Is it a:
- Genre?
- Technique?
- Mode of Film?
- an Art form?
Forbes magazine believes that animated film in America is “still a genre, not yet a medium…” this has nothing to do with the quality of the film but is based on the fact that animated films target the same audience, they are tapered to appeal to younger children regardless of the themes that may be present, the plots are suitable for all ages and each film containing similar elements. The full article can be read in detail at the link below…
Animator Brad Bird disagrees with the above and believes animation is not a genre but a mode of storytelling. He states animation is capable of any genre of film, horror, fairytales, science fiction but that it itself is not a genre.
http://deneroff.com/blog/2012/06/12/brad-bird-animation-is-not-a-genre/
Norman McLaren, considered a pioneer in both animation and film making defines animation as, “not the art of drawings that move but rather the art of movements that are drawn. What happens between each frame is more important than what happens on each frame.” So for McLaren the real meaning of animation lies in the creation of motion. http://perceivinganimation.blogspot.co.uk/2008/10/definition-of-animation.html
Neighbours (1952) is McLaren’s Oscar winning film. It employs the principles of animation through a combination of live action and stop motion techniques, the exaggeration of the two men’s love for the flower adds a humorous note to the slightly more serious tone it has. Although the plot may be simple there is a deep underlying theme corresponding to anti-war, with war there are no winners, both sides have losses.
The Zagreb school of animation was the first non-American Oscar award winner with their animated short, ‘Surogat’ (1961)
In this short, “a passionate love develops, provoking jealousy, vengeance and finally tragedy. In the end a small nail reminds everyone of the artificiality of the world that has been created.”
The Zagreb school promote animation as a non realist form, they wanted to transform reality differently to the animation of Disney Studios. In the link above they animate inanimate objects, the main character is the simple shape of a triangle.
The first full length animation film to be made in Great Britain (1954) was Animal Farm, produced by John Halas at Halas and Batchelor studios – founded by he and his wife Joy Batchelor. Halas was a founding member and the President of the International Animated Film Association (ASIFA) from 1960 to 1985, then Honorary President.
John Halas view of animation was that it is the job of live action to depict the physical reality meaning that animation presented not how things would look but what they meant.
Another old master worth mentioning is surrealist animator Jan Svankmajer, well known for the distinct style he applies to stop motion, usually animating inanimate objects creating dark, surreal visions.. For example his 1988 film Alice, a dark adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s story.
“I speak of Surrealism in film. Surrealism is psychology, it is philosophy, it is a spiritual way, but it is not an aesthetic. Surrealism is not interested in actually creating any kind of aesthetic.”- http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0840905/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm
In an interview Svankmajer stated, “I never call myself an animated filmmaker because I am interested not in animation techniques or creating a complete illusion, but in bringing life to everyday objects.” http://www.awn.com/mag/issue2.3/issue2.3pages/2.3jacksonsvankmajer.html
This quote above corresponds to his view on what animation is to him, a form of subversion…
“For me, animated film is about magic. This is how magic becomes part of daily life, invading daily life…. Magic enters into a quite ordinary contact with mundane things … (making) reality seem doubtful. ” http://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/841546.Jan_Svankmajer
One example of Svankmajer bringing life to inanimate objects is his Dimensions of Dialogue (1982). Again this is a dark, surreal and somewhat nightmarish film, containing 3 sections:
Exhaustive discussion: heads similar to the famous paintings by artist Arcimboldo, the heads eat each other eventually creating copies of themselves, sense cinema described this as….. “instructional that it is everyday objects that are confronted, devoured, spat out and homogenised, through a series of metaphors of colonisation, to an endless repetition of cloning operations. This is our digital world laid out in 1982.” http://dangerousminds.net/comments/jan_shvankmajer_-_dimensions_of_dialogue
Passionate discourse: An unexpected baby causes two clay lovers to destroy each other.
Factual conversation: Communication breaks down between the two heads, they are no longer helpful to each other.
An opposing definition to that of Svankmajer would be that of Walt Disney who defines animation as…
“Animation can explain whatever the mind of man can conceive.” – The Illusion of life, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnstone, pg13.
“The first duty of the cartoon is not to picture or duplicate real action or things as they actually happen – but to give a caricature of life and action – to picture on the screen things that have run thru the imagination of the audience to bring to life dream fantasies and imaginative fancies that we have all thought of during our lives or have had pictured to us in various forms during our lives.” –http://www.lettersofnote.com/2010/06/how-to-train-animator-by-walt-disney.html
Walt Disney studios have created some of the most beloved film of all time from the first fully animated feature length film – Snow White and the seven Dwarfs (1937) to 2013’s Frozen which is now the biggest animated film of all time, achieved through the appeal of characters, their designs and storytelling techniques that capture the younger members of the audience.
Animation has evolved from hand drawn cells into the computer generated images we see today, it has the ability exaggerate and transform, picture the invisible, transport audiences into the past, even predict the future and finally it has to ability to even control time and speed. Animation even in the digital era is still the art of the impossible:
“Animation is the most nimble of mediums. It has survived the mechanical ‘persistence of vision’ toys popular in the 19th century; found expression as an art form in cinema; it was the means by which to experiment with time-based art and cinematic forms to present new visual vocabularies; it was brilliantly positioned to pioneer the use of computers to create moving images from numbers; it has demystified complex processes; visualised scientific phenomena and provided simulation models to help us understand the world; it has become an essential ingredient in multimedia content; it is imbedded in the control interface display of multi-million dollar jet fighter planes, it is integral to the computer games industry; it increasingly underpins all special effects in motion picture production; and it has provided content in an ideal form to distribute across a bandwidth poor networked environment.” –http://minyos.its.rmit.edu.au/aim/a_notes/anim_intro.html
HannahLoughridge 