16mm Film Direct Animation

Yesterday we took a trip to The Cube, a cinema in Bristol, for a workshop day. In it, we developed our Super 8 film-in-a-day films, as well some direct animation.

We started off by watching three animations: Begone Dull Care (Norman Mclaren), Free Radicals (Len Lye) and Virtuoso Virtuell (Maja Oschmann & Thomas Stellmach). The first two were animations that worked directly onto film, with music added to. The latter was digitally animated to look like ink blots. 

I think both methods would be equally hard. With the film versions, the initial animating may have been easier but coordinating it with the music in the planning process must've been very difficult and time consuming. The digital one may be harder to animate, but I think it would be easier to keep track of where the music is lining up with the animation.

Later, we experimented by animating 16mm films ourselves; scratching into, drawing on, painting on etc. I think what made it so difficult was how big our tools (brushes scratchers) were in relation to the film. It made every mark I made feel clumsy, so I wasn't too happy with the outcome of mine. This was later then all added together and we watched it at the end. Although we weren't up to Mclaren or Lye's standards, it was still pretty cool to watch.

I can definitely still see these techniques around today. A lot of music videos have elements of them in, some adverts, even in a couple of films. The first video reminded me a lot of the scene in 'Dumbo' with the pink elephants.