Sunday, November 25, 2012

Animating with Live Action Footage


Cartoon-blogging, essay 16 of 21 blog entries on
250 great animated short films

Dream Work (2003), directed by Peter Tscherkassky.

The 16th essay, “Animating With Live Action Footage,” is published in full at Press Play at IndieWire.  It deals with several extremely challenging films that fall along the borderline between live action and animation.  As the highlighted films by Peter Tscherkassky, Virgil Widrich, and Norman McLaren are experimental, I struggled to find an accessible way to describe what I see in them.  My experience with a Beatles song suggested a way in…

First, a memory which has been seared into my brain:  It’s 1973 and my cousin and I are alone in the house, obsessively playing and replaying the last minute of the Beatles’ “I Am the Walrus” backwards on a cheap plastic portable turntable. And I’m getting seriously creeped out.

                                                                                Continue reading here…

This series of 21 essays is inspired by a list of 250 great animated short films, composed in August 2012 by Scott Bussey, Jorge Didaco, Waldemar Hepstein, Bill Kamberger, Robert Reynolds, Sulo Vatanen, and Lee Price, with additional assistance from participants on the IMDb Classic Film message board.

© 2012 Lee Price