Old News and Updates: or ...Welcome to my Blog archive Comments Hey, happy halloween! I just wanted to stick a post here as an unabashed self-serving link to my camera package that I'm trying to unload. It's a great stop-mo camera package that I just put up for auction on e-bay and I wanna get the word out to the stop-mo world that it's for sale: Mitchell GC Auction - Mike Eder Sure... why not? Here's a thread at the message board with some discussion about it, including pics: 35mm stopmo camera package. Sounds like a great deal. Glad to see you check my blog! Oct 27 2005 Off the Rails A film by Darcy Prendergast Man, I don't know what's in the water in Melbourne, but that place produces some great "puppet pushers"! Anthony Lawrence, Dik Jarman, Adam Elliot, my stopmoshorts partner Nick Hilligoss, and now Darcy Prendergast. If his new film Off the Rails is any indication, he's got quite a future. Just in the image above you can see this guy's an artist. Textures, colors, dirt, character... and so far I'm just talking about the wall in the background! If you click on the image, you can watch the whole 6 minute short. If you've ever seen any of the award winning films by Adam Elliot - his trilogy Uncle, Brother & Cousin or the oscar-winner Harvie Krumpet you can clearly see the influence. But Adam has been more than an influence to young jedi Darcy... he's actually been a mentor - and it's clear the force is strong in this one. I'm super-impressed with this film! Every aspect of it is handled skillfully.... design, animation, editing, sound - and I think this is only his 2nd film! I like the way he dirties up the clay... not only does it look good, but in one deft swipe it eliminates one of the problems that plague clay animators, who can often be seen wearing white gloves and obsessing over every speck of dust that tries to accumulate on their puppets. But what I like the most is that his work is observed from life... these characters are based on real people. Here's another picture from the film... Comments Oct 23 2005 Flushing out my head No, first let me state that you have not accidentally clicked on the Private Dick Plog! There is a point to the picture above, I'll explain.... Last entry I mentioned the book Writing with Pictures. I must say, this might be the perfect book for me right at this point in time! I had arrived on my own at the method of conceiving my film entirely in terms of puppet pantomime, and that resulted in a tight, concise story that handles things visually, without a lot of extra padding to explain complicated and probably extraneous ideas. But, as decent as my script outline was, there was still one loose end left unresolved, and I wasn't entirely satisfied with the way things wrapped up. I'm only partway through the first section of the book, but already it's given me a very clear idea of how a story must work, which when you break it down is a simple thing. At the outset of your story you present a situation that must be resolved by the end. Already the seeds exist... the beginning pretty well necessitates a particular end. It's just a matter of tying up the loose ends... all of them, and bringing about a satisfying resolution to the situation you created. I'm so glad I got this book just now, before I get too far in and can't make changes, because the story I had blocked out, while very visual in nature and quite entertaining, didn't quite bring about a totally satisfying resolution. Well, that and - the head I sculpted for my main character doesn't look capable of expressing the sheer delight required by the earlier ending. So, I did what I do when I need to ponder.... I took my dog out for a nice little walk. I live right at the edge of the woods, and it's a beautiful fall out there! Crisp air, sharp stars and a carpet of freshly-fallen leaves. We just wandered around the yard and the neighbor's (really big) yard, and I tried a few different ideas, processing them visually in the puppet pantomime method, but none of them quite worked. There was an exciting moment though, when I heard a sudden crashing of leaves and branches down in the woods and a deer burst out and ran like some ethereal ghost through the yard, across the street, and leaped over a guardrail to descend into the woods on the other side! This happens a lot... in fact some nights as many as 8 or 10 deer will go trooping through the yard, so when you see one, especially if it's running, the idea is to stand well clear in case more come close behind. There was only the one tonight though. We went in, I gave the dog a Milk-Bone, and continued pondering. Still nothing. And then it happened... while I was on the toilet!! I sat down with nothing, and by the time I flushed, the idea had sprung fully formed into my mind. I've run through it several times now, and it seems to work on every level. But you know how these things go... this still might not be the definitive version.... it might require a second or even third movement. And speaking of the Private Dick Plog, many thanks to Tennessee Reid Norton for plugging the Kim Blanchette Cup-O-Noodle Soup ads on my Video Clips page! Comments Oct 22 2005 I see pictures "I have never exactly made a story. With me the process is much more like bird watching than like either talking or building. I see pictures... keep quiet and watch and they will begin joining themselves up... I have no idea whether this is the usual way of writing stories, still less whether it is the best. It is the only one I know; images always come first." - C. S. Lewis This caption comes from a book called Writing with Pictures by Uri Shulevitz, which was suggested to me by Bruce Hoffman (Boy Oyng on the message board), and it comes at the perfect time. Odd how these little coincidences seem to keep happening.... here I was, going deeper into Puppet Pantomime and finding a way to use it to actually concieve my films, and meanwhile, on an unrelated note, Bruce discovered and recommended this excellent book, which deals with the same stuff. I just started reading it, and so far I like it very much. Not too sure how I'm going to handle the blog now. I haven't updated in almost two weeks, and it's because I'm not sure what to say. Not that I don't have anything to say, quite the contrary.... the problem is that now I'm working on my movie, and I don't want to give away too much. Hopefully I can continue to find things like this to blog about. *** Cthulhu lives! Also, I got this email from Andrew Leman, who has been hard at work on a movie version of the Lovecraft tale Call of Cthulhu. You might recall I posted about his film earlier - it's done in the style of a silent movie from the 20's, and using stopmo! Here's what he had to say: "Mike, We have finally finished The Call of Cthulhu. It screened last weekend for the first time up in Portland, and we're having the premiere cast/crew screening here in LA on Monday. I did not expect to end up doing all the stop motion animation myself, but that is what happened. I spent countless hours on it, and of course there are only a few seconds in the finished film. But I'm pretty happy with how it all came out." You can watch the trailer at the website Cthulhulives.org as well as read a detailed production log and other great tidbits. And, for your viewing pleasure, the DVD is now available on the Cthulhulives.org site store. I love it when an independent film comes together! Comments Oct 10 2005 An end... and a beginning In my last entry I was despairing because I "just don't seem capable of hammering out a story that works". The reason I said that is because I haven't been able to come up with a decent ending for my latest script. I actually had several choices... the goofy funny ending, the happy but thought provoking one, or the tragic and deeply thought provoking one. The part of me that loves the Quays and Svankmajer for their fearless, edgey work of course wanted to see the tragic and deeply thought provoking ending, but it just doesn't feel right for this movie... I think it would ruin it. But I couldn't make up my mind, and now I understand why.... I conceived the beginning of the film entirely in terms of Puppet Pantomime... in other words entirely visually. And I purposely left a section in the middle fairly open so I can come up with "gags" on the spot as I animate (in fact I was thinking about the incomparable Chuck Jones Looney Tunes). But when it came time to design an ending, I didn't think it through visually... instead I did it sort of in outline form... you know, "So, if I do it this way it would be happy and goofy, but if I do it THIS way....". So, after writing about my indecision last night on the blog, I decided to turn all my attention to the problem, and as I lay in bed (that's when I do some of my best thinking) I finally hit on the brilliant idea to actually visualise each possible ending in terms of Puppet Pantomime. I know, I know.... in retrospect, I should have done that from the beginning (it always sounds so easy when I spell it all out after the fact). Anyway, suffice to say, I now have an ending that I think will work, though it still needs a little tweaking and fleshing out of a few nagging details. Anyway, I'm happy enough with it now that I feel ready to start making puppets and building sets... but first of course, I have to make my animation table. It's hard to believe, but I'm actually ready to start making my first real film! It's not Ahab, and it's not Buster, though Buster was sort of a warmup for one of the main characters. I won't give away too much just yet. Comments Great two entries Mike! Firstly, Much good thoughts going to you (your entire family) and your mom for a successful surgery. Great news on her pain blocking treatment! (I just read an article about them last night in the New Yorker by co-incidence, they seem a kind of miracle for chronic pain.) Secondly, bravo on getting the sofa out and the lumber in hand! I call that Action! Thirdly, your recent expansion into cinematic storytelling and pantomime is such a great development. I'm certain your new works will be exponentially more able to express the greater scope of what you have to share. And lastly, your not posting for a bit didn't discourage this reader at all. I still check everyday, just in case... -Shelley Thank you Shelley, and to the others who sent their condolences as well. I really appreciate it. -M Glad to hear production is nearly underway! So this visual ending - is it the funny one, the happy but still thought provoking one, or the seriously thought provoking metaphysical one, or none of the above? Or do we just have to wait and see? - Nick H Hi Nick! Great to hear from you on the blog. Guess I neglected to mention which ending I ended up with. Well, let's just say I hope it'll be funny, and I think it'll be thought-provoking. I'll settle for either, or anything close though. - Mike Oct 8 2005 Back on the ball Um, don't ask about the picture... I just wanted something on a ball, and this is what i found! I hope I still have some readers left after my recent bout of inactivity! I know I've been horrible about updating the blog for a while, and it's been ages since I pruned back this main page so it loads in under 4 minutes. I finally got around to that... it's actually a pretty scary undertaking since I write my code all out by hand the old fashioned way, and I'm always afraid I'll accidentally delete an entire page. Things get pretty crazy when I'm moving pages into the archive... I end up with four or five open pages at once and disaster is never more than a mouse-click away. Anyway, I've been struggling with depression lately. My mom has been having heart problems, and she's going to need surgery soon. For a few months she was in terrible pain and things looked really bleak, but she went to a pain clinic and has been receiving nerve blocker treatments, and now she's just about back to her old self. She's a tough old bird, and it takes more than this to put her down! So that's the main reason I've been down lately, but there are a few more factors added into the mix. For one, Halloween is right around the corner, and while this is my favorite time of year, I'm forced to realize that I haven't got any animation done since a year ago when I made Terror in the Pumpkin Patch, aside from a few little tests. Of course, there's more to life (and even to stopmotion filmmaking) than doing animation, and it has been a time of learning and acquisition for me. I've come to realize that by far my weakest area is story writing. You can have great puppets, sets, lighting and animation, and it means nothing with crappy writing! The explosion of artist-created comics in the 90's showed us how that works out. I've been working on a few different script ideas, all at different stages of development, but I just don't seem capable of hammering out a story that works! Maybe I'm trying too hard, attempting to create stories with too much depth and too many shades of meaning. I feel like I'm getting very close to understanding how to do it though, and I think the key lies in abstraction and stylization. From the beginning I've been fascinated by films that don't have a straightforward narrative, and yet the scripts I write are all very standard narratives. Another factor that's been holding me back is that I still don't have a decent animation table. I didn't even have room for one... the space where it needs to go held a sofa and coffee table. Well, two nights ago I managed to get the sofa out of here (the hard part wasn't really getting it up the stairs or squeezing it through the door - it was finding a place for it!) and I've now collected enough lumber to build my table. I also bought a 6-pack of Durham's Rock Hard Water Putty from Ace Hardware online, which is my favorite substance for surfacing a set... I've never had much success with plaster. Of course, plaster is a lot cheaper.... My recent delvings into film analysis (Cinematic Storytelling, last blog entry) have brought me closer to understanding how to write stories, but I have a secret weapon up my sleeve. There's a technique I used for learning how to paint that worked like gangbusters when I was hopelessly muddled in various techniques that just weren't right for me. What I did was sat down with a pile of books... all my favorite painters, both historical and modern (from Michelangelo to Kent Williams) and just looked at them for hours, inundating my eyes and my mind into the world of painting sort of the way Alex was subjected to violent films in A Clockwork Orange... a saturation bombing technique. Immediately afterwards I turned off the light and lay down to sleep, and I swear, images were swirling before my eyes and continued into my dreams. The next day, I woke up with a new understanding of how to approach it. Bear in mind, I think it's essential that I had been studying hard for a long time before that... so it didn't just arise from nothing. I just think I had too many approaches conflicting in my head, and needed to narrow them down. So my course now is clear... I'm due for a stopmo film festival to end all stopmo film festivals! Also, I haven't actually started any new script ideas since discovering my two secret weapons... Puppet Pantomime and Cinematic Storytelling. I suspect when I do cook up a new idea it will be a lot better than some of my older ones simply because I understand those two concepts better now. And I think I can build a good film just from those ideas, no need to try to implant deep philosophical concepts into it! It seems animation works best in terms of simple ideas... visual metaphors, and leaving the meaning to the viewer to figure out. Comments Sept 29 2005 Cinematic Storytelling Sorry for the long delay. I just had nothing to say, and I figured it's best to say it. And I really don't have much now, just a quick note about what I've been up to. In my web wanderings I journeyed to the ruins of a once mighty site called Cinephiles, as fantastic in its own way as Anthony's message board (though nowhere near as massive). Basically I went searching for sites where people discuss movies because my Silent Movies thread at SMA has reached page 7 now, and that's over the line. I'm afraid it might implode if we try to push it farther, so I needed somewhere else to persue my cinemania. Some of the people who post there are as intelligent and concerned about their subject matter as the people who comprise the upper circles of SMA, but it has a good deal of bickering and flame wars, which is almost unheard of at our message board. Anyway, after reading almost the entire site in a matter of a few days, I've learned quite a bit about how these people go about analyzing a movie. They're a lot more systematic about it than I've ever tried to be... basically I just always liked the pretty pictures! My main focus has been on imagery and cinematography, but now I see that there's a 'language' of cinematography that's a lot more precise than I realized. Different kinds of cuts or pans can say things about the character or the space... as can the staging and timing. Well, I guess that goes without saying really, but now I'm gaining new insight into how to speak this language. I now have a new hybrid term to add to Puppet Pantomime.... Cinematic Storytelling. By linking the words together I remind myself that they work together and should be thought of as one entity. Comments Sept 18 2005 Peeling the onion, playing the games I've uploaded an amazing film created by Marjut Rimminen called The Stain... my personal favorite of all the films included in the no longer available (as far as I know) International Tournee of Animation collection. I got it down to 12 megs... not bad for a ten minute film! It's one of my all-time favorites, mainly because of the way she has of integrating cartoon animation, narrative voiceover and stopmo to weave this intense little twisted family drama so that it unfolds in layers like a puzzle, and just before the big reveal at the end an astute viewer "gets it". It's one of the most inspiring pieces of creative filmmaking I've ever experienced. Whet your appetite yet? The animation is nice, though very crude, but it's all brought together and pushed into the realm of pure artistic gold by the voiceover. But the real magic of it is in all the details that come to the surface without jumping out and bitch-slapping you. I get more of them every time I watch it. The reviews all say she comes very close to the upper limits of what animated film is capable of achieving, and I tend to agree. Brilliant the way she weaves "games" into the whole movie to represent sex and violence. I noticed also that when the really bad things are happening there's a motif of doors closing. Well, I shared this little gem with Shelly, who then discovered an amazing blog entry dealing with just what we were discussing about the film. Here's an email she sent me: This new blogger of mine sounds like your kind o girl... excerpted from: http://layersofmeaning.org/wp/ ...I've been reading a lot of art theory lately, looking at issues of signs, symbols and metaphors. The underlying concept, as put forth by Rudolf Arnheim, states that fully representational images don't allow us to add or explore our own relationship with the image. As an image becomes more abstract (more of a symbol), the viewer can impress their own experiences upon the image. While doing reading on Arnheim, I came across this writing at Arteology that does a wonderful job of summarizing Moles' writings about the importance of the discovery process in art. According to Abraham A. Moles (1966): 'the greatest pleasure produced by perception is felt when consciousness is allowed to function at its maximal effect, that is, approximately at the rate of 100 bits a second. According to this, first of all, a work of art should contain a sufficient amount of superficial content or decoration immediately appealing to the senses. As a starting point to the interpretation can serve also the name of the work, if any. But to qualify as competent art, the work must be able to offer also a deeper content. Finding this deeper content will then produce the pleasant feeling of 'eureka' once more, provided again that discovering it is not too easy. If it is very easy, or if there are no deeper layers to be discovered, the aesthetic pleasure remains brief and thus meager, and the work of art risks being classified as kitsch. The perception of a profound work of art proceeds thus as several (or at least two) step-by-step phases. Each successive stage of comprehension should optimally be attainable so that the flow of new information remains always in the range of 100 bits per second, i.e. near the maximum of human abilities of perception. The deeper content can be a background structure, or anything else that arouses interest, for example an invitation to an emotional mood, or a message. The most rewarding work of art is one in which the process described above can take place several times successively like in the figure on the right. Such a multi-faceted work of art can be looked at over and over again. In each new vista the observer finds something new; first perhaps a solution to a problem which remained unsolved in the previous phase of observation, and second, a novel surprise: another problem motivating him to a deeper still reflection. Each phase of observation leads to more profound comprehension and thus increases the aesthetic value of the work.' Continuing the tradition of posting some of the great emails I recieve, here's one that gave me a bit of a scare at first... mostly because it was sent from Tippett.com. I was expecting a cease and desist order from Phil or one of his army of lawyers concerning the recent clips I posted, but instead I was delighted to find this: Hi Strider, I was really impressed with your website and love all the clips you have. Alot of rare stuff. I'm in the process of making my own stop-mo film and your site has alot of inspirational go get it.. Anyway. I've been an animator for years working with Anthony Scott and all the old timers. I animated the California Raisin commercials the Noid..alot of Claymation..Then animated on James and the Giant Peach....then moved onto the computer and hacked out on the keyboard for Star Wars and Matrix..Hellboy..Constantine.. What I'm saying is your site is helping me get my perpective back. The simple days of just pounding out a short stop-mo from my private screwed up world that dances in my head. Thank you and keep up the site. *** I should also report that, apparently the day after my last entry, the Kent Williams site update finally went active! Check it out... it's not fully finished yet, but so far it's looking good. Comments Sept 12 2005 Solus I reported some time ago that there was a major site update on the way at kentwilliams.com. I've been checking, but so far it hasn't happened.... just an announcement that it's coming soon. But there is some fantastic news for us Williams addicts.... he's got a new book out called Solus. The link will take you to the Bud Plant Comic Art site where it's just been listed as a new arrival. Kent's self portrait above will take you to his section of the Merry Karnowski gallery, which has a number of new images. Here's the description for Solus: This exhibition catalog of Kent's new work explores the solitary dynamics in every relationship, and captures unique personalities in portraits of his friends. Superb contemporary fine art by an award-winning artist. Includes 13 images in color, almost all full page, plus the cover image. Nudity. Signed by the artist. Artspace, 2005 *** I've been doing a bit of long overdue updating on some of the lesser-updated pages of the site. Thus far I've mostly just fixed things so the Video Clips and The Masters pages look decent now in Internet Explorer, plus I added the Kim Blanchette Cup-O-Noodle commercials as normal movie links below his section on the Video Clips page because apparently some people are having trouble viewing the Kim Blanchette Cup-O-Noodle Cinema. I also added my recent stopmo sketches to the On The Table page. Give me another day or so and I'll have those Tippett clips posted where they belong, and I'll chop this page down to a manageable size! There ya go Jason, a little lite reading for the morning.... enjoy your coffee buddy! Comments Ψ