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Ed's Newsletter - February 2001
This picture is of me
and Ray Harryhausen, the stop-motion legend. ("Jason
and the Argonauts", "Seventh Voyage of Sinbad",
and many more.) This is one of the wonderful perks that come
with what I do for a living. Every now and then, I get the
opportunity to come face-to-face with greatness. When I took
this photo, Mr. Harryhausen and I were standing in the lobby
outside the main theatre at the University of Teesside in
England. I was showing him my new Sony Cyber-shot digital
camera, and he was fascinated that photos could be converted
into zeros and ones. I showed him how to do a self-portrait,
by turning around the display screen and pointing the camera
at myself. He peered in and saw his image on the display screen
and lit up like a Christmas tree.
Click!
Got it!
Ed Hooks and Ray Harryhausen forever.
THANKS TO ALL FOR
ANIMATION 2001!
Siobhan Fenton and Chris
Williams deserve a huge round of applause for organizing Animation
2001 in Teesside England. In addition to Ray Harryhausen,
representatives from DreamWorks came, as did animators from
Framestore, Cosgrove-Hall, Aardman and other distinguished
animation companies. One of my personal favorite screenings
was of the very moving "Father and Daughter" by
Michael Dudok de Wit. See it if you get the chance! We viewed
many compilation reels and listened to many lectures and heard
answers to many questions. And the most important part of
it all was the presence of excited animation students from
the University of Teesside. Even at nine o'clock in the morning,
they turned out en masse for the lectures, an accurate barometer
of student commitment!
For my part, I taught
a few classes, sat for an interview with the BBC, gave my
talk and generally made like a student myself. I send heartfelt
cyber-thanks to everyone that participated in this event and
created for me a real "adrenaline moment." I hope
to see you again next year, at Animation 2002!
NEXT INTERNATIONAL
STOP: FILMAKADEMIE
I will teach for a week
at Filmakademie Baden-Wurttemberg (Ludwigsburg, Germany) June
25-29. Congratulations to school administrator/animator/teacher
Sven Pannicke and his wife, Brit, on the birth of their son,
Maxim Jannis Konstantin Gdanietz. Max came into the world
on March 12th, and everybody involved is happy and healthy.
I am eager to get the little guy on my knee.
ED'S BOOK "ACTING
FOR ANIMATORS" (Heinemann, $18.95)
is available at Amazon.Com for $15.16 plus postage. Here is
the world's longest link, directly to the Amazon.page for
the book: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0325002290/
edhookstheatrica/102-0411243-7806530
THE NEXT ACTING FOR
ANIMATORS WORKSHOP IN SAN FRANCISCO WILL BE SATURDAY, MARCH.
24th
There is space available
in the class which meets 10am - 5pm at my San Francisco studio.
The tuition is $125. In this class, we cover the main principles
of acting theory and discuss connections between thinking,
emotion and physical action. I show clips from various live
action films to illustrate principles, and we get some people
up to do some fun improvisations. (Shifting power centers,
master/slave status transactions). If you're in the Bay Area,
I hope you can join me. For more info, check the web site
and/or drop a note: edhooks@edhooks.com.
ED IS MOVING TO CHICAGO
IN THE FALL!
Stay on this mailing
list for information about acting workshops to be offered
in the Windy City.
CRAFT NOTES
"MASSACIO, EMOTION
AND COMPUTER ANIMATION"
One of my favorite places
in the world is a tiny family chapel in Florence, Italy. Located
in Santa Maria della Carmine, not far from the Ponte Vecchio
bridge, I have visited the room many times. I like it because
art history turns a corner in the place and, if you know what
you are looking at, a visit there can be a truly moving experience.
I speak of the Brancacci
Chapel now, in craft notes for animators, because I recently
returned from Animation 2001 (otherwise known as Animation
in the UK) at the University of Teesside in England. There
I met many young and enthusiastic animation students. It occurred
to me as I stood at a lectern and looked into their faces
that some among them may be artistic descendants of a young
man who frescoed the Brancacci Chapel five hundred years ago.
His name was Massacio, born originally as Tommaso Cassai.
He died young, not even reaching his thirtieth birthday, but
in his short life, he put his mark on art forever, inspiring
and delighting many generations to come. Perhaps the most
important of his diciples was Michelangelo. If you look at
reproductions of Michelangelo's sketchbooks, you'll find that
when he was a very young man, he stood in the Brancacci Chapel
and studied Massacio's work carefully. Many years later he
honored Massacio in another way. Michelangelo's panel depicting
the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden that
is frescoed in Rome's Sistine Chapel is very close to Massacio's
depiction of the same event in the Brancacci Chapel. Put images
of them side by side, and you'll be amazed.
Massacio's great contribution
to Renaissance art was the depiction of emotion. Before he
came along, the prevailing art style was Gothic, full of symbolism
and ornamentation. The purpose of biblical frescoes at that
time was to simply tell the story, to describe the events.
Massacio wanted his figures to have emotion. The work you
can see in the Brancacci Chapel is a shift away from glorification
of God and into glorification of man. Massacio's focus is
on the emotional impact of events on his characters. Look
at the pain and shame he has put into the bodies of Adam and
Eve. He was only eighteen years old when he frescoed the Brancacci
Chapel, and he worked side by side with an older, over-forty,
well-established artist named Masolino. If you stand in the
chapel and look at the panels, you can easily tell which ones
were done by Masolino and which Massacio did.
He was a Young Turk,
a non-conformist, a student of architect Brunelleschi (the
man who built the mighty dome in Florence) and sculptor Donatello.
He painted with the kind of mathematical precision demanded
by today's computer animation, but he combined precision with
humanity and emotion. His work was controversial in its time,
the subject of much "tsk-tsk-ing" among the holy
and the purists, but Michelangelo understood what he was up
to and later picked up the torch.
Emotion is the primary
thing that binds us humans to one another. Audiences empathize
with emotion, not information. Animators, like other interpretative
artists, speak to the audience with emotion. As Artonin Artaud
said, "Actors are athletes of the heart", and so,
too, are animators. I submit that the time is ripe for a new
generation of Massacio's. Young animators, particularly those
working in computer animation, are entering the field at a
time when the major Hollywood movie studios seem more interested
in commercial tie-ins, pop-star music tracks and hot advertising
campaigns than communicating story through emotion. There
is too much emphasis being given to the bells and whistles
of animation and not enough to the message of art. We need
Massacio!
Following are a few links
to Massacio's body of work and the Brancacci Chapel in particular.
Take a look. And if you are moved by what you see, plan a
pilgrimage to Florence. Yes, Michelangelo's David is magnificent,
and you should by all means spend time with him. But if you
want to witness the seed of Renaissance art, if you want to
feel your breath quicken in a surprising way, take a walk
across the bridge. Find the Brancacci Chapel. Take a sketchpad.
Links:
http://gallery.euroweb.hu/tours/brancacc/index.html
(Virtual tour/history of Brancacci Chapel)
http://www.kfki.hu/~arthp/html/m/masaccio/brancacc/
(Detail)
http://www.christusrex.org/www2/art/brancacci.htm
(Detail)
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