Jan Svankmajer is a renowned surrealist film maker known for his unusual style of animating and uses of multi mediums in his films. Many of his animations depict bizarre mind goggling scenes where people and objects animate in a nightmarish and uneasy way. A lot of his early work was banned by the communist authorities in his country and he was actually band out right from making films for a short time. An example of one of his works is his 1971 film Jabberwocky which among other things featured children's dolls falling into a coffee grinder and then being ironed out, this violent imagery did not go down well with the authorities. Although violent, his films always have an air of comedy about them and the violence is shown in an almost slapstick way, particularly in the film 'The Male Game'. He's also famous for using exaggerated sound effects in his animation, people eating for example will be coupled with over the top sloppy sounds of someone chewing.
His films tend to use multi mediums, and quite often human subjects are shown moving into scene in real time, however at some point during his films they are portrayed in stop motion. He tends to mix animation techniques, having a combination of claymation, stop motion and stop motion involving cut out card imagery moving across a flat page. One such film that is a brilliant example of this, is his short above, 'MUZNE HRY'( The Male Game), which depicts a man, drinking beer and watching a football match which becomes increasingly violent as the players begin to attack each other. Here we see the three different mediums Svankamjer uses in this particular short.
The main Subject, is a man shown in live action, who sits around eating biscuits and drinking beer.
The second medium uses cut out card images of the individual players who move across a flat pitch and interact with one another.
And the final medium is claymation, which depicts the close ups of the players as the inflict various injuries on each other.
Influences on other Animators: Terry Gilliam
The Writer Director Terry Gilliam was greatly influenced by Svankmajer. You can see these influences throughout Gilliam's work, in particular in the work he did when in the Monty Python group. Gilliam worked on all the animation for the Pythons and his style draws many parallels with the work Svankmajer. Not only in its surreal subject and goofy slapstick comedy but visually as well. The cut out animation in the python films and sketch shows is very reminiscent of Svankmajers work coupled also with the exaggerated amusing sound effects, its easy to see Gilliam's reverence and respect for Svankmajer. Here is perhaps the most well known example of Gilliam's animation, The introduction to 'Monty Pythons Flying Circus'.
One of the best known stop motion directors in current pop culture is Adam Pesapane better known as his directing alter ego PES. Pes's animations are immediately recognisable, many of his shorts use everyday household items to represent something else. His first film Roof Sex, depicts two arms chairs sneaking off to a roof top and having sex, the film won PES his first Annecy International award for best film and has been screened at over 100 film festivals internationally. Another example and perhaps my favourite piece of stop motion by PES is his 2008 short Western Spaghetti. This film shows a meal being made, however the ingredients are substituted for items such as pin cuisines used to represent tomatoes, crayons as spaghetti, and bubble wrap to simulate boiling water etc. This video won the 2009 june Audience Award at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival, and got a mention at the Sundance film festival. This film was one of the first stop motion animations that really got me interested in the whole stop motion medium.
Pes is also attributed to having the shortest film ever nominated for an Academy Award. His 2012 short, Fresh Guacamole lasts only 1 minute 40 seconds and again shows everyday objects representing ingredients to make guacamole. When different ingredients are cut up they turn into something else, often with a visual pun behind them. For example when a baseball is diced up it change's into dice, and at the end Poker chips are laid out on a plate to represent Potato chips.
PES has been heavily influenced by Czech surrealistJan Švankmajer who's work can be compared to PES's. You can see where PES has been influenced from his style, Jan's film 'Breakfast' is a brilliant example of surrealist stop motion, where in a man sits at a table and inserts money into another mans eyes, a plate of food is then revealed from the mans abdomen being drawn up from somewhere on strings. This style of using one object to represent something else, in this case a man to represent a vending machine is seen all through out PES's work.
The practise of stop motion animation is extremely similar to standard filming, taking one still frame after another and playing them in quick succession to produce a moving picture. The process of photographing something move in quick succession could be attributed to Eadweard Muybridge. Muybridge was trying discover whether or not a horse lifts all hooves of the ground while in full gallop. how he did this was by setting up multiple cameras along a race track and taking a photo as the horse gallops by. Playing these photographs one after another in quick succession made the horse animate and appear to be running. This was how film was created and in a way it was the very first stop motion.
However the term stop motion is generally used as a means of making objects appear to move and animate of there own accord which they would not otherwise be able to do. For example if you had a model of a person with moveable joints and limbs you would be able to make it appear to animate through stop motion. What you would do is to take a still image of the object as is, then move a limb ever so slightly, take another still then move it again and so on. Then when you play the images back the model would appear to moving on screen of its own accord. Depending on how small the movements are between each new photo will effect how smooth the animation will be If you were to have big movements between each frame it would create a more jumpy effect and the smaller each movement a smoother one.
Claymation
Claymation is another form of stop motion which uses the same principle of taking frame after frame an moving the subject between each frame and then playing it back in quick succession. The Subject or subjects in the case of claymation are all malleable and so are easy to rearrange between each frame, obvious and well known examples of claymation in modern culture would include Wallace and Gromit by Nick Parks and Robert Chicken, created by Seth Green. Another famous example of claymation is in the Indiana Jones: Raiders of the Lost Ark film. The scene in which the ark is opened and a number of nazi officers have their faces melted of, used techniques similar to those used in claymation.
This is my example of short stop motion to demonstrate my understanding and findings of the basic principles. Its a short 30 second piece showing a ball of blue tac move across screen and morph into different shapes and forms on its own volition.
Its a very simple piece and not at all perfect, iv created other stop motions in the past which took a lot more time and effort, however for the sake of a demonstration and due to the short amount of time i had this does the job of showing very simply how the process works and what you can do with almost nothing.
