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Ed's Newsletter - April 2003
"SPIRITED
AWAY" WON!
Every now and then the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences gets it right. "Spirited Away" won the
Oscar for Best Animated Feature, and I could not be more thrilled.
As a direct result of the award, the movie is currently in
re-release in 700+ theaters in the U.S.. See it on the big
screen, please. And, for
your permanent collection, it will be released on DVD
April 15th.
MANY THANKS TO
MICROSOFT!
Some of the X-Box people got together with some of the Sports
Games people on the Redmond, Washington Microsoft campus,
and we did an Acting for Animators class last month. I'm still
buzzing! Thanks to all, for spending a day with me and for
being such wonderful hosts. Extra special thanks to Matt Brunner
(X-Box) and Joe MacDonald (Sports Games) for coordinating
the event. And thanks for the gift of the X-Box baseball cap.
I'm still trying to wrestle the thing away from my daughter!
<g>
GOOD GRIEF! MORE
POWER ON THE GAME HORIZON!
I read the other day that Sony has begun developing PlayStation
III for sale by 2005. The new game console will run on a computer
chip expected to be 200 times faster than those currently
installed in personal computers and game units.
MIDWAY SPORTS
GAMES CHEERLEADER CONTEST
One of my Chicago stage-actor students walked into class last
week and told me she had entered the Midway Sports Nationwide
Cheerleader Search contest. Her name is SIA, and she has put
together a little digital cheerleading clip that should keep
you focused for a minute or so. Check her out, and then cast
a vote. Maybe after she wins this one, we can send Sia to
Washington. " Gimme a Vote! Gimme a Vote! Gimme a Vote,
Vote, Vote! Yaaaay Midway!!" http://www.midwaysports.net
UPDATE ON ED
HOOKS'S SCHEDULE
I previously announced a trip to Malaysia for April, but that
has been pushed back to August/September. At that time, I'll
be making two or three stops in Australia before going to
Malaysia. If you are living/working in that part of the world
and want to schedule an Acting for Animators class, please
raise your hand sooner rather than later so I can include
you in my travel itinerary.
I am traveling this month,
though, to Ludwidgsberg Germany for a series of classes (April
28-30) at Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemberg (http://www.filmakademie.de/english/home.php3)
and to attend FMX in Stuttgart (May 2-4). It will be wonderful
to once again visit with Thomas and Renate Haegele, Tina Ohnmacht,
Sven Pannicke and my other good friends at this illustrious
film school. It has been my good fortune to teach acting at
Filmakademie for the past several years, and each time it
has been a delicious treat. This is a top notch, world-class
educational institution, and I am beyond grateful for the
opportunity to work with such talented people.
SPEAKING OF FILMAKADEMIE
.... CONGRATULATIONS!
Congratulations to Filmakademie students Chris Stenner, Heidi
Wittinger, Arvid Uibel and Georg Gruber for their 2003 Academy
Award nominee (Best Short Animation) film, "Das Rad".
(http://www.dasrad.com/)
It s a wonderful piece of work, folks, and we are all extremely
proud of you. (Sorry I missed the party. I hear it was a humdinger.<g>)
ED HOOKS - ACTING
FOR ANIMATORS UPCOMING SCHEDULE
April 26-May 4- Stuttgart Germany (Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemberg)
May 16-18 - Kalamazoo Animation Festival, Kalamazoo, Michigan
(http://www.kafi.kvcc.edu/)
June 19 - Graduation speaker, Art Institute of Illinois (Shaumberg)
June or July - Edmonton, Canada (working on it)
August and September - Australia and Malaysia
October 5-11 - Denver, Colorado (public class plus more)
November 6-9 - Cineme, Chicago's first International Animation
Film Festival
November 26-29 - South Wales - UK (SAND '03)
CRAFT NOTES
"Emotions Revealed" (Paul Ekman's new book)
"Thinking tends to lead to conclusions; emotion tends
to lead to action." This is acting lesson number one
in each of my Acting for Animators workshops. The first thing
to understand about audiences is that they empathize with
an on-screen character's emotion, not with the thinking. When
your character feels something (an automatic value response),
he tends to do something about it, and that is what draws
the audience in emotionally.
Paul Ekman (http://www.paulekman.com/)
is a professor of psychology in the department of psychiatry
at the University of California Medical School, San Francisco.
He is an expert on the expression of emotion in the human
face and, as such, anything that he writes is automatically
going to be of interest and value to animators. (The team
at Weta Digital referenced Ekman's work when they were animating
Gollum.) He is the author of thirteen previous titles, including
"Telling Lies", and his newest is "Emotions
Revealed (Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication
and Emotional Life)" (Times Books, 2003, US$25). I just
yesterday completed reading it and want to recommend it to
you.
Those animators who are
looking for straightforward descriptions of facial expressions
will find a lot to chew on here. This book contains over one
hundred photo illustrations of various emotional expressions,
along with specific instructions about how to achieve some
of them. The facial movement of fear, for example: "Raise
your upper eyelids as high as you can, and if you are able,
also slightly tense your lower eyelids. If tensing your lower
eyelids interferes with raising your upper eyelids, then just
focus on raising your upper eyelids. (Then) let your jaw drop
open, and stretch your lips horizontally back toward your
ears; .... (Then) with your upper eyelids raised as high as
they can go, staring straight ahead, raise your eyebrows as
high as you can; try to see if you can also pull your eyebrows
together while you keep your brows raised; if you can't do
both, then just keep the eyebrows raised with your upper eyelids
raised." Ekman includes this kind of thing for many emotional
expressions, so you can sit in front of a mirror and make
faces at yourself for hours on end. This alone is worth the
price of the book.
To me, however, the real
value of "Emotions Revealed" is Professor Ekman's
insightful exploration of why we experience the emotions we
do, and what we can and should do about it. In this regard,
the book is a self-help text, one of the best I've seen. The
three or four (okay, maybe five) psychologically dysfunctional
animators out there will find this to be a very helpful roadsign
pointing toward mental health. Paul Ekman first teaches you,
for example, what the expression of sadness looks like in
terms of micro-expression, and then he suggests various reasons
why a person might have such an expression and offers ideas
about how to approach someone with that particular display.
In no particular order,
here are some gems I pulled from "Emotions Revealed":
*A false expression can be betrayed. It is slightly asymmetrical
and lacks smoothness.
*Emotions are primarily about how we deal with other people.
*One of the most distinctive features of emotion is that the
events that trigger emotions are influenced not just by our
individual experience, but also by our ancestral past.
*It is hard not to behave emotionally when the stakes are
high.
*The emotional signals given off by another person ...triggers
our own emotional response, and that in turn colors our interpretation
of what the person is saying, what we think are that person's
motives, attitudes and intentions.
*There are no external signals that tell people we are thinking.
*It is part of our evolutionary heritage that we signal when
each emotion begins.
*In anger, the emotional impulse is to move closer to the
emotional trigger.
*Two emotions can occur in rapid sequence, again and again.
Two emotions also can merge together into a blend. This happens
far less than the rapid-succession process though.
*The eyebrows are more difficult to manage than the lower
face.
I could go on and on
and on with this, but you get the idea. Paul Ekman's book
is chock full of good things to think about and study and
learn about the process of human emotion. He is a Grand Master
of emotional expression.. His book looks inside the human
mind and correlates the emotional results with external expression.
Every animator will want to have this title on her shelf.
"Emotions
Revealed" at Amazon.com |
