Ed's Newsletter - March 2001

A MEGA-ANIMATED THANK YOU to the folks at Lucas Learning in San Rafael where I recently spent a fun day teaching an Acting for Animators class. And a special thanks to Blaire Hughes who kept the animators and me plied with pizza, cookies, cokes and coffee all day. An acting class just isn't the same without pizza.

I WILL TEACH an Acting for Animators class in my San Francisco studio
on Saturday, March 24th, 10am-5pm. Tuition is $125. Come play with
me! For more info, send an e-mail. edhooks@edhooks.com.

CONGRATULATIONS to Michael Dudok de Wit, who won a British Academy Award for his lovely 8-minute animation, "Father and Daughter". I'm predicting here and now that he will handily win an American Academy Award for the same project. If you want your very own NTSC video copy of "Father and Daughter" along with two of Michael's other
pieces, "The Monk and the Fish" and "Tom Sweep", contact animator Tom
Ortega. His e-mail is: lord_bron@hotmail.com, and he is arranging to
get some copies directly from Michael in London. The cost is $20
plus postage. Or you can go directly to Michael Dudok de Wit himself
and try to figure out how to get U.S. dollars to London. His e-mail
is: m@dudokdewit.com.

Thanks to UK animator Mike Richards for his favorable review of my
book "Acting for Animators" on his web site,
http://www.mikerickard.co.uk/books.htm. While I'm at it, I'd also
like to thank animator/author Doug Kelly for his endorsement of the
book. His comments have been published on the book's sale-page at
Amazon.com. Four stars, yes! Mille Grazie!

I'm looking forward to participating in the ASIFA-SF May event in San
Francisco. Chapter president Karl Cohen is putting together a bunch
of animator people for what promises to be a fun soiree. I'll be
there talking acting, drinking coffee and eating cookies. Stay tuned
for a specific date.

CRAFT NOTES
"The Aesthetics of Videogames"

Last week, I spent a very stimulating day working with some of the
members of the videogame team at Lucas Learning, and this week my
copy of a new book by Steven Poole, "Trigger Happy: Videogames and
the Entertainment Revolution." (Arcade Publishing, $25.95 U.S.)
arrived in the mail. I have videogames on the brain and want to talk
about it. Before going further, though, let me definitely recommend
"Trigger Happy" to anybody who wants an overview of this young
industry as well as some lucid crystal ball gazing into the future of
videogames. Steven Poole employs a relaxed, light-hearted writing
style and his fan-like exuberance for the subject comes through loud
and clear. As a reader, I got the feeling that he would have
written this book even if he weren't paid for it, just because he
cares, and because he was looking for an opportunity to test pilot
umpteen new games in the name of book research.

The line in the sand that divides the movie-going experience from the
game-playing experience is one of aesthetics. When you watch a
movie, the magic happens when you empathize with the on-screen
characters. The story unfolds in front of you sort of like a dream,
and you identify with what the characters are feeling emotionally.
When you play a videogame, on the other hand, you figuratively move
out of your seat in the audience and take your place on stage with
the other characters. In reality, you cannot be on the stage and in
the audience at the same time. If you want to move from the stage to
the audience, you have to walk down the little steps and go sit in
the seat. And vice versa. Once you are on the stage, empathy is
theoretically not possible. The nature of the emotional experience
shifts. To be sure, you can get excited, but it is the kind of
excitement actors feel, not the kind that audiences feel.

Empathy is an interesting emotional experience. In order to feel it,
the audience member must have physical distance from the on-stage
action. If the person in the audience can affect or change the
twists and turns of the plot, as is the case in most videogames, then
empathy is impossible. When you empathize with a character, you
relate to or "feel into" the character's emotion. You recognize in
yourself, if only fleetingly, the potential to feel what the
character on stage is feeling. You are reminded that we are all part
of a big human family. The emotional sensation is one of inclusion.

When you play a videogame, you may turn a corner at the castle and
encounter a character that has recognizable personality
characteristics, but the possibility that the character might
interact directly with you prohibits empathy. The key word there is
"encounter". You're involved as a player, and you are not sitting in
an audience. Yes, you can get an emotional kick out of the moment,
and if the doctors were measuring your blood pressure and heart beat
at the time, your excitement level might cause the sensors to jump
off the page -- but that's not empathy. It is excitement but not
empathy. The aesthetic experience of game playing is more "present"
than that of an audience member watching a movie on screen or a play
on the stage.

HOW GAME ANIMATORS CAN USE ACTING THEORY

There are many ways game animators can profit from an understanding
of acting theory even if empathy is not possible. The game player's
experience will be heightened if the action on screen appears
realistic and believable, if the make-believe world he is drawn into
rings true. Since the human sense of sight is many times more
powerful than the sense of hearing, much can be gained by causing the
characters to move in complex but recognizable ways. For example,
the use of the psychological gesture can be used to advantage in a
game. A character's gesture is not simply an illustration of the
spoken word. It reflects a deeper truth and may even be in
opposition to the spoken word. We humans are wired by nature to read
and decipher the way that gestures coordinate with words. If
gestures come into conflict with words, we will tend to give the most
credence to what we see, not what we hear. This fact of human nature
can be used to the game animator's advantage.

Another excellent acting principle for game animators is to give each
and every character an objective. In acting theory, an action is in
pursuit of an objective. It is not enough that a character enters a
room and then walk-cycles across it. The game players experience
will be heightened if he has the feeling that the character is going
some where for some reason, in other words if the character's action
is informed by an objective.

And of course a game animator should keep in mind that, when it comes
to acting, thinking tends to lead to conclusions, and emotion tends
to lead to action. It may be effective to have a character enter a
scene because he wants to, but it will carry an emotional jolt for
the game player if the character enters because he needs to. The
player will go on alert when he senses the emotion in the character,
even if it doesn't lead to empathy. Again, what we are talking about
here is enhancing the game-playing experience.

THE FUTURE OF GAMES

In an effort to approximate the movie-going experience, some games
use "full motion video", story sequences that unfold as the player
sits and watches. He plays up to a point, and then the story line is
advanced via FMV. If games are ever to reach the point where the
player can experience empathy at the same time he is playing the
game, it will likely be in this direction. FMV is like switching a
light switch on an off. When it is flipped on, the player is quickly
shuffled into the audience mode. When it is flipped off, the player
is brought back on stage. It remains to be seen, however, if this
experience will satisfy. People who play games may not want to sit
passively while FMV plays. It could be that they are playing the
game because they want to interact in the first place. Take away
interactivity, and you may be robbing the player of the kind of
aesthetic experience that caused him to get out his wallet.

Years ago, there was an interesting live-theatre experiment called
"Tamara". It played in LA for a couple of years and then went to New
York as I recall. The action took place in an actual house instead
of a theatre, and the audience was invited for a real buffet dinner.
(The fact that the audience was comprised of invited dinner guests
limited the number of people who could watch this production at a
given show.) At the dinner, the characters intermingled with the
audience and began to interact with one another. The maid would get
into an argument with the butler, for example, and the two of them
would storm out of the dining room and head upstairs. You could, as
an audience member, go with them if you wanted to. If they went to a
guest bedroom to have it out with one another, you could stand at the
foot of the bed and watch them. You couldn't interact with them, but
you could be there. It was a very odd aesthetic experience, and I
have a hunch that it may be something that game designers might want
to consider. The audience member could not affect the plot or the
way the action unfolded, but he was free to watch whichever part of
it he wanted to. You could see this show five times and see five
different plot lines. You were up close and personal with the
action, but you were emotionally removed, which allowed for empathy.

Steven Poole points out in "Trigger Happy" that videogames now
produce as much revenue as regular feature films. Sales of game
consoles and software in the United States and Europe alone are
expected to generate more than $17 billion worth of business a year
by 2003. That's billion with a "B". He raises the question of
whether such sales might be the signal that videogames are in
themselves a unique art form. I don't know the answer, and I'm not
positive that it really makes a difference. Games are what games are
and, on their own terms, they will deliver an increasingly satisfying
aesthetic experience. I can easily envision a man coming home from
the office and firing up Playstation rather than watching
standard-fare murder and mayhem on the evening news. He can't do
much about kids shooting up high schools, but with his console, he
can control at least a pretend world. The evening news may
therefore agitate him, while the videogame is relaxing. With the
world going to hell in a handbasket, that may be enough.