on all sorts from The Wombles and Fireman Sam to Koala Brothers and Fantastic Mr Fox. We were doing some character performance exercises and it was time well spent. It was actually the first time I’d animated with a ball and socket puppet which was heaven. Ben watched the results and picked up on little things in my animation that I might miss and shared some of his wealth of experience. A valuable day, Ben’s very generous and a real genuine bloke.

Some images from the day (click the image to see in more detail).

Here’s a picture of Ben on the set of Calon's Igam Ogam which he directed.

Ben Halliwell. Photo.

Character Performance

I had wanted my puppet to walk into the space, falling under a spotlight, and notice the camera but unfortunately it turned out the armature was not strong enough to hold the clay I had covered it with. I guess you always have to use ball and socket when working with plasticine. Change of plan. I quickly built a box and made a pint glass for him to hold. He would now be propped up against a bar and would talk from there. I still managed to get movement out of the upper body to convey his character. Turned out ok and there were some nice bits but a few things still not quite right. Will post on YouTube soon.