Claymation (1978)

Hey, I'm bored. I'm bored of the big be. I'll tell you that. Wait a minute. Three-dimensional animation is the art of making things move that don't usually. Give me five. Strong. I got an idea. You have to watch this. Or making things that do move move in new and different ways. Watch this now. Okay. Come on back. Come on. Now these men are animators. They decide what to move and how to move it. Nothing in film animation moves by itself. [Music] The animator is always in control of the medium. Well, almost always. And now there's something new in three-dimensional animation. Clay. Clay. Clay. [Music] Will Vincent is a clay animator who's really into his medium. Well, for for several years while making live action and a few cell animated films, I was working on a technique of clay animation. It was a technique that Bob Gardner, a sculptor, and I worked on during college. And so eventually we made a film called Clothes Mondays to sort of show off the animation techniques and to show off what clay could do as an animation medium. How's that? Thank you for joining me on I am a replica of the model. Until closed Mondays, clay was pretty much dismissed as a serious animation medium. It is called crumbling and impractical. Mut mut mutations mutations metamorphological mutations mutations to reversal comparative mutations mutations. His co-creators won an Academy Award for the film. Clay animation came of age. [Music] Oh, [Music] enough. Watch out. Clay's really neat stuff. It's um basically the same plasticine that every preschooler uses except we use hundreds of pounds even for a short film. We use our hands as our primary tools uh for smearing, kneading, smoothing, texturing. Clays are natural for simple figures and limited movement um or big blobby shapes. [Music] Most of our productions require more refined use of the clay uh for greater detail and realism. And for these things, we use sculpting tools common to most kinds of clay modeling. [Music] In a production like Rip Van Winkle, uh, we may use 30 or 40 characters, each one having to be specifically designed and and have unique qualities about it. [Music] The characters range from 7 or 8 in tall to 10 or 12 in tall. And occasionally we use different scales. Very small scaled characters for distance shots and even as large as life-size for extreme close-ups. [Music] The process uses a full range of colors. Even from the beginning, the commercial colors of clays just weren't adequate. Uh there wasn't enough variation in color and hues and so forth. And so we always have mixed our clays starting usually from ivory and adding colored pigment in the same way that one mixes paint. And it allows us to get a complete spectrum of colors uh with different intensities and for really quite elaborate landscapes sets. This is a scene from mountain [Music] music. I wonder what makes it work. Behind the scenes, many elements are involved in making it work. Oh, sunset. What directing? Get this. I am a genius. I'm a genius. How would that sound, right? How was that? We have all the usual film making problems. Lighting, sound, music, scoring, direction of actors, editing, and then we have a few of our own that are unique to Clay Animation. Are you hungry, Al? Well, yeah. I could I could use a damn uh sandwich. Nothing's going on. Where's that chicken? Nothing's going on. Ain't you disgusting? What do you mean? You're going to ham sandwich. You're talking about my Where is the chicken here? I'm trying to find a sound here. Talking about a ham sandwich. What is it? Where's Mr. Take two? Take three. Rats. Here comes the director. I can't hear anything. Quiet on the set. Hey, have you guys finished that shot yet? Yes, I think we have something uh VW. Okay. Well, let's let's get on with the closeup now. Huh? Okay, we'll set up for that. Actually, there really are a lot of similarities between our process and live action film production. Um, both are shot in real space with the characters moving around in front of the camera within sets. If a scene calls for mood and drama, as many of the scenes in Martin the Cobbler did, um, then we can light the sets just about the same way that a liveaction production crew would light a set. [Music] In fact, the entire production is shot and soundtracks recorded with live actors before animating begins. The footage and sound are edited into a reference film, which is used as a guide to animation, as in this scene from Martin the Cobbler. You you keep looking out the window because you thought I thought that I I admit you were Listen, complete original music scores are composed and recorded before animating begins. What I was thinking is if we could on those cues, we can turn on the lights in the room so that action can be executed in perfect synchronization with the music. Then we need to get into the camera movement. The camera pulls away from the window back to reveal, you know, Martin and his cobbler bench. Maybe have some and have it right match with the right with the hammer or something. He's he's actually a percussion, right? [Music] By editing the reference film, the voice and the music tracks together, uh, we're able to really get a precise guide for animation. And sometimes we're able to edit the finished animation, as in the fast cut sequence before the eruption scene in Mountain Music. [Music] Okay, let's discuss Martin. Animators plan every action that will appear on screen and characters are all designed with movement in mind. You might want to do it that way or we've got a full we do a full beard type thing. Yeah, I really like the beard on Martin except that uh it may create some problems with uh doing the lip sync and moving the mouth. Smooth character movement begins with an armature, a stable, flexible structure to support the figure in motion. [Music] [Applause] What wee the action described in the script is translated to storyboard form scene by scene. Then each scene is broken down into individual moves and moves are broken down frame by frame. The distance that a character has to move in a given scene is divided by the number of frames in that move. Uh the formula is distance divided by frames. That tells us how far the character has to move each frame. How far the camera has to move in each frame is calculated in the same way. There may be as many as 50 or 60 different elements that have to be moved every frame. So you may be having the camera move uh tracking in towards a shot while it's tilting. Those have to be each done a frame at a time and then the characters are moved. Uh there may be one one character that's moving his mouth and head and hands. Another character may be pulling on something. And altogether there may be as I say several dozen different elements that moving in each frame. In a complex shot, the camera may be panning, tilting, and tracking all at the same time with horizontal and vertical camera moves occurring between each exposure of film. Let her go. [Music] Okay, let's get ready for the next one. It's 4:30. Uh, Granny is going to be moving forward a little bit more. Right foot coming forward. Oh, it's going to be a good framing. So, in the glamorous, fast-paced world of film making, the animator stands alone or sits alone or with a friend and turns his world slowly, one frame at a time. Okay. 450. Okay. Pause the foot and just keep moving the body. Okay, just hold the foot out where it is. So, yeah, your skirt can start coming down. Okay. How about the pivot? Do you want to continue that or pause? Just just move it forward. Pivot. Pause the pivot. The hand pauses. Okay. How about uh just have her blink a little bit on this one. Have her blink down one. This scarf is a little weird yet. Okay. Okay. Four here. Okay. 452. Start to move the left left foot forward. Skirt will come down, right arm back a little bit. Begin to pivot to the other direction. And then we're going to start easing out this. She's going to stop in one more one more step. So start easing out and unblink her. Yeah. The set is quiet, electric with concentration. The animator is always alert to the possibility of error. It may take several people many days to shoot one scene. And in a single frame, it can all be lost. A successful scene is the result of dozens of elements working well together. Bloody mirror. Wait, where's the mouse searching around? And there may be hundreds of scenes in one production. There it is. Thank you, my love. All working toward the closing moments of the final scene. Vladimir, Vladimir, wait. I'm coming with you. Well, Morgan, what took you so long? I'm going with you to the festival. Together, we can show these young people come at the old dances. We're two pups, a bloody me. Two pups in our prime. [Music] when at last all the scenes work well together. That's a happy ending. Happy endings always make me cry. Don't cry, Will. [Music] [Laughter] Strawberry. Ho ho ho. He he a oh [Applause]