Spangler Studios Blog

Last weekend I was back in NYC, this time not for work but for personal development. I participated in an intense three-day performance, singing and meditation workshop called Another City led by Ben Spatz (website: www.urbanresearchtheater.com ). There were six other people, all from various backgrounds but with at least some experience in performance or singing. The meditation was not something we did separately, but seemed to be at the core of everything we did, without this being a spoken fact.

Over the three days, during our exercises and experimentations, we were encouraged to begin by finding first our own internal centeredness (again, without this being something spoken outloud, but that was apparent in what we did), then exploring our individual methods of expression, then relating our physical expression to the environment around us, followed by altering our movement and awareness to join with another person’s movements, and then with the movements of the entire group.

Each evening we would take what we had learned into the streets of the city, first attempting to blend in with other pedestrians, then finding a suitable space, we would “perform” our movement and singing structure in a way that was not aggressively directed at passerbys, but so that we could still be observed and heard.

What was interesting about this experience in relation to stop-motion, was this particular style of performance, of which we were just touching the surface, but that I could feel was a very powerful method of connecting with an audience. From what I experienced, it seemed that what was at the heart of this method was that the actor (or animator?) gets to a place where they are feeling something, experiencing something within themselves that is also not shut off. There is an awareness generated that is apparent from the outside, and this visible internal awareness is what an audience or viewer would be drawn to and be able to connect with, as if they were experiencing the movement, the scene and the mental state of the performer through the performers eyes.

Normally I am not comfortable when moving and making noise in a way that draws attention to strangers, but because of the way our comfort zones were gradually expanded during this workshop, and because we quickly formed a strong supportive bond as a group, I was able to relax and be expressive in the moment (though I have no idea what I looked like from the outside!). What I’m wondering, since the main focus of this blog is stop-motion animation, is how can this expressiveness and genuine awareness be applied to the slow performance of an animator?

I’ve often said that stopmo animation of a puppet is a meditative experience, or that it must be somewhat meditative to be successful. Still, I so often lose that connection with the puppet when the movement gains momentum in the wrong direction and it all becomes a mathematical scrambling to save the shot.

I think it could be very helpful to do more improvisational animation with a puppet, where the focus is conveying the awareness of the puppet. This would also probably require the least possible amount of watching the framegrabber playbacks. If you haven’t seen it yet, I felt very connected to the awareness of my screwhead test puppet in this improvised test where I made a strong effort to stay with the puppet and not get caught up in the external view as seen through the camera and computer playback:

Before I sign off, I would also like to add a note about how I became interested in this performance workshop. After coming across the website for urban research theater, I was able to read some of the personal observations written by Ben, and these writings are what drew me to wanting to learn more about Ben and his work or his methods of performance, and what led eventually to me signing up for the workshop. Just recently, in the August newsletter, I felt an especially strong connection to what he wrote about creating proper foundations when learning and discovering your own work, truly understanding it and what you are doing. To quote a section:

“…I want everything to be clear. No muddy steps. I catch myself stopping work on a particular thing, because it is difficult, and moving on. Okay, it’s not the end of the world, but I will make a note to go back to it. Nothing will be left undone, nothing will be skipped. Nothing will be created that does not have a solid foundation. I am tired of doing and seeing theater that does not know what it is made of, that does not know what it is. We will discover or create what performance is for us.

There are different kinds of knowledge, different levels and depths. It is not just a matter of doing but of process. When you discover something through your own searching, you own it in a different way than if someone teaches it to you. That’s why the creator of a craft, someone like O Sensai, is always on a different level than even the first generation of students. There is something unique in quality that comes from discovering your own work. It comes from thoroughness, from having to go down every road, reaching every dead end and turning around before finally discovering the way through. Ultimately this depth of understanding is irreplaceable…”

He was talking about theatre, live performance, but I feel the same way about film and animation, and feel that this speaks very directly about the creative place I am now and what matters to me now. Earlier this month I had even been discussing with friends how I felt that a natural progression of self-motivated and self-directed learning is what was lacking from my own understanding of film, animation and art in general, and that I was finally getting around to learning what I really needed to learn.

So, time to get back to the learning and say goodnight to the computer!

ps: to people who have left comments, if I haven’t yet responded, please forgive me as this has been a busy time, and thank you for writing. I love reading what you have to say and it encourages me to keep posting.

Today is Tuesday… Last Friday the commercial spot job at Handcranked finished. We ended up splitting the last shot into two days, which worked out very well. One of the main characters had to fall over in the middle of the shot, so we stopped shooting right before the big moves of the fall started and resumed the next morning. Also in this shot, after the character falls, several surrounding background objects needed to bounce in response to the impact after a short delay, depending on how far away they were. I was using a cut-out animated animatic for timing cues, and got into some difficulties when I tried to follow it too closely. One reason was that I couldn’t match it exactly if I wanted to, because the animatic was made at something like 30 frames per second, and we were shooting at 24 on twos, and I ended up increasing the already too-long delay present in the animatic. Later I was told the animatic was just for suggestion purposes, which I should have been more aware of. I think in the back of my head I knew I was doing something wrong by focusing on the movement of an animatic for detailed timing, and not trusting my own timing. Next time I need to ask specifically what timing cues I need to copy from the animatic and what cues are there that can be ignored or understood as vague suggestion. I’m perturbed by my mistake with this, and the lousy outcome of the timing of part of the most important moment of the spot, so now I’m determined to execute the same bounce-response movement in a test here at home, maybe by having one of my test-puppets with a beak pecking at bits of things on the floor, and the surround bits an react to the impact of the pecking by bouncing.

Another tricky thing about this final shot was that the main character who falls has to fall very quickly, so I had to make a decision about whether or not it was necessary to change over to ones during the fall, even though the look of this animation is supposed to be choppy. But like I said before, the look is choppy, but not plain bad, so I did end up switching to ones, and was glad for it, the fall looked nice. However, when trying to switch back to twos, I did it too early during the part where the characters bounce in response, which was part of the reason for the overly delayed movement. It would have been better to finish off the fast movement with ones, and then switch to twos afterward.

Today was a golden day… I’m not quite sure what the right descriptive word is. “Happy” isn’t good enough, and neither is “satisfying” or “productive” or “positive.” Maybe “appreciative” would be more true to the feeling of it. I felt very appreciative of the place I’m in at this short moment, these last few days of a job that has been satisfying and productive and positive in the ways that it has challenged me and opened me up to fresh ideas and connections with like-minded creative people.

I rode into Waltham on the train at 10am and got started on the next shot, a fairly simple and short one, compared to the most recent shots and the complicated ones coming up tomorrow and Thursday. It was a nice quiet day at the studio, only myself and Jeff, who was directing. I was especially diligent this time about preplanning the movements and expressions in the 2 and a half second shot, down to every last blink, and found that this allowed me to get most of the hard math work done before the shot even started. The rest of the way was smooth creative sailing because I could TRUST the notations I had so carefully made, and could depend on them to be accurate. After that I was free to make small adjustments as necessary as I went along and observed how the shot was developing.

Another key factor was that instead of my usual playlist of sappy sad and dreary melodies (the kind of music that makes you sigh), I tried out some new mixed CDs with real “beats” compiled by my master DJ roommate, Amelia, who has lately been the main source of my musical education and enlightenment. Anyhow, feeling the beats and accompanying them with a lovely cup of jasmine green tea, brought me to that perfectly centered point of focus, where I was totally into the work, enjoying it, engrossed in it, not feeling the least bit tired or in need of physical things, my stomach was not digesting, my mind was not preoccupied, my heart was not caught up in emotional troubles, I wasn’t in any pain - not even my animator’s back was bothering me. Later, when I did get hungry, I treated myself again to Thai, went for a walk in the perfect fall afternoon weather, sunny and refreshing, perfect new fall leaves on the sidewalk, and I felt so lucky to be experiencing such a rare state of worry-free balance and to be aware of it in the moment. I also felt lucky that in addition to this, no catastrophes are currently occurring in my personal or family circle, no extreme dramas, no one is particularly unwell. Everything seemed to be at an apex of balance…. if you were animating the feeling frame by frame as a leap through the air, it would be the frame where the object has reached the top and hangs for a milli-moment before descending again, but stretched out into the space of several hours.

The shot went smoothly, with only a small hang up at the very beginning requiring a restart (a spot of dust on the camera sensor showing up on a main character’s face). The time lapse still camera was capturing again, as well as a video camera pointed from the back of the set into the characters and towards my face, which was a little distracting at first, but I got used to its ever present eye after a while, and even got comfortable enough to eat my fig newton snacks in front of it without shame. Next time I’m going to make a face at it during a capture and see if anyone notices.

At 5:30 I finished early and later went out to a movie at the Embassy Cinema in Waltham - “The Science of Sleep,” which I loved…. again I’m at a lack for proper descriptive words. It was a sort of crazy romantic story mixing live action with jerky stop-motion assisted dream sequences, simple and childlike and colorful. The main characters were older and plainer and more flawed than your average movie heroes, with their complexities exposed, and that’s what the film seemed to be about, was these characters and their imperfections and complexities and sad human-ness, and yet also their beauty and ability to find love and acceptance for others and themselves despite these things, even in celebration of these things. The main characters were shown living their lives, trying to make things work in normal ways, even though the film’s style is very abnormal. They weren’t sarcastic, didn’t use catchy witty phrases, weren’t very made-up physically and weren’t lit in a glorified way. I felt I could really relate to them both and was touched by the human qualities revealed in them. the childish stop-motion was inspiring, because it again reminded me that animation does not have to be slick and smooth to be effective and emotive, and overall the film made me feel more tolerant and celebratory of my own complexities and abnormalities and perceived weaknesses. The analogy that I thought of later was, that I really don’t need to worry about making myself into a solved Rubik’s Cube, with all my qualities neatly balanced out and aligned, which is how I’ve often viewed the future “complete” form of myself to be.

Before the film started, I set my cell phone alarm to buzz at 9:15 since the train would be arriving at 9:25, but discovered at the end, that it had already turned to 9:17, so I exited the theatre with unusual speed, still blurry minded with movie-disorientation, with a strong need to pee, and started running down the dark street towards the train platform, feeling somewhat like I was in the movie, trapped in a strange half-dream like the main character. Since the platform is on the opposite side of the tracks, I am often paranoid that I’ll reach the tracks just as the train is arriving, but on the wrong side, so the bells will ring, and the bar will descend across the road and I’ll be forced to stand there and watch as my last possible ride picks up its passengers and descends into the night. So I ran like a madperson just until I reached the right side of the tracks, and then walked normally again. The final pleasant surprise of the night was when the train conductor allowed me to get off at my stop without paying the fare! Now I am completely tired out from writing, time to get to sleep in preparation for a complicated shot tomorrow.

This is an addition to yesterday’s posting about x-sheets, and mathematical understanding vs. animating on the fly frame-to-frame.

The other day, one of the directors and myself were joking about how it could be an interesting exercise to try to animate a character or scene in front of a camera on a timer, programmed to take a frame at regular intervals, requiring the animator to get in, move the puppets in a quick precise way, and get out before the picture is taken.  This means that whoever is animating would not be able to sit and nit-pick and change their minds and divert from the original plan, so they must have a very well-understood plan for how the movement will happen, which generally requires a sort of mathematical formula (a compression code almost for easy memorizing), which means sitting down and figuring out major arcs of movement, eases, timing, etc.  Anyway, I think this is a great idea for awful nit-picker perfectionists with lax processes like me.  I wonder if there is a way I can set up my frame grabbing program to take frames in an automated way like that.
Oh yes, and it could be like the animation olympics if several “teams” were competing against each other, animating the same shot within the same time restrictions.  It would be interesting to see the possible variations….

Thursday, third day of animation, 4 shots done. The shots are coming out nicely, due to the well-balanced mix of great puppets, well-timed/acted voice track, thoughtful calm direction, luck, and me trying to walk the line between mathematical control and improvisation. We’ve been using x-sheets (exposure sheets), to plot out the timing of certain actions, some actions entered by the director either as necessities or suggestions, and others (usually secondary details) added by myself. I haven’t been used to using x-sheets as much as we have been. The other jobs I’ve been on used them mostly to keep track of dialogue and the frame count, but action was more or less kept track of in the mind or thought up on the fly, except by some animators who had more organized and practised methods. I also didn’t learn too much about using x-sheets at school, pretty much only in character animation for 2-D.

At school, my stop-motion work was only based on the storyboard frames and dialogue track, and was done in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way, with the style looking naturalistic and on the slow side. So I started to think that this was just my personal “look”, but I now realize that I’ve got other possible “looks” within the grasp of my skills, and I’m craving a new variety of styles beyond that plodding style. I’m starting to divert from the original topic a bit, so I’ll bring back…. This use of x-sheets is basically a new step in organization of the shots, of the movement, even its subtle parts, which is very necessary for these two 15 second commercial spots, because the timing is set. There isn’t much flexibility for on the fly inspiration. That can still come into play in small subtle ways, and is still a necessary element to successful stop-motion, but I’m realizing there is a lot to be said for organization, premeditation of movement, and developing (eventually) a more ingrained understanding of the division of movement into parts, into frames (at varying rates), arcs, speeds, styles, etc. If I can truly have a mental grasp of action and expression in its mathematical form on paper, on an x-sheet, then I’ll have more control over it, and possibly be able to take my abilities to dimensions beyond my current reach.

I’m trying to push myself further towards organized thought and control, because when I depend too much on my ability to improvise on the spot, I can feel myself slipping out of the framework, losing my grasp on the bigger picture, and then suddenly focusing only on the movement at the edge of its creation - from one frame to the next, repetitively toggling to the live frame and back, replaying the shot over and over just to see how that new movement looks. Sometimes this is necessary, but when I get into this state, I know I have lost control, at some point I’ve become lax in my self-discipline and have ended up slogging through to the end of the shot.

I feel best about a shot if I have a clear picture of it from start to finish, a clear understanding of the main elements, the motivation of the characters, timing, and style… and then if I can add in improvised subtleties and tweaks, push things one way or another, make little changes and additions (the things that really bring it to life), then I feel satisfied, like I’ve done a proper job. If I fall into that sluggish mode and lose the clarity, but am able to pull of a successful shot base on my improvising skill and luck, then I don’t feel so hot, maybe because I can’t for certain say that I could replicate that success in any controlled way next time, without understanding the mathematics that went into it.