Animated short "Seventeen" on piratebay.org

[Paul Fierlinger]

Then give me unsolvable puzzles any day of the week. Saying "just" on his films is a bit lame. Personally, It puts me through emotions, deep enough to brings me back to his films again and again. They are candies. They are poems. They are something, that no other one makes. A piece is a puzzle only if you watch it like you are watching a puzzle. The motion art is the art of creating relationships between one image and the other in subsequence. Kovalyov is doing that well, and more: he touches the audience, like he touched that jury. If you really see his films as triumph of surface over substance, I think you have been looking at the wrong frames. Anyway, I never like being in the persuasion. It's only a matter of taste in the end. I just know that Kovalyov is up there with a select few, who touch and inspire and don't lose their voice, lightyears ahead of all the others.

To me all this sounds like gross overstatements, but I digress.

[hisko]

.
less directive, more intended to open/tickle some viewer's "raw" (unexpected) feelings,

I'll order it and watch it again soon. With a more open and a less sleepy mind.

[hisko]

because when we decide to animate, is because we believe that what we are about to say cannot be said in film in the same exactness.

It's a very interesting discussion and I agree with most what you say, but I am not sure that I believe that what I like to animate cannot be said in film.
I think that it is more simple. I say it in animation, because I like to draw and paint (still learning) and because I like to tell stories (still learning) and because I don't have the skills to be a director in lifeaction.
I can name some films that work in animation but could work in life-action film just the same. Like "Grave of the Fireflies". I am sure that some people on this forum find it kitsch etc. But I mourned for that little animated girl for days. Having a little son myself, that film showed the ultimate horror of war to me. Children that have nothing to do with a war, dying from hunger. It's the strongest antiwar film that I ever saw, but it would touch me as a lifeaction film in the same way I think.

I think that animation lends itself very well for visions of the inner world. Like the memories in 'Waltz with Bashir'. That film was made by a documentary-maker that choose for animation for this reason.

[slowtiger]

some films that work in animation but could work in life-action film just the same

But that wouldn't be the same film or even the same story. You can try to have the same story in a novel and in a poem, but it will be two different stories. Only executive morons treat stories as "properties" which can be transferred into any medium and stay the same - they don't, it's only the same brand name.

The other side of this should be: every story can be told in every medium, or better: no story or theme is per se disqualified for animation. It may not always be a good film, but this highly depends on the director's skills. And the skills of a director are the same, no matter if he works in animation or life action. He only uses different tools.

So one of the first questions for a director should be: which medium (or mix of) will be the best for the story I want to tell? Another equally important question could be: I want to use this medium, so how do I tell this story in it the best way? Please note that this still not excluses some stories right from the start. There have been ballets choreographies about hysterectomy and poems about mass murder. I don't say this was done with good results, but it was done.

[ZigOtto]

this question (Animation vs Live Action feature, ... why to choose one instead the other ?)
have been recently come up on an other forum about Tatia Rosenthal's $9.99 stopmo movie
from an Edgar Keret story. I haven't seen it yet, (not already scheluded by distributors here, in France),
but I'm sure this question won't resist after a theater performance.

[Peter Wassink]

nice thread this.

i just started reading this book "Directing the story' about storytelling and storyboarding.
And in its preface the auther sums up what it is that an audience does when it watches a film.
he lists 7 points and then ends the preface saying:

"What is very interesting is nr 4 (point 4 was: the audience starts to make connections to what it all means)
Once the audience starts to connect the pieces of what the story events mean, they start to feel emotions.
This was an amazing discovery: Meaning automatically evokes emotions"

Its quite close to what Asaf was saying
its obviously much harder to build a meaningfull story in a short animation than it is in a live action feature.
Kovaljov's films suggest a lot of meaning but this meaning is not actually in the films.
you need to bring your own, like with the poems that Asaf mentioned, if you do so you can enjoy them and they will trigger emotion.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Zig, just watching the trailer I like what I see, but trailers are devious that way. But here's what I find interesting for this thread; the fast cuts don't always work in this trailer the way they would if we were watching live action edits. It's the nature of the beast which has fewer original frames to a second so that a less than one second clip might show us just 3 or 4 jerky frames, making the effect of fast edits look at times silly.

When I was comparing live versus animated earlier in this thread, I had more technical problems in mind than synopsis. Take for instance a live action scene of a man sitting in a crowded cafe as he just notices a woman enter the room about 6 tables away from him. We can easily catch the flash point of recognition on his face and even from his distance we can catch the cue that she has noticed him as well -- and all this with no cutting to close up shots; just in a single and quite short MS.

To achieve the same effect in animation you have to handle the story of mutual recognition in a much more cumbersome way which will diminish its effect.

[slowtiger]

Of course one big difference between life action and animation is the higher level of abstraction in animation. We're not talking photographic samples from real life, but create a graphic representation of it. This means that any viewer needs more computing time just to identify the depicted elements, let alone understand their meaning.

Tex Avery's observation of "5 frames are enough to identify an object" only holds true for that certain cartoony drawing style with nicely separated objects in front of clear BGs. Any animation style which tries to mimick life action, like many anime do, must allow more time for recognizing the elements of a scene.

Life action can rely on every viewer's experience with the real world, his knowledge of it is an essential part of that "contract" between viewer and director which can say: "I know you know how people look like when standing in the shadow under a tree, so all I have to show you is just a bare movement of a shadow so you will deduce the presence of a person from that." But in order to fulfil this contract, the surface of things must be very exactly like the surface of things the viewer has seen in real life.

Animation can't do this. (Drawn animation, not that CGI bastard.) Instead animation can use a different contract, which basically says "I know you know how to read symbols like graphic representations before, so I show you the symbols I selected and let you decipher the sense." The strength of animation is its ability to concentrate on what the director wants to show, while omitting much or everything else.

So there's films of high reduction on one end ("The critic", "Flebus", "The little Island"), and there's films of visual opulence on the other (Miyazaki and other anime, "The thief and the cobbler" ... - note that "opulence" doesn't equal "realistic".) The more an animated film gets into the realistic extreme, the more its director can use the tools of life action filmmaking - except fast edits. They just don't work that way in animation. (I've noticed that I can't follow some extremely fast edited films and trailers - so the threshold of "too fast" depends on training and on being exposed to visual overwhelming for a certain amount of life.)

[malcooning]

To achieve the same effect in animation you have to handle the story of mutual recognition in a much more cumbersome way which will diminish its effect.

C'mon Paul, of course there's a way. You just need to squeeze your imagination further. And that's the trait of animation - as I said before, we are called to invent the method of communication each time anew. The live-action scene you described is straight forward, accepted, common, and do-able. That's because the language of cinema is a well-spoken language, and we all now how to read it (and some of us know how to speak it too). But in order to convey similar gesture in animation you need to drop your knowledge of film language altogether, and build up that described moment with the tools that will do the job in your medium. If a single painting or drawing can convey that gesture (and I'm sure it does) - then surely animation can.

...animation can use a different contract, which basically says "I know you know how to read symbols like graphic representations before, so I show you the symbols I selected and let you decipher the sense."

I know what you mean, and you are right. Although I would be careful with the use of the term "symbols". Many of the films are using metaphors, which are often the very opposite of what symbols are.

The strength of animation is its ability to concentrate on what the director wants to show, while omitting much or everything else.

I don't think this is particularly the trait of animation. This is what masters of cinema do exactly - they show what they want, and omit everything else. In animation this behavior is by default because animators have to create everything from nothing, and this creation often stops developing when it reaches the necessary minimum to convey the intention (unless we are talking about "the thief and the cobbler" ). In cinema there's a tendency (and a need) to reduce, and in animation there's the need to elaborate.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Well, I am in agreement with you, Asaf -- I just didn't express myself precisely, what more, I misspoke. What I meant to say was that if you imitate the live action scene, it will come out as cumbersome ( as happens in hisko's film several times, IMO). So to make it work in animation you have to find a way that uses a language only animation can use well, and then you can achieve the same result -- BUT, and this is a big BUT, you won't be able to do it in a single shot, therefore you have to be very clever about how you split the moment into several animation film shots. The sweating lad who's watching a naked prostitute is an example of a cumbersome solution; do guys really run sweat down their faces at such moments? And if you believe they do (not me) then do we have to sit on the spectacle for such a long time? That's what I mean by cumbersome.

[malcooning]

Kovaljov's films suggest a lot of meaning but this meaning is not actually in the films.
you need to bring your own, like with the poems that Asaf mentioned, if you do so you can enjoy them and they will trigger emotion.

Furthermore, many directors create films with this notion in mind, and they construct the films in a way that demands from the audience to do the brain job. but this is contrived and unfair. (That's what Paul referred to as "unsolved puzzles"). But a clever director would create his films in the way that the emotions would come into play - not by way of dictating what to feel at which moment, but by bringing an assortment of elements together, all of which will afect the audience on an emotional level, and the resulting sensation then becomes very individual - because each member of the audience has different mix of emotions triggered by the assortment of elements. This what gives a piece of work a lasting quality" it can be experienced in many different ways.

I can name some films that work in animation but could work in life-action film just the same. Like "Grave of the Fireflies". I am sure that some people on this forum find it kitsch etc. But I mourned for that little animated girl for days. Having a little son myself, that film showed the ultimate horror of war to me. Children that have nothing to do with a war, dying from hunger. It's the strongest antiwar film that I ever saw, but it would touch me as a lifeaction film in the same way I think.

I think that animation lends itself very well for visions of the inner world. Like the memories in 'Waltz with Bashir'. That film was made by a documentary-maker that choose for animation for this reason.

I agree with you about "grave of the fireflies". It is definitely the strongest film about war I have ever seen. It haunted me for weeks after. And when Amelita Galli Curci sings "home sweet home" in the end - that's for tears. But I think that despite the very realistic approach to the film, the animation plays a very important role in it: it is a parcel. Horrors are not horrors of real blood and open wounds and burning flesh. It is horror through association. Your emotion and psyche are affected deeper, because you are not busy rejecting the oh-so-realistic materials. In Waltz with Bashir animation is a parcel too: it takes the documentary bits, the dreams, the memories and the atmosphere, and binds them together in one coherent bundle that would not deliver very well was it real live footage. In that sense, Bashir is very well delivered (but as for animation value, I find it's animation visually quite annoying. In fact, I can hardly put it in the "animation" section when I think about it. It's a well made "creative documentary").

[malcooning]

That's what I mean by cumbersome.

It's true. I think Hisko made some choices based on his film language, as he's so inspired by film. And the result is cumbersome in many parts. This is exactly why I always think one should ask himself "can I make it in film, or not"? If the answer is yes, there is a wrong somewhere. and the search shall continue. Only in some rare cases, (like when the drawing style is so beautiful it gives all the emotions in itself) an animation works, even though it was possible to cut it in film too. But I myself don't think my work is beautiful enough to justify a piece as such.

Animators are poets of motion in time. We better get that notion carved in our head, or drop the vocation altogether.

[hisko]

Animators are poets of motion in time. We better get that notion carved in our head, or drop the vocation altogether.

Good idea!!
And bore the hell out of everyone that is not in our little poetic-animation circle.

[Paul Fierlinger]

Excellent point, hisko! Not everyone admires poetry (I'm one member of this often silent majority).

[Sierra Rose]

Your emotion and psyche are affected deeper, because you are not busy rejecting the oh-so-realistic materials. In Waltz with Bashir animation is a parcel too: it takes the documentary bits, the dreams, the memories and the atmosphere, and binds them together in one coherent bundle that would not deliver very well was it real live footage. In that sense, Bashir is very well delivered (but as for animation value, I find it's animation visually quite annoying. In fact, I can hardly put it in the "animation" section when I think about it. It's a well made "creative documentary").

I finally saw some clips from Waltz with Bashir. I agree the animation is unattractive. Do you think it was rotoscoped? I can't put my finger on why I dislike it so much.

Although it does seem like a good film, as much as you can tell from teasers.