Ed's Newsletter - February 2006

A HEARTFELT THANK YOU
I want to thank the many people who reached out to support my wife and me after the unexpected death of our twenty-one year old daughter, Dagny. For those who did not know about it, she died in her sleep in her Chicago apartment on November 30 th. Alcohol was a contributing factor. She was a lovely, talented and sensitive person, and the world is less well off without her. We miss her deeply.

Donations in Dagny’s memory are welcome. Send them to Give Kids the World, 210 South Bass Road, Kissimmee, Florida 34746. Give Kids the World, supported by Disney, Universal, American Airlines and others, is a wonderful organization devoted to granting terminally ill children their greatest wish. You can read about it at http://www.gktw.org.

“THE JOURNAL OF EDWIN CARP” AVAILABLE ON DVD.
I became a fan of Richard Bazley’s work when I found out he was a supervising animator on “The Iron Giant”. These days, he is Head of Story at Aardman. Now Richard has created an animated short entitled “The Journal of Edwin Carp”, based on the book by Richard Haydn. The style of animation, created with Flash, is a tribute to illustrator Ronald Searle, and the wonderful voice work is by Hugh Laurie. Paul Bengston produced.. The movie is very British in its feel and looks amazingly 2D, which is quite an accomplishment given that he used Flash.

Here is an article about the evolution of the piece: http://www.animationartist.com/2001/09_sep/features/animated_carp.htm

And here is how to contact Richard in order to purchase a copy: Eight pounds UK, $20 U.S. (includes shipping) http://www.bazleyfilms.com

ADDRESS UPDATE

My home address has changed. The new one is 2954 N. Hamlin Avenue, #2, Chicago, IL 60618. The phone on my desk is 773-427-4651. E-mail remains the same.

April 20-23 Red Stick Festival, Louisiana State University
May 3-7 FMX, Stuttgart, Germany
June 9 th Animation Industry Giants event, Dallas
July 15-16 Cadritech, Sao Paulo, Brazil 

“ANIMATORS VS. STORYTELLERS”

Several thousand years ago, the storyteller and the actor were the same person. That was back when tribes were nomadic and carried with them their resident shamans. The purpose of the shamanistic stories was to bring cohesiveness to the tribe, to celebrate victories, mourn deaths, get through a rough winter. The shamans kept a finely tuned ear to the tribe and served up stories that they needed to hear. In other words, the storytelling had a specific tribal purpose.

Fade Out/Fade In 2006. With a few rare exceptions ( Miyazaki comes immediately to mind, and maybe Brad Bird and Sylvain Chomet) the storyteller is no longer the actor. What is worse – and is a large part of the systemic problem in today’s animation industry – the storyteller now works most often to serve the needs of the company stockholders rather than those of the tribe. He is motivated not by what the tribe needs, but what the tribe will buy. In my view, this is what happened to bring Disney Animation to its knees, and DreamWorks is on the same course. Pixar has dodged the bullet because virtually all of its films to date have been shamanistic at root, even if the choices were not conceptually shamanistic. Walt Disney himself was a very shamanistic storyteller, which accounts for much of his legendary success.

The animation industry has been chasing a red herring with its debates about the virtues of 2D vs 3D. The real discussion should revolve around story and, secondarily, commerce vs. shamanism. I have heard leading lights in the animation industry give speeches about the importance of story, only to see those same people put out lousy stories. Clearly, they are motivated by what will sell rather than what people want to see. They have lost their moorings, which should be based in shamanism. They are out of touch with the tribe.

But where does the lowly animator fit into the scheme of things? If he is not the storyteller, then what is his function in modern animation? Well, he is the interpreter – for better or worse – of the story that the storytellers are hiring him to tell. He is the contact person between story and audience/tribe.

The most talented animator in the world cannot save a weak story. All he can do is imbue the characters with the illusion of life, the appearance of emotion. He can set up the possibility for the audience to empathize with the characters on screen. But if the story isn’t worth the telling in the first place, the audience/tribe will quickly lose interest.

I have a litmus test that I apply to all animated feature movies nowadays: If the film contains flatulence jokes, it is in trouble. Remember “Treasure Planet”? Remember the alien character that communicated with flatulence? When storytellers resort to fart jokes, it is an indication that they have nothing to say and that they hold their audience in disdain. No matter how well animated, a fart joke is still just a fart joke, and the only ones apt to laugh at it are younger than seven years old. Or are the storytellers, I suppose.

We still have tribes in 2006. Today they are global rather than local, but we still have them. And they still have the same imperative: to survive the harsh winter and to get the next generation into being. Storytelling is about how to live successfully in the world. There still needs to be a point to it. The tail too often wags the dog now, serving profit rather than tribe, and we need to re-discover our fundamental values.

Being a storyteller and/or animator is not only fun, it is an honorable thing to do with your life. The world needs shamans now more than ever, and it is way past time that we started making animated movies for adults. What, for instance, are the tribal consequences of not being truthful? Our elected leaders lie to us all the time; James Frey got caught lying with his book “A Million Tiny Pieces”. Why hasn’t someone made a movie about the virtues of truthfulness? And what about the environment? What are the tribal consequences of defiling the environment? Only Miyazaki addresses that, as far as I can tell. The last great anti-war movie I saw was “Grave of the Fireflies”, and that was several years ago. The world is at war with itself. Where are the movies?

There are important themes on which to base stories, and the big-time storytellers should take heed. Try this: Make a list of the “classic” animated films, the ones that have lasted. You will discover that, inevitably, they carry themes that are essential for the tribe to hear. Fifty years from now, people will still be screening “The Iron Giant” and “Monsters Incorporated”. “Treasure Planet” and “Shrek” will only be watermarks of how things were in the year 2000.