Tim Burton was born on August 25th, 1958 in Burbank, California. Burton was never very good in school, and was not a bookworm. Instead he found pleasure in painting, drawing and in movies. In 1979 Burton had been brought into work on 'The Fox And The Hound' he did not enjoy it one and he claimed it bored him. After realising Burton's talents were not fully being utilised, they made him a conceptual artist on designing characters which would then, later on be used in films. The unique style of his concept drawings did not go down to well with Disney and were not used. Failing working at Disney he then went on to producing his own projects. This included artwork and a poem which would eventually, years later become 'The Nightmare Before Christmas', the live action short 'Frankenweenie' and the animated short 'Vincent'.
During Burton's various animations, he has used many different techniques, these include things such as Rotorscoping and Claymation. Rotorscoping involves drawing over film footage of live actors, and claymation involves having clay models slowly being moved whilst pictures get taken to seem as if they are moving. Both of these techniques were used in the making of 'The Nightmare Before Christmas'.
This big production was initially thought up by Burton as a child, years later the image which was once in the head of one man, could be seen by millions, but not without a lot of hard work and teamwork. Peter Crushing and Christopher Lee were two big names in stop motion and played the roll of Burton's influence for his stop motion films. This film is difficult to put under any genre, but a Burton-esque, horror, fairy tale type genre would fit the bill here. This film took 3 years to complete, 230 sets were used and 200 puppets were used throughout the film. Before making sets he would first have to think about scale. Once the set was built he would then spread clay on the set, and draw lines over the top, thus adding more detail, he would then make the armatures for the puppets, coat them with clay and then work into them with more detail before bringing them on set. Since Burton's main challenge was keeping things consistent, he did not like to move his models by hand, so therefore mounted them on small poles, which in this case had a 2 foot reach for maximum manoeuvrability. He would then pre-make the movie, sequence by sequence before the movie starts and start taking photos when he feels everything is good.
This movie is aimed at a young to mid age generation since the film is quite playful and filled with animation, which in general is more younger based. The movie had mixed reviews, the majority more positive than negative, yet despite the negative reviews did quite well earning over $50 million in the US on it's first theatrical run and a total box office gross of $74.7 million.
I personally like Burton's style, although quite dark and sinister it appeals to me because of the sheer creativity and the ability to turn even the most boring situation into something interesting.
Aardman Animations is a british animation studio based in Bristol. They are most well known for there claymation and have made very successful, high grossing films such as 'Wallace and Gromit' and 'Chicken Run' which to date is the highest grossing stop motion animated movie making $106,834,564 domestically with an additional $118,000,000 overseas for a worldwide total of $224,834,564.
As mentioned above 'Chicken Run' was the highest grossing stop motion animation of all time. The main technique used for this film is Claymation, this is where a clay, or in this case plasticine model gets made and gets put on a set, the director then takes pictures of the model as it moves a few inches, these photos then get sequenced to give the impression that the model is moving.
Chicken Run's storyline involves. "Chickens having been hopelessly repressed and facing eventual certain death at the chicken farm where they are held, Rocky the rooster and Ginger the chicken decide to rebel against the evil Mr. and Ms. Tweedy, the farm's owners. Rocky and Ginger lead their fellow chickens in a great escape from the murderous farmers and their farm of doom."
This film fits into the genre of adventure comedy, stop motion, animation and fantasy, the same could be said for both Wallace and Gromit and Flushed Away. These films don't have a specific age range of audience in which they fit into, the target audience is much larger and fits all ages since adults are drawn by the sophistication of the film, and children are drawn by the animation and the humour.
PREP
A film such as this involves a lot of prep time, and a lot of effort in general, for example this film took 1 year prep and 3 years animation, the makers would run the camera speed at 24fps (standard) and the film had more than 80 mins running time along with over 100000 frames. 1 minute of film was shot every week, 900kg of plasticine was used along with 4000 litres of paint, with this props for the soundtrack were also used, these were every day objects but played a key role in the soundtrack. Soundtrack is important because it creates atmosphere and depth, along with that close up's of the face are key and this is why many different mouths were used to show speech.
In all this film is brilliantly done, appeals to all audiences and makes people happy, which is why I love these kind of films, they are cleverly done and attract a big audience and single out from any other kind of film.
Timothy and Steven Quay (better known as The Brothers Quay) are identical twin brothers who are both American, and who are both influential stop motion animators. Once moving to England, the brothers made there first short films which are sadly no longer available due to the only print being irreparably damaged. After the 1970's after returning from the Netherlands after spending some time there, they returned to England where the teamed up with Keith Griffiths who was another Royal College student and from then on they produced all there films together. In 1980 the trio decided to form Konick Studios, this studio still exists today and can be found in Southwark, south London.
Influences
The Brothers Quay had many influences when it came to producing there work, they would often follow techniques used by past animators and modernise it when it came to producing there work.
Some of the brothers main influences included:
For writing:
Franz Kafka
Bruno Schulz
Robert Walser
Michel de Ghelderode
For Animation:
Walerian Borowczyk
Jan Lenica
For Puppeteers:
Wladyslaw Starewicz
Richard Teschner
For Composers:
Leoš Janáček
Zdeněk Liška
Leszek Jankowski
Leszek Jankowski as well as being an influence for the brothers also helped them create many original scores for their work.
Another BIG influence for the brothers was the Czech animator Jan Švankmajer, unusually they discovered Švankmajer's work late and by that time their characteristic style and preoccupations had been fully formed. The brothers discovered him in 1983 and decided he was such a major influence that they named one of there films after him. (The Cabinet of Jan Švankmajer).
The brothers work:
To produce the brothers work puppets must often be used, these puppets are usually made from organic materials and when appearing on screen the puppets will be partially disassembled, therefore enhancing the dark atmosphere that is created in a number of Timothy and Stephen's films. A common trend throughout the films is that there will be no spoken dialogue or content at all, some of the films such as The Comb (From the Museums of Sleep) (1990) include occasional background dialogue in which the audience is not suppose to coherently understand. Due to there being so little dialogue in any of there pieces, the brothers rely heavily on their music scores in which the majority are written by the Polish composer Leszek Jankowski, the soundtrack or scores will be written specifically for them by the composer.
Here is a list of some of the brothers short films:
- Street of Crocodiles which was voted by Terry Gilliam as being one of the ten best animated films of all time.
- The Comb (From The Museums Of Sleep)
- Stravinsky – The Paris Years
- The Summit
- Duet
Along with short films the brothers were also responsible for some music videos, these include:
- 16 Horsepower ("Black Soul Choir")
- Michael Penn ("Long Way Down (Look What the Cat Drug In)")
- His Name Is Alive ("Are We Still Married", "Can't Go Wrong Without You")
This year the brothers were commissioned to create in May 2012 a major city-wide art installation, OverWorlds & UnderWorlds, this would be the Arts Council England's flagship contribution to the London 2012 Cultural Olympiad.
No comments:
Post a Comment