Ed's Newsletter - June 2001

THANKS TO ASIFA-SF!
Karl Cohen put together a splendid evening of fun at the ASIFA-SF
Animation Book Fair on May 30th. We met at the San Francisco
Exploratorium's McBean Theater for snacks, networking and laughter.
Voice actors Will Ryan and Diane Michelle came north from LA and
knocked us all out with their amazing character voices interpretations and ukulele playing. Nik Phelps talked about the role of music in animation and screened some of his excellent work. And I got up and talked a bit about acting in animation. Then we and other authors (Nina Paley, Michaela Pavlatova, Russell Merritt, Arnaldo Laboy and Chris Lanier....and more....forgive me for missing some names. EVERYBODY was wonderful!) schmoozed and signed books, CD's, whatever. It was great to see old friends and to meet some new folks. Thanks, Karl, for a fun time!

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.

CHICAGO - CHICAGO - CHICAGO!
I'll be in Chicago July 4th - 8th. Upon my arrival, I'll be staying at the Days Inn , 644 W. Diversey Parkway in Lincoln Park, but I may stay part of the time in my own apartment. Depends if I can get a bed delivered. I signed a lease on a small place in Lakeview, just north of Lincoln Park, only a couple of blocks from the water. If Chicago animators want to get together with me during this trip, first try calling the hotel at (773) 525-7010. If I've departed there, leave word on my new Chicago answering service, (312) 458-9922. I'd love to see you, of course.

VAN GOGH AND GAUGUIN ARE COMING!
Chicago's Art Institute has scheduled a precedent-setting fine art exhibit for the fall, and I can't wait to see it. "Van Gogh and Gauguin: The Studio of the South" will have 130 paintings, drawings, sculptures and ceramics by Vincent van Gogh and Paul Gauguin, who worked together during a famously productive two months in 1888 in Arles, France. Here's the web site for the Art Institute: http://www.artic.edu/aic/index.html.

ED HOOKS TEACHES IN GERMANY JUNE 25 - JULY 3RD
I'll be a guest teacher at Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg in Ludwigsburg June 25-29. I am very anxious to see my old friends there. It has been too long! After that, I will teach a one-day class (Sunday, July 1st) near Frankfurt. It is open to the public, and if you want to join us, contact the animator-organizer, Jens Kavitz. His e-mail is: JT-Kirk@t-online.de. He has created a swell web site that features the workshop, too: http://afa.creatorstudios.de. Then, on July 3rd, I'll be teaching at
Scanline Productions in Munich. I'm really looking forward to this trip!

CRAFT NOTES
"FATHER AND DAUGHTER" - DECONSTRUCTED
There are a lot of excellent acting lessons packed into the eight minute running time of "Father and Daughter", Michael Dudok de Wit's Academy Award winning animation. The piece is deceptively simple, has no dialogue at all and no facial animation, and yet it packs the emotional wallop of a sledgehammer. On the premise that Dudok de Wit, previously nominated for an Academy Award with "The Monk and the Fish", is doing something very right, I'd like to more carefully examine, from an acting perspective, his work on "Father and Daughter". If you have not yet screened it, now would be the time.

The story is outlined on Michael's own web site, where you will also find some images from the movie. http://www.dudokdewit.com/. In his words, "A father says goodbye to his young daughter and leaves. As the wide Dutch landscapes live through their seasons so the girl lives through hers. She becomes a young woman, has a family and in time she becomes old, yet within her there is always a deep longing for her father."

Let's start with the moment the father leaves the daughter. The two of them arrive at the water's edge on their bicycles. The father has set the stage and has a boat tied nearby, waiting. He bends down and gently hugs his unsuspecting young daughter. He stands and briefly surveys the boat and water and, ever so briefly, hesitates. It is hard for him to go, more difficult than he expected. He turns back to his daughter, rushes to her, picks her up off the ground and embraces her with more desperation. Acting-wise, it is significant that the first time he embraced her, he bent to her and the second time, he picked her up. The first embrace was sweet and suggested no alarm. The second embrace, in hindsight from the girl's perspective years later, will always be enigmatic. The second embrace has within it a sense of finality and tension and inner conflict that is not there in the first embrace. For me, the contrast between those two embraces was the first indication that I was watching a movie that
contains powerful and subtle acting.

The father places his daughter back on the ground, turns quickly and gets into the boat. He rows away, never looking back. The girl is left to figure out if this is a game that dad is playing....or is something else going on?

The camera's POV becomes a long shot as the hour grows late, the sun begins to set and her father's boat becomes a distant speck on the water. The little girl runs back and forth along the bank, agitated, distraught. We can feel her thoughts and can surmise her cry. If there were dialogue, she surely would be yelling, "Father! Father! Come back!". But he never does. As darkness begins to grow, the daughter makes what is probably her first step toward adulthood: She picks up her bike and rides back home...alone, without her father. She must be a big girl now. Even with no facial animation, we can feel the will of that child as she determinedly pedals away from the spot where her father has so mysteriously disappeared from her life. We can empathize with her feelings.

The seasons change. The girl gets older. We see her pedaling her bicycle into a ferocious wind. She is battling the elements, determined to return once again to the spot where she last saw her father. In acting terms, we know that a scene must have conflict, otherwise known as an obstacle or, my preferred designation, a negotiation. There are only three possible kinds of conflict: (1) conflict with yourself; (2) conflict with another character; (3) conflict with the situation. In "Father and Daughter", the conflict at this point is with the situation. The girl is not in conflict with her father because he isn't there. She's not in conflict with her self because she definitely wants to see him again. She's in conflict with her situation, symbolized by the powerful wind in her face. The moment would have lacked tension if Dudok de Wit had not created harsh weather.

As she pedals, she passes an old woman who is also on a bicycle. This foreshadows her own self as an old woman and is smart storytelling. Dudok de Wit is giving us a glimpse into the future, and he is reminding us that we are all mortal. Young girls ultimately turn into old women. It's life.

The seasons change again. The girl returns to the spot by the water again, but we can detect a change in her attitude. She's older now, not yet a seasoned adult, but no longer a child. She's come to this spot enough times by now that she has no real expectation that her father will appear. The trip has already become a pilgrimage. The conflict in the scene has subtly shifted. Yes, she is still in conflict with her situation, but she is slightly in conflict with herself. The child in her is still running back and forth on that ledge, crying out for her father; growing up means we must be more
realistic about disappointment. We must not give in to raw emotion. The acting rule about conflict is that at least one form of conflict must be present, but it is possible to have more than one at the same time. This is the first point in "Father and Daughter" where I detect two forms of conflict simultaneously. Significantly, the weather is still rough, this time with rain.

The girl becomes a young woman, and we see her out riding her bike with girlfriends. As the group pedals past the spot where the father disappeared, the girl separates from them. The other girls pedal ahead and out of frame while she stops to gaze out over the water, still seeing in her minds eye the final image of her father. What I liked about this scene is that the girl stopped alone. We get the feeling that she has not shared her true anguish with her girlfriends. If she had, one of them would surely have turned around and comforted her. They are oblivious to the significance of this spot by the water. Again, the moment shows conflict, this time mostly with her own self. Adulthood means singularity. You can be part of a group, but you are never part of a group. You are always
alone in life. We can see the young woman grappling with this self-realization.

The daughter becomes a mother. She has a young daughter of her own, and they are out for a bike ride. The daughter is on the passenger seat, having a great time hanging onto mom. This time, as the girl - now a woman - passes the spot where her father was last seen, she does not stop. She does not even look at the water. She pedals on past. The scene would not have worked if the mother had glanced at the water. Her obligation now is to her own daughter, and she has made a determination that her daughter is too young to grapple with such things as grandpa's disappearance. We in the audience can feel in that moment the same iron will that was apparent when the little girl rode back home alone on the day her father disappeared. We empathize. Isn't it remarkable that such emotion can be packed into so few seconds, and when nothing overt happens? The mother pedals past, with her daughter in tow. She does not hesitate, and she doesn't look at the water. That's it. The moment kicked me in the gut.

The woman now has a husband and a second child with her on a bike ride. Their children run to the water's edge to play and get wet. Dad crouches with them closely, protecting them should they lose their balance. Mom, significantly, does not approach the water. She stands alone, at the top of the hill, watching her husband and children against the canvas of the wide and empty water. She sees her husband loving his children the way she believed her own father loved her. She is pensive and physically still. The wind blows her hair. Her posture has in it a bit of fatigue, mixed with the
always-present determination. She continues to stand alone and apart in life, this time from her own family. She carries her pain and her suffering and her memories alone. Conflict with the situation again.

We see a nighttime shot of a person riding a bicycle. All we can detect is the headlamp on the bike. We presume the person in the dark is the woman. The fact that she would be out riding alone, at night, is significant from an acting perspective. We don't even need the image of a physical person to make this moment work. All we need is the headlamp and the jerkiness of the pedaling. The jerkiness of the light, caused by feet and legs pumping on the pedals, expresses emotion. (Emotion tends to lead to action, "Acting for Animators", page 7) We can feel the woman still struggling. This sequence takes very short seconds but, again, it hit me in the gut. Who among us has not taken our own demons into a dark night?

The movie now heads into its end game. The woman grows into old age as snow falls. We can see the ravages of arthritis in her back. She becomes stooped. Riding her bicycle becomes very difficult for her. She is too old to ride it up the hill, and so she pushes it. Again, we see the same determination in the old lady that we saw in that little girl who bravely rode home alone after her father did not return.

Side note: When you are animating old age, remember that as people age, gravity claims them. The spine settles, arthritis may flare. The movement of an old person is dictated by an attempt to avoid pain.

The old woman parks her bike. It falls down. She picks it up. It falls down again. She picks it up again. It falls down again. She leaves it on the ground. In any negotiation, there must be a way to win and a way to lose. When the woman decides to leave the bike lying on the ground, she acknowledges reality, gravity. She will no longer struggle with the bicycle. She has come to this spot for the final time.

She walks into the dry lake bed and finds a rotted out boat. Her father's boat? We don't know. She is tired. She lies down in the boat, curling up like a child, sleeping.

She awakes and arises from the boat; she sees something off screen and begins to move toward it. As she moves, she begins to grow younger. Her painful walk movement becomes an easy run. She approaches the man, her father, who is waiting for her now. She hesitates about ten feet away from him, pauses in her tracks. Now she is a young girl again, but she does not immediately leap into her father's arms. This, for me, was the most powerful moment in the entire film. Children blame themselves. We can feel the little girl saying, "Do you really want me? Or will you run away again?" She hesitates to express her love for fear it might cause him to flee. They look at one another, come to a non-verbal understanding, and she runs into his arms. He lifts her up, just as he did the last time he
touched her.

And we leave them that way. Roll credits.

Acting-wise, the hesitation when the girl approached her father in the lake-bed was full of conflict. This time, the conflict was between the girl and her father. This is important! Remember, there are only three kinds of conflict. Dudok de Wit has masterfully allowed the conflict to shift and turn over the lifetime of this young girl. The negotiation is resolved successfully only in death.

The structure of "Father and Daughter" is interesting for one more reason. It contains only a single "adrenaline moment" (see my book, "Acting for Animators", page 55). This girl's entire life is affected by a single moment in her childhood. It is a brilliant device.

Yes, the music by Normand Roger contributes mightily the the mood. The pencil and charcoal presentation lends an air of delicacy. Technically, the piece is excellent and in perfect symmetry with itself. It is the acting that resonates most for me, however. Artonin Artaud declared that "Actors are athletes of the heart", and this movie proves just how powerful the heart can be when it is a prime motivator.

I wish "Father and Daughter" had been completed before I wrote "Acting for Animators" because I would have included an analysis of it. Michael Dudok de Wit has touched my heart as a fellow artist and as a human being. Animators are actors, and actors are shamans. Shamans speak of what it means to live a life, to survive successfully. "Father and Daughter" is a success on all levels.