AustrAliAn AnimAtion showcAse - National Film and Sound Archive

AustrAliAn
AnimAtion
showcAse
A STUDYGUIDE by Jo FlAck
www.metromagazine.com.au
www.theeducationshop.com.au
introductio
n
Animation is different. It
looks different and tells its
stories in different ways from
live action film.
D
espite the proliferation of
animations made for grown up
audiences in recent years most
people think of animation as a medium
for children and whilst it is true that
most animation is made for a children’s
audience, animation is capable of great
sophistication and can handle adult
themes in ways not possible with live
action. The three animations in this collection, Harvie Krumpet, The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper
Morello, and Birthday Boy are all
examples of the possibilities inherent in
animated fiction.
Animation is created differently. It is
extraordinarily labour intensive and
more expensive to make per minute
of finished product than live action
film. It is for this reason that animation
Anthony LucAs, director of
The MysTerious GeoGraphic
exploraTions of Jasper Morello
is more often a medium of short film
than in features. This is especially the
case in Australia where our industry,
market and sources of funding are
smaller than in overseas markets like
the USA and Japan.
In recent years it appears that there
has been a renaissance in Australian
animation. Australian works have been
nominated for and won many awards
including, for the three animations in
this collection, three Academy Award
nominations and one winner, Harvie
Krumpet. Yet despite the publicity
of recent successes, animation has
always been strong in Australia. Harvie
Krumpet is the second animation to
win an Oscar, the first being in Bruce
Petty’s 1976 production Leisure.
SCREEN EDUCATION
AdAm eLLiot, director
of harvey kruMpeT
The animations in this collection were
made by young filmmakers who have
each worked for many years to build
up to the success enjoyed by these
productions. They have been able to
fund the production of these works
because of the reputations they have
earned through their careers to date.
an
introductio
to each
animation
n
Birthday Boy
sejong Park, 2004. 10 minutes. the dVd
contains fifty-six minutes of extras including
a director’s commentary and features on the
technical aspects of production.
http://www.birthdayboymovie.com/flash.htm
Birthday Boy is in Korean, subtitles are available but for the best viewing experience it is
suggested that students view the film without
subtitles.
Synopsis
S
et in 1951 during the Korean
war Manuk is alone and playing
at being a soldier and making his own toys on the near empty
bombed streets of his village. He
imagines life at the front where his
father is a soldier. Manuk returns home
to find a parcel on the doorstep and,
thinking it is a birthday present, he
opens it. Manuk does not realize it but
the contents of the parcel will change
his life forever. Manuk’s mother arrives
home to find him asleep.
Filmmaker Sejong Park has worked as
a 2D animator and is a published illustrator. He graduated from the Australian Film, Television and Radio School
in 2004 with an MA in Digital Media.
Birthday Boy is his first 3D CGI film.
Birthday Boy has more than twenty
awards and was nominated for the
Animated Short Film Oscar® in 2005.
It was also awarded the Best Short
Animation, BAFTA Awards, UK in 2005
and the Best Short Animated Film at
the AFI Awards in 2004. It has been
screened at nearly fifty film festivals.
Birthday Boy was produced by the
Australian Film, Television and Radio
School, AFTRS.
AboVe: BirThday
Boy. right: harvey
kruMpeT
Harvie Krumpet
Adam elliot, 2003. 22 minutes. the dVd extras
include a director’s commentary, a storyboard
feature and the animations that led to the
development of harvie krumpet.
http://www.harviekrumpet.com/
Synopsis
H
arvie Krumpet is the biography
of an ordinary man. Brought
up in a Polish forest with his
lumberjack father and a mother who
suffers from lead poisoning, Harvie is
a person seemingly cursed with bad
luck. Born with Tourette’s Syndrome,
Harvie is marginalized from the rest of
his village and is teased at school.
At the age of eighteen Harvie’s house
burns down and his parents are found
frozen to death on their bicycles,
just as the Germans invade. Harvie
flees to Australia where he works in a
rubbish dump. Bad luck follows him
to Australia where he is in and out of
hospital on a regular basis; from being
struck by lightning to having his testicle removed, his misfortune seems
unending.
On Harvie’s sixty-fifth birthday, Val
suddenly dies, leaving Harvie alone in
life again. He is soon diagnosed with
Alzheimer’s disease and moves into a
nursing home after a neighbour finds
him trying to withdraw cash from the
microwave. Harvie finds rejuvenation
and excitement with a fellow Alzheimer’s patient, Hamish McGrumbel.
Together they entertain the other
residents with their mischievous acts:
getting drunk, practical jokes, escaping from the home and naked puppet
shows. Despite these high jinks, Harvie’s condition worsens and he falls in
and out of hallucinations and depression, almost opting for suicide before
being saved by a very special woman
SCREEN EDUCATION
Harvie finds love in nurse Valerie
Burstall. They get married and move
into Val’s flat with her two cats and
diseased parrot. They adopt a little girl
called Ruby and many happy years
follow.
who enters his life and steers him to a
new realization about life.
After five years hand painting T-shirts
Adam Elliot studied animation at The
Victorian College of the Arts. Harvie
Krumpet has won nearly thirty awards
including many prestigious awards for
animation, the 2003 Australian Film
Institute (AFI) Award for Best Short
Animation, making Adam the first
Director to receive five AFI Awards and
the 2003 Academy Award® for Best
Animated Short Film. It has screened
at over 100 film festivals around the
world. Harvie Krumpet was produced
by Melanie Coombs of Melodrama
Pictures and financed by Film Victoria,
the AFC, and SBS Independent.
The Mysterious Geographic
Explorations of Jasper
Morello
Anthony Lucas, 2005. 26 minutes. the dVd
extras include an audio commentary, a
documentary on the world of Jasper morello
and a collection of Anthony Lucas’ short films.
http://www.jaspermorello.com
Synopsis
O
n his previous voyage, Jasper
Morello, Aerial Navigator,
made an error that resulted in
the death of a crewman. He is haunted
by guilt and believes he will never redeem himself. When Jasper is offered
a berth on a routine mapping flight
he eagerly accepts, though it means
leaving behind his wife Amelia who is
working as a nurse with the victims of
a horrible Sickness that has afflicted
their land.
Also on the voyage is Dr Claude
Belgon, a famous biologist who is
studying the Sickness. Jasper is
drawn to Claude’s aloof intelligence
and clinical rationality and the two
pear. Jasper’s suspicions are aroused
when he finds Claude doting on the
only remaining cocoon. Claude belays
Jasper’s fears until he discovers that
the cocoon has hatched and Claude
is keeping the creature alive with his
blood. Jasper confronts Claude and
is sedated. He wakes to find himself
chained to the wheel, Claude orders
Jasper to pilot the vessel home. Desperate to save Amelia, Jasper agrees.
Jasper
Morello
become friends.
A storm blows Jasper’s airship far off
course where it collides with another airship, the Hieronymous, and
is wrecked. Jasper and the crew take
refuge on the deserted ship where
they make a horrifying discovery – the
bones of the crew, gnawed clean.
Claude is certain that the explanation
lies on an uncharted island marked on
the Hieronymous’ navigation chart and
persuades the Captain to go there.
Jasper learns that Amelia has contracted the Sickness. His inability to
help her drives him to the brink of
madness. To make matters worse, the
cook also contracts the vile disease.
On the island they discover a new and
beautiful species of creature, which
looks innocent but attacks Jasper. The
Captain and crew shoot and eat the
creature. The cook is fed some of the
creature’s juices and makes a miraculous recovery. Claude realizes that
something in the creature is a cure for
the Sickness and insists they bring
back a specimen. With six cocoons in
the hold, the Hieronymous heads for
home.
Crewmen begin to mysteriously disap-
Upon learning that once he has served
his purpose he too will be fed to the
creature, Jasper engineers a collision
with an iceberg and Claude is dashed
against the ice. Now Jasper is the last
man on the ship – but to bring the
creature home alive in time to save
Amelia, he must feed it – and all that
the creature will take is blood.
The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello has been
screened at over thirty film festivals
and won many awards including an
Oscar® Nomination at the 2006 Academy Awards® 2006, two AFI Awards
in 2005, two IF Awards in 2005, the
Best Animation Award at Flickerfest
2005 and The Grand Prix at the 29th
International Animated Film Festival,
Annecy, France in 2005.
With his production company, 3D
Films, Anthony Lucas has animated
numerous TV commercials, children’s
television and a national TV station
identity series for SBS television.
The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello was made
in association with the AFC, Film
Victoria, SBS Television and 3D Films.
It was written by Mark Shirrefs, the executive producer was Susie Campbell
and it was co-produced by Julia Lucas
and Anthony Lucas. The film is distributed in Australia and New Zealand by
Madman Entertainment.
SCREEN EDUCATION
curriculum relevance > This collection of short animations will find curriculum relevance for
students of the humanities, the arts and media related subjects. The works may be studied alone, as a group or
comparatively. Teachers may like to focus on the very different production techniques of each work or they may prefer
to concentrate on the themes that run through the texts.
Who watches short film?
Short film is a very popular medium. Whilst there is no
doubt that many short filmmakers are students or young
filmmakers starting out on their careers, there are also a
huge number of established filmmakers working in this
form. The market for short film and animation is enormous. Between them the films in this collection have
appeared at hundreds of film festivals. In fact screening
at film festivals is one way that filmmakers get noticed.
For Adam Elliot and Anthony Lucas success at previous
festivals has in part led to the funding required to produce Harvie Krumpet and The Mysterious Geographic
Explorations of Jasper Morello. It is certain that the critical acclaim with which Birthday Boy has been received
on the festival circuit will have the same effect on Sejong
Park.
audience looking to relax in front of the box. These films
make audiences sit up and think.
Short film and animation programs are popular on television in late night time slots. Because the films in these
programs are often edgy and contain adult concepts
they are definitely not made for children, or for an adult
Please note, many educational organizations have
restrictions on the sites students may access. Teachers
should check that the sites they wish to use are available
at school.
Before
viewing
T
he activities below are designed
to accommodate a range of
approaches to this collection.
Whilst teachers will be using this
collection for different purposes it
is important for all students to have
some understanding of the impact of
the animation techniques employed in
the construction of each production.
These techniques impact on both the
messages the filmmakers wished to
convey and to the ways in which audiences read the texts.
How does animation
work?
Animation is the creation of an illusion of movement by assembling a
sequence of still images. Audiences
see movement through a phenomenon
called the persistence of vision, the
retention of an image in the eye for a
brief moment as the next image is being received.
sequence is more important than the
quality of the images or models. Some
of the world’s most famous animations
are not the most beautifully drawn but
the most emotionally moving.
The landscape created by animators
is at once simple yet extraordinarily
powerful. Animation allows filmmakers
to pare down the world of their imagination to only those features that are
important to the story and ideas they
wish to convey. Non-naturalistic elements are used to emphasize meaning.
Fantastical characters and locations
can be constructed using flights of
fancy, exaggeration, whimsy, pathos
and humour with a view to focussing
the audience on those aspects of their
story the animator considers important.
Most animation is based on the power
of suggestion. Audiences are willing to
suspend disbelief and journey with the
animator through the world and story
he or she has constructed. Much of
this journey will be read and understood through the symbolic devices of
metaphor, simile, allegory, audio and
visual imagery. Animations are rarely
literal, they ask their audiences to
think and to engage with the text in a
deeply symbolic manner.
»
Make a list of your favourite animations.
• Why do you count these as
your favourites?
• Who is your favourite animation
character? Why?
• Think about how these animations use metaphor, the power
of suggestion and non-naturalistic elements to convey meaning. Create a poster or a short
presentation with excerpts
from your favourite animation
for your class that illustrates
the use of these elements.
Animation forms
Three different animation forms are
evident in the works in this collection. Harvie Krumpet is a stop motion
‘claymation’ using plasticine, The
Mysterious Geographic Explorations
of Jasper Morello employs a cut out
stop motion silhouette approach with
some 3D animation designed to add a
three dimensional feel to the work and
Birthday Boy is entirely made using
3D CGI (computer generated imagery)
animation techniques.
»
Research the animation techniques
used in the animations in this col-
SCREEN EDUCATION
Animation is the process of imagining
and representing action. Animators
generally believe that the quality of the
High speed broadband has also contributed to the
popularity of short film and animation. Short film programs and festivals online such as that run by Atomfilms
http://www.atomfilms.com continue to proliferate while
large organizations ranging from YouTube http://www.
youtube.com to the BBC Film Network site http://www.
bbc.co.uk/dna/filmnetwork/ now have many short
films and animations ready for download. No longer do
students have to book and wait for films to be delivered
from film libraries, they are able to search the web for
access to high quality material that will complement the
study of these animations.
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lection.
What other animations have you
seen using these forms of animation?
List the advantages and disadvantages of each animation technique.
What is your favourite animation
technique? Why?
After viewing
Watch the DVD extras to learn about
how each filmmaker works.
»
Why do you think the filmmakers
chose to use the techniques that
they employed?
Features of the collection
‘Excellence of the entries shall be
judged on the basis of originality,
entertainment and production quality
without regard to cost of production or
subject matter.’
Members of the Academy vote for
their preference from the six nominations. Harvie Krumpet won the Oscar®
in 2003.
The stories in this collection are narratives that tell us much about the human condition. In each the protagonist
must face and deal with the difficulties of life in their own way. Themes
include (See Table 1):
All three animations were nominated
for an Academy Award® for Best Animated Short Film. To be nominated is
a great honour. Films submitted to the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and
Sciences undergo an extensive judging process which shortlists the six
best films for nomination. The proc-
Morello were produced with the help
of Film Victoria, the Australian Film
Commission, and SBS Independent.
Find out about these organizations at
their websites
http://www.afc.gov.au
http://www.film.vic.gov.au
http://www.sbs.com.au/sbsi/
»
»
What is the purpose of these
organizations?
How do they define Australian film
and animation?
What help did they provide to
Adam Elliot and Anthony Lucas?
Find out more about Academy Awards®
on their website http://www.oscars.org/
»
Australian animation
Australian Film Institute
Awards
»
Thematic links
Theme
ess is designed to identify excellence,
which the Academy defines like this:
The animations in this collection
are Australian yet they are not
about recognizably Australian
stories or themes. What defines an
Australian animation?
Birthday Boy was made at the Australian Film Television and Radio School.
Find out about AFTRS at their website
http://www.aftrs.edu.au
»
»
What is AFTRS and what does it
do?
How does AFTRS support Australian animation?
Harvie Krumpet and The Mysterious
Geographic Explorations of Jasper
Birthday Boy
All three animations won Australian Film
Institute Awards for short animation.
Filmmakers may enter their films for
an AFI Award; the nominees are then
selected by a jury of AFI professionals.
AFI members may vote for the film of
their choice. AFI membership is open to
adults and industry professionals.
Find out more about the Australian
Film Institute and AFI Awards on their
website http://www.afi.org.au
»
»
How does the AFI define Australian
film and animation?
What other AFI Award-winning
fims have you seen?
Harvie Krumpet
Jasper Morello
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What it means to be human
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Alone but not lonely
•
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•
Life and death
•
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•
Loss
•
•
•
the impact of war
•
•
Against the odds
•
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•
What if?
•
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Knowing oneself
•
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selflessness and redemption
the nature of gifts
tAbLe 1
•
SCREEN EDUCATION
Life’s journey
after viewin
g
individual
study
BirTHday Boy
The impact of war on individuals and especially on
children has long been a
concern of artists.
B
irthday Boy is a study in the
universality of these themes.
Sejong Park has very clear
views about war and uses the imaginary character of Manuk as an
allegory to express his opinions. The
animation is in an observational style,
it follows Manuk through his day observing his activities and allowing the
audience to make their own meaning
from this observation.
Much of the poignancy of the animation springs from the juxtaposition
of adult understanding against the
innocence of Manuk’s view of the
world. His actions and imagination are
at odds with our knowledge of what
is really happening. In addition visual
and audio symbols and metaphors
drive home Park’s message.
»
»
What does Birthday Boy have to
say about war?
Birthday Boy is not just about war, it
also has autobiographical elements.
Sejong Park was born and grew up in
Korea before moving to Australia as
a young man. Whilst the war ended
half a century ago it still resonates in
the Korean psyche. However Park has
said that the influence of his childhood
had a much more direct impact on his
work than the war.
When I started making Birthday Boy I
imagined … my childhood, how I grew
up … and I was thinking more about
the emptiness in my soul, loneliness
and something … missing. I realized
that there isn’t any Asian sensibility type of animation worldwide so I
thought I will try something different
[from] what other people think animation should be, this very stereotypical
kind of animation. I thought I wouldn’t
go that way, I will do something different.
– Sejong Park interview,
The Movie Show
»
Watch Birthday Boy again, how do
»
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you think Sejong Park’s description
of his childhood impacted on how
he designed and constructed the
character of Manuk?
Towards the end of Birthday Boy
Park shows the audience family
photographs and paintings on the
wall. What impact do these have
on our understanding of the film’s
messages?
Other than its setting and language, in what ways does the animation express what Park calls an
Asian sensibility? If you are unsure
about how to respond to this question try to imagine how the same
storyline would be handled by a
different animator, perhaps Adam
Elliot, Anthony Lucas or even Pixar.
Birthday Boy invites its audience to
consider ‘what if?’ What if I were
Manuk? What if I were his mother?
How would I react?
Imagine you are Manuk’s mother,
SCREEN EDUCATION
Make a collection of fictional and
non-fictional images of children in
wartime. Contrast these to Manuk.
What do the differences reveal to
you?
Draw up a chart that details each
scene in the animation. On one
side of the chart note what Manuk
is doing and/or thinking, on the
other leave space for analysing
these actions and thoughts.
• Think about the use of symbols
and metaphors in Birthday Boy,
add these to your chart.
• Now work in groups to determine the meaning of each
element of the animation.
»
»
write the journal entry she would
make at the end of the day on
which Birthday Boy is set.
Imagine you are an adult Manuk
explaining the death of his father
to his own son.
3D cGI animation
The popularity of 3D CGI (computer
generated imagery) animation has
soared in recent years. The technology
has allowed animators to create imagery like never before. Once criticized
as artificial and mechanical, the ‘look’
of 3D CGI is now accepted as a positive contribution to the art form. This
look is due to the way the technology
and software used to create 3D CGI
images shapes the form of characters,
sets and objects within the frame.
The degree of realism in 3D CGI
animation is dependent on a range of
factors including:
– Aesthetics, how realistic does the
filmmaker want the animation to be?
– Budget, the size of the budget for
technology, software and personnel
will contribute to the realism achievable in a production.
»
Some aspects of Birthday Boy are very
realistic, others much more stylized.
»
Analyse Birthday Boy to determine
which parts of the animation are
realistic and which stylized. What
technical and aesthetic decisions
would Sejong Park have made in
making this animation?
Research 3D CGI animation programs, popular ones in industry
include Maya and 3D Studio Max.
Some 3D animation programs have
free download trial versions. If you are
interested you might like to give them
a go. Be warned, these programs
need a very fast computer, are very
difficult to master and require a huge
learning curve!
SCREEN EDUCATION
– Purpose, is the choice to employ
3D CGI to create an effect that is not
possible in live action film such as
in Lord of the Rings (Peter Jackson,
2001-03)?
Look at the ‘making of’ features on
the DVD to see how Birthday Boy was
made.
HarviE KruMpET
Some are born great
Some achieve greatness
Some have greatness thrust
upon them …
… and then … there are others
H
arvie Krumpet is a story of
everyman, albeit an everyman plagued by bad luck!
He is just like us, moving through life
making the best of what the world
throws at him. As with Birthday Boy,
Harvie Krumpet is an animation that
asks us to consider ‘what if?’ What
if my parents died? What if I were a
refugee? What if I were suddenly the
victim of an accident or were taken ill?
What would I do?
Adam Elliot’s approach to such big
questions is to employ quirky humour
and a whacky cast of characters to
what he claims is a film about people
he knows.
All my films are about everyday people, people I know intimately. I don’t let
the truth get in the way of a good story
and I embellish and exaggerate so
they’re all biographies basically.
– Adam Elliot interview, The Movie
Show
Such an approach is common among
artists and authors who take inspiration from wherever they can find it.
This doesn’t mean that Adam’s world
is any different from ours, he simply
collects personalities, behaviours,
names, situations, locations and even
historical events and stores these
for later use. Thus a character might
comprise part imagination and part
features from the people Adam has
met.
have a neighbour whose clothes
are all from the op shop? Write a
list of physical characteristics and
character traits that have entertained you. Use your imagination
to exaggerate. Now select from
these lists and create a composite
character who might appear in
one of Adam Elliot’s animations.
Draw a sketch of your character
and show it to your classmates.
Do they understand what you were
trying to achieve?
Take the title of the film, for example,
Harvie was the name of a family pet,
there are no prizes for guessing what
Adam has for breakfast!
»
Build a character bank of your
own. Think about all of the interesting people you have seen or
met recently. Perhaps you noticed
someone with funny ears and another with bow legs. Does a family
member have a squeaky voice
and collect milk cartons, or do you
All of Adam Elliot’s films are biographies, each is about family. By looking
at these animations we can see the
development of his style and the
maturation of his ideas. Elliot’s earlier
animations are:
Uncle (1996)
Cousin (1998)
Brother (1999)
Watch these animations and make
notes about what you see as the development of Adam Elliot’s style.
»
What do you think his next work
will look like?
SCREEN EDUCATION
Making money or making art?
Adam Elliot began his working life in
illustration and graphic design but
decided to follow his heart rather than
his head and enrolled at film school to
study animation. For most of the years
after he graduated from the Victorian College of the Arts in 1996 he
earned so little that he was eligible for
unemployment benefits. Despite the
critical success of his early films Adam
received little financial reward from his
work. That changed in 2004 when Harvie Krumpet won the Academy Award
for best short animation. In a strange
twist Adam’s success has come at a
cost. He now finds that the business
side of the industry eats into his creative time. A media professional is only
as good as his or her next project and
the success of Harvie means for Adam
that this project is slowed by the very
business that makes it possible for
him to keep going.
Harvie Krumpet. Explain why these
examples are ironic.
Fatalism is the view that worrying
about events or trying to avoid them
is pointless because whatever will be
will be.
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Why do you think most filmmakers
earn so little?
Research how films are financed
in Australia. Try the Film Finance
Corporation website http://www.
ffc.gov.au/investment/
Harvie’s humour
»
Harvie Krumpet is successful
because of its humour. What’s so
funny about Harvie? In addition to
oddly modelled and quirky characters the animation employs unlikely
situations, elements of slapstick
and running jokes including ‘fakts’.
It makes us laugh through its black
humour.
Black humour is closely related to
satire in which serious subjects and
events are given a humorous or satirical treatment. Black humour is often
ironic or, as is the case with Harvie
Krumpet, fatalistic.
Irony is a comedic device in which the
literal meaning or outcome of events
is the opposite of that intended or
expected.
Find some examples of irony in
Harvie Krumpet is funny because it is
affectionately Australian. We laugh at
the situations in which he finds himself
because we can recognize ourselves
in them. Adam Elliot is a strong believer in bringing Australian voices to
Australia and the world. He is critical
of any cultural cringe amongst Australian animators: ‘We’re forgetting about
our voice. The rest of the world wants
to hear our voice.’
»
»
Write a short piece that describes
a funny situation in which you have
found yourself, make it as Australian as you can.
Script and storyboard your story.
Show these to your classmates,
ask them to identify the affectionately Australian aspects of your
idea.
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Stop motion claymation
One of the oldest forms of animation
is still one of the most popular. This
painstaking technique involves creating and photographing models positioned in a series of tiny moves. The
»
Choose your favourite scene from
Harvie Krumpet and pause the
DVD. Use frame advance to move
through the scene counting how
many characters or objects were
moved for each shot.
Watch the film again with the
director’s commentary switched on
or look at the storyboard featurette
that is one of the extras on the
DVD. In small groups make a list of
advice for beginner animators that
you have learned from the DVD.
The fun of claymation takes animators back to the days of playing
with plasticine. Why not try it?
In your group design and storyboard a simple plasticine animation in which every group member
creates and animates a character.
Create the sets and backgrounds.
Don’t forget Adam’s trick to save
time, there is only one sky for
every scene in Harvie Krumpet.
Wherever you can double up on
movements, backgrounds and
sets, do so.
Shoot this animation using either
the stop motion effect on your
video camera if it has one or a digital still camera. If you have access
to a digital edit suite capture your
stills into the edit program and
place them on the timeline. For a
low tech option download your images into a computer and animate
them is a program like PowerPoint.
Screen your animation for your
class. Use these screenings to
add to your advice for beginning
animators.
SCREEN EDUCATION
»
Find examples of fatalism in the
film. How do these contribute to
the humour of the piece.
Create some fakts of your own, try
them out on your classmates to
see if they are funny.
models are arranged on a set which is
lit like any film set. Film normally runs
at twenty-four frames per second.
In most stop motion animation each
frame is shot twice, this makes twelve
moves for every second of film. Harvie
Krumpet took fourteen months to
shoot at the rate of 3 - 5 seconds per
day. There are approximately 30000
individual movements in the film.
Naturally such precision is expensive
to produce, Harvie cost $34,000.
Adam Elliot is proud that, unlike most
animation these days he did not use
any CGI techniques, even when to do
so might have saved time.
10
The Mysterious Geographic
Explorations of Jasper
Morello
‘Somewhere in the twelfth
dimension where light does
not reflect lie the Shadowlands. A dark world of gothic
horror, of spindly figures in
windswept landscapes and
skeletal animals running from
unseen terrors.’
T
he Mysterious Geographic
Explorations of Jasper Morello is
a disturbing and gothic animation which employs a unique style of
cut out silhouette animation to create
an imaginary world Anthony Lucas affectionately calls the Shadowlands.
The Shadowlands are shadowlike in
both name and nature. In this world
nothing is quite clear, meaning is obscured and characters are literally and
figuratively in shadow.
The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello is an epic
steampunk story in the Gothic tradition. It is the story of Jasper Morello’s
epic adventure in search of redemption. The first line sets the tone of the
film:
One degree is not a large distance. On
a compass it is scarcely the thickness
of a fingernail. But in certain condi-
tions one degree can be a very large
distance … enough to unmake a man.
»
»
»
Already meaning is obscured, what
does Lucas mean?
Analyse this line, why do you think
it is written in this florid, old-fashioned language? How does this
language establish the theme of
the film and give us information
about the main character Jasper
Morello?
Rewrite the line in plain English,
which is better? Why?
Look at the opening of the film up to
the credits.
»
»
»
What does the look of the film contribute to our expectations of what
might happen?
What clues are we given?
How do you feel at the end of the
SCREEN EDUCATION
11
opening?
The Hero’s Journey
The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello uses a common
story structure called the hero’s journey
which follows a series of stages:
•
The hero’s journey begins in The
ordinary world
•
•
•
•
The ordinary world is where the
audience gets to know the protagonist for the first time.
Call to adventure is where the protagonist meets the problem, quest
or challenge that is the cause
which provides motivation for the
entire narrative.
Refuse the call, in this stage the
protagonist is afraid or reluctant to
embark on the challenge.
Mentor, meeting a mentor provides
motivation and encouragement for
the protagonist.
•
•
•
•
the challenge and the special
world the protagonist earns the
assistance of allies and defeats or
learns from enemies.
Cross the second threshold and
approach the innermost cave, this
is where the protagonist prepares
for the biggest challenge of all.
Supreme ordeal, this is the climax
where the protagonist confronts
the greatest challenge of all, faces
physical and/or metaphorical
death and emerges a hero.
Seize the reward, the hero enjoys
the rewards but the audience
knows that the journey is not yet
finished.
The road back, the hero recommits
to the journey.
Death and resurrection, this is
where the hero faces the climactic
ordeal that redeems and purifies.
structure of the hero’s journey and
subconsciously understand the
stages the protagonist must go
through. The structure helps us
read cause and effect and character motivation in narrative texts. It
is one of the reasons we know that
Jasper will survive his ordeals and
why he must do so.
»
The journey moves to The special
world
•
•
•
Returning to the ordinary world the
hero is equipped with knowledge
that will benefit this world.
Audiences are familiar with the
Analyse The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello
to identify how closely it fits the
model of the hero’s journey.
In Gothic literature and film all is not
as it seems. We are seduced by our
recognition of familiar places, objects,
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•
Cross the first threshold, the
protagonist embarks on adventure
and enters the special world.
Passing tests and learning about
The journey returns to The ordinary
world
1
character types and situations yet we
remain unsure about what these might
mean.
It’s as though there’s a dance of death
and you dance past all these rather familiar places like the house in Psycho,
the elm tree that’s weaving and wailing
in the wind and the skeletons of animals that are rushing past the sound
of howling and banshees, but you’re
quite happy to be there because
you’re going to die anyway.
The things in Shadowland are the
enduring power of love, the transmigration of souls, animism and by that
I mean that everything has a spirit
whether that be a tree, whether that be
a rock, whether that be a cloud. The
other theme is vampiric which is life
feeds on life, on itself until it dies.
– Helmut Bakaitis,
the voice of Claude Belgon
»
»
Research the term Gothic fiction
to find out about its history and
themes:
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Gothic_novel
• http://www.enotes.com/gothicliterature/
Identify the gothic elements of The
Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello.
There are several important subgenres
of Gothic literature under which The
Mysterious Geographic Explorations of
Jasper Morello falls. It is both speculative fiction and a steampunk text.
Speculative fiction asks the reader
to consider ‘what if?’ and describes
those genres that speculate about
worlds that are unlike the real world in
various important ways. Speculative
fiction includes elements of science
fiction, fantasy, horror fiction, supernatural fiction, alternate history, and
magic realism.
»
»
»
Choose your favourite scene from
the film and draw the steampunk
machines you see.
Design a steampunk machine that
Jasper Morello might find useful.
Steampunk is perfectly suited to the
cut out silhouette technique that led to
the Shadowlands. As Anthony Lucas
explains:
The Shadowlands is … a technique
but from that technique it’s grown and
evolved so I tried to make a culture
and it’s a parallel culture to our own
and it always looks like Wuthering
Heights or the moors or some dark
Jayne Eyre, Edgar Allen Poe nightmare.
I think with the Shadowlands it is a
great way to create fantastical environments, it’s not only an easier way of
visualizing these grand landscapes and
places and cities, it would be very hard
to do that scale of environment in a
different way of model making, you’d
have to have much more attention to
detail but because it’s silhouetted you
can skip over the detail and just go for
a raw form, what is should look like
… it’s silhouette. It’s a way of creating
mystery too within those places.
Silhouette animation
Anthony Lucas originally hit on the
Shadowlands technique by chance
when the overhead lights on a lightbox
he was using to film a cut out animation failed. He was drawn to the way in
which some things were obscured and
others emphasized by the silhouetting
backlighting created.
»
»
Choose your machine filled frame
from the film, pause the DVD and
try to identify how Lucas created
the machines. It is a bit like a puzzle, you will gradually begin to see
all kinds of familiar objects.
Create your own silhouette steampunk machinery. If you have a
lightbox this will be easy. If not, assemble your machinery on a plain
background, take a digital still and
manipulate the still in a photo editing program until you have made a
steampunk image.
Jasper Morello uses both 2D and 3D
animation. Lucas has incorporated
3D elements to simulate a sense of a
three dimensional world.
»
Can you identify which parts are
constructed with 3D CGI?
Comparative study
All three animations in this collection
lend themselves to comparison. Here
are some suggestions:
Storylines and characters
After viewing the animations divide
the class into small groups. Allocate
one film to each group. The groups
will be responsible for arguing the
case for their film to the class. Topics
for classroom discussion and debate
might include:
»
»
»
»
»
Which animation has the best
storyline?
Which character is the most likable? Why?
Argue the case for your group’s
film being the most visually appealing.
Which film is the most entertaining? What criteria did you use to
make your decision?
Which film is the most important?
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»
List some of the ‘what if’ questions that Anthony Lucas is asking
through this film.
Why do you think he asks these
questions?
Steampunk is a subgenre of speculative fiction, which originated in Gothic
fiction and the work of Victorian writers including Jules Verne and H.G.
Wells. It has become a popular genre
in recent years and has had a strong
influence on many literature and media
forms including manga, anime and
cyberpunk fiction. Steampunk works
are set in or inspired by an era when
steam power was still widely used,
usually the nineteenth century and
has been described as adventures
in a time that wasn’t. Steampunk
works have science fiction or fantasy
elements and feature fictional technological inventions. The genre is both
romantic and dystopian, and is often
imbued with a deep sense of melancholy.
1
»
What evidence can the group provide to support this view?
Which film has the most to teach
its audience? What is the message
the filmmaker wants us to take
away from the viewing experience?
Animation techniques
these animations to note where
repetition has been used effectively.
Extension activities
Choose an essay topic from the list
below:
»
»
»
»
»
»
»
Discuss the merits and problems
inherent in claymation, cut out stop
motion and 3D CGI animation.
Create a poster that illustrates the
strengths and weaknesses of different animation techniques.
Compare the sound design for
each animation. What are the features distinctive to each?
Which is better, dialogue or voiceover? Why?
Compare and contrast the use of
colour in these animations.
Animations are expensive and time
consuming to make so a feature of
the process is the use of repetition
of backgrounds, sets, movements,
etc. The trick is to incorporate repeated elements discreetly. Analyse
»
»
»
The tragedy of Birthday Boy is not
that Manuk’s father has died, it is
that he is so young that he will not
remember him at all. What do you
think?
‘Harvie didn’t just seize the day, he
was strangling it!’ The world would
be a better place if we were all a
little bit more like Harvie Krumpet.
Discuss.
Although set in an imaginary
steampunk world, The Mysterious
Geographic Explorations of Jasper
Morello has much to teach us
about the horrors of our very real
world. Discuss.
‘As with the ant, every man has
a purpose, you must serve that
purpose no matter the cost.’ – Dr
Claude Belgon. All three anima-
»
tions illustrate that every man has
a purpose. Compare the purpose
of Manuk, Harvie and Jasper. Does
one have a higher purpose than
the others?
The future of Australian animation
is in safe hands. Is it?
Conduct a class debate on one of the
following topics:
It is true that:
Some are born great
Some achieve greatness
Some have greatness thrust upon
them …
… and then … there are others
When it comes to the coverage of
difficult subjects animation is a better
medium than live action.
The animations in this collection teach
us that difference between tragedy
and comedy is not as far as we think. •
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