Ed's Newsletter - April/May 2001

ACTING FOR ANIMATORS AT STANFORD UNIVERSITY
I've agreed to teach a one-day class (Saturday, August 4th) and a
three-day class (Mon-Tue-Wed, 9am-1pm, August 13-15) for Stanford's
Academy for New Media. For enrollment info, call 1-877-455-9582 or,
on the Internet, visit http://newmedia.stanford.edu.

NEWSWEEK MAGAZINE PREDICTS JOB GROWTH FOR ANIMATORS
I'm not certain what a "Programming Artist" is exactly, but according
to the April 30th issue of Newsweek, the world is going to need more
of them. The article, "Next Frontiers" by multiple authors) puts it this way: "The high-end graphics popular in Hollywood animation, computer games and virtual media require artists who are also computer programmers. The Labor Department projects employment for commercial artists to rise 25 percent by 2008, spurred in part by an increased demand for digital talent." (page 58).

AND THERE'S MORE GOOD NEWS FOR GAMERS...
According to the Interactive Digital Software Association, video game
sales have grown 15 percent a year from 1997 to 2000 and now represents a $10.5 billion industry. Yes, that "billion" with a "b"! Wow! The industry created more than 219,000 jobs and paid $7.2 billion in wages in 2000. What we can conclude from this is that, though feature animation companies like Disney are retrenching and laying off staff, the game industry continues to thrive. Maybe this is where some of those "Programming Artists" Newsweek is talking about will land.

THANKS TO SEATTLE COMPANIES GREAT ESCAPE AND VALVE SOFTWARE!
I taught an Acting for Animators workshop for these two companies on
May 4th, and we had a heck of a good time. In particular, I want to thank Ed Allard and James Gwertzman for making it happen. It was a true delight to work with your talented team of artists!

ANIMATION BOOK FAIR MAY 30TH IN SAN FRANCISCO
I am honored to be a speaker at the FIRST Animation Book Fair, May 30th, Exploratorium's McBean Theater, 7:30pm. Admission is free. The event is sponsored by ASIFA- SF. I'll be talking about the role of acting theory in animation and will sign some books. Hope you can make it. Other speakers that night will be Nina Paley and Nik Phelps ("Fetch"), Michaela Pavlatova ("Forever and Forever"), Russell Merritt ("Walt in Wonderland"), Karl Cohen ("Forbidden Animation"), Arnaldo Laboy ("The Adventures of Poyi and Ubo") and Chris Lanier, author/illustrator of the graphic novel "Combustion". Also, it appears that Will Ryan and Diane Michelle will perform live love scenes of literature, including "The Day Elmo Aardvark Met Va Va La Voom!". I'm not missing that one, that's for sure! For more info, send an e-mail to Karl Cohen at karlcohen@earthlink.net. He's the genius who is putting it all together and making it happen.

MONDO MEDIA NEXT WEEK!
I'll be teaching at Mondo Media May 22nd, 5pm-7pm. Y'all come!

LOOKING FORWARD TO GERMANY JUNE 25 - JULY 3RD
I'll be teaching acting to animation students at Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg in Stuttgart June 25 - 29 and then taking the train up to Frankfurt for a one-day Acting for Animators class (July 1st - Sunday) that will be open to the public. For more info about the Frankfurt event, contact organizer/animator Jens Kafitz at JT-Kirk@t-online.de. After Frankfurt, I'm back on the train, for a class at hot SFX company Scanline Productions in Munich. A good time will be had by all, I'm sure, and I'm eager to see my German friends. Pass the bratwurst.

A NEW ANIMATOR IS BORN!
Congrats to TIEN YANG, his wife KEE and their new son YANG IIYU, born just two days ago in San Francisco. Mom and baby are reportedly in
great health. Dad is a basket case.

CHICAGO-CHICAGO-CHICAGO!
On the way back to San Francisco from Germany, I will stop in Chicago
for four days, July 4 - 8. That's when I hope to sign leases on an
apartment and space for a Chicago acting studio. My permanent move
from SF to Chicago is happening in September. During this trip, I'll be staying at the Days Inn, 644 West Diversey Parkway in Lincoln Park. The telephone number there is (773) 525-7010, and I'm always happy to see Chi Town animators who want to look me up for an espresso and a hoot and a holler.

"OOPS!"
Apologies to Mike Rickard whose name I mangled in my March
Newsletter. Mike wrote a nice review of my book and posted it on
his website. You'd think I could at least get the man's name right.
Good grief. Sorry, Mike! His URL is http://www.mikerickard.co.uk/books.htm.

...ABOUT "SHREK"
I held off writing this Newsletter until I saw "Shrek", thinking I'd
be dancing on my keyboard and have a ton of craft notes to offer. I
was prepared to proclaim the much-ballyhooed movie from
PDI/DreamWorks a home run and a modern-day masterpiece. I went to
the first screening on the first day of the first run at the Century
Theater in Mountain View. I was grinning like crazy when Shrek started taking his mud bath in the opening segment ... but somewhere mid-flick, I felt a furrow appear creep onto my forehead, and it hasn't left yet, five hours later. There is something about this truly beautiful movie that is emotionally un-satisfying and, I'm sorry to say this, even creepy and cold. When I look into the crystal ball and try to predict which movies fans will be renting, playing and downloading fifty years from now, I see "The Iron Giant", "Snow White", "Toy Story" and half a dozen more, but not "Shrek." I think what we have here is an animation book mark, a bent-page
reminder of what the state of the art of animation looked like in
mid-2001. That in itself will not be enough to earn this movie a place on the shelf with other animated classics.

DreamWorks' PR machine has made certain that everybody knows "Shrek"
is state-of-the-art animation, and I didn't see anything to contradict their claim. There is very little room for "up" from here technically speaking. PDI/DreamWorks got it right. Skin texture, all those hairs on the donkey, backgrounds, that amazing flying fire-breathing dragon, it's all dazzling. The dance sequence at the end of the movie blew me away. Loved it!

More good news is that, acting-wise, major studio computer animation is clearly growing into adulthood. I was most impressed by the physical gestures of the characters in "Shrek". The most common error I see in character animation is that the character's gestures are emotionally shallow, too often merely illustrations of the spoken word, and I don't think they stepped into that trap with "Shrek". In specific transitional moments, I think the animators did a great job projecting emotional nuance in extreme close-up shots. I don't want to be a plot spoiler, so I will resist too closely spelling out the specific moments that appealed to me, but there were several. There is a transitional moment early on between Shrek and the Donkey, and there is one moment in particular at the end of the movie, in which the theme is summed up. You'll know it when you see it, and it's shot in close up. These are very excellent acting moments, and they succeed on a lot of levels.

So if I am happy with the various individual aspects and elements that comprise "Shrek", why am I not happy with the movie overall? The characters are likeable enough, it's true, and the hero (if you can call him that) travels a satisfying character development arc. The voice-performances are uniformly good, particularly that of Eddie Murphy as the Donkey.

The problem is, I think, that "Shrek" is too happy with its own self. It's a smug and rib-nudging movie. The story tellers behind the movie - and I hate to include the animators in this criticism because I think they are just doing their job - seem to be patting themselves on their collective backs too much. I couldn't escape the feeling that, on a scene by scene basis, the story tellers wouldn't leave me alone and allow me to drift into the story. If it is true that a movie is a dream, then I want them to stop waking me up! I couldn't do with "Shrek" what I can do so easily with "Peter Pan" or "Lion King", namely lose myself. I felt like the movie kept grabbing me by the shirt front and saying, "Hey! Did you see that donkey fur? Cool, huh? Did ya see that dance step? How 'bout the surface
tension on the water in that lake scene? Doesn't the Princess look REAL? Huh? Huh?" Sigh..... I just wanted to watch the movie, know what I mean?

Overall, "Shrek" left me with the dynamic of a fun block party rather than a story. By the time the final credits rolled, I felt like I had been on one of those neat-o new rides at Great America or Magic Mountain, that I had been turned upside down and sideways and my adrenaline has been caused to flow. But as I walked slowly out of the auditorium (I was the very last person to leave, after studying every single credit, looking for even a passing mention of Chris Farley), rather than feeling like I had learned something about life, I basically just wanted to go get on another ride. To me, that means the movie isn't working on a gut level.

I am positive that "Shrek" will produce huge short term revenues for DreamWorks and, in a high-stakes financial game, that's really what this is all about. But it is a truism in the movie-producing biz that you can buy your intitial grosses with advertising. DreamWorks has hit all the bases here, getting the flick into competition at Cannes, sending the star cast onto the talk shows and so on. But as is true of all movies, at some point, word of mouth must take over. You can't buy your grosses forever, and I can't shake the feeling that word of mouth on "Shrek" will be loud and ... shallow. The movie will create a stir extending through the Academy Awards next year when DreamWorks will campaign for some more kudos that can be parlayed into further grosses, and that will be that. There will be yet another big PR press when it is released on DVD but, by then,
there will be other, newer state-of-the-art animated movies to talk about. By then, either DreamWorks or some other studio will be making more convincing donkey hair.

Let me leave you with this: Regardless of technological advances, animation is ultimately going to be judged by the way it tells stories and affects people emotionally. Successful story telling needs heros and villains, conflict and structure, important and worthwhile themes. Walt Disney understood this better than anybody and, for some reason, he did not fully pass his wisdom down to his successors. We're only a couple of generations removed from the Great Man and, already, the focus has largely shifted away from story and onto digital bells and whistles, commercial tie-ins, hot music tracks, whatever. Animators are, at the end of the day, actors -- and actors are shamans. Ours is an ancient art, based in religion, tribal hope for a successful hunt and a mild winter. We have an honorable and historical franchise to fulfill when we draw a circle in the dirt and call a meeting. It is not enough to get the tribe together only to tell it how brilliant we shamans all are.