Loving Vincent's diary - 3rd week

BreakThru's producer Hugh Welchman (Oscar Winner for producing BreakThru's Peter and the Wolf) and painter/director Dorota Kobiela (director of BreakThru's Little Postman and Chopin's Drawings) are co-writing BreakThru's latest film, Loving Vincent, the world's first feature length painting animation film. The film is a mystery thriller looking into the life and death of Vincent Van Gogh, and is told through bringing over 120 of Vincent's masterpieces to animated life...

The script is on its fourth, and final, draft, and wth production scheduled for spring 2013, the pressure is mounting. This weekly diary will candidly record their process of writing the elusive final draft.

Loving Vincent's diary - 3rd week

So we spent yesterday - a day of dense golden winter sunshine- in the car, and today… the day of walking around Amsterdam… we woke up to a slushy blustery storm and a blanket of grey outside; again good traveller awareness! So it goes…

We braved the blustery rain of Amsterdam to walk the Van Gogh mile. The van Gogh mile is a nice idea: as the van Gogh museum is closed for renovation, and temporarily part of the exhibition is re-located to the Hermitage, a mile away, they strung a red line from the buildings and bridges for tourists to follow, and along the way you can stand on red dots on the pavement and listen to quotes from Van Gogh's letters looping on speakers attached to doorways/lampposts/windowsills. Additionally if you have an iPhone you can see some multimedia add on through the Van Gogh mile App. This was designed for sunny days! The wind meant it was hard to hear the quotes, juggling your iPhone and umbrella at the same time as putting earphones on and off is challenging. 

(Check out the Vincent umbrella!)

However there was an upside to doing it in these conditions. On a raining Sunday morning in November, with no shops open, central Amsterdam is utterly empty. Normally it would be bustling with tourists and people going about their city business. But at this time and in these conditions we were walking through these beautiful historic streets entirely alone, with only the sound of the rain, and Vincent’s words echoing across the streets. Pretty gezellig as the Dutch would say. There was some acceptable augmented reality add ons in the App, I am interested in augmented reality, but I am waiting to see one that has wow factor. Maybe we should do one for Loving Vincent,  I was thinking that after the Liege 3D film festival. We gained all this expertise in 3D (we have so far won 15 best 3D awards) and we aren't applying it to Loving Vincent. The film has to be 2D, for sure, but maybe we could do a 3D exploration, actually painted, where you go inside his paintings. I have seen something like that, but they were computer simulations, which just doesn't do it, it would need to be painted for real.

Finally we reached the Hermitage, and swum- with and against- the mass of people there. So many people that you have to bide your moments to get the view you want. Still having to wait patiently to be able to see a clear view of a painting from a distance gives you time to think, and to witness the absurd cat and mouse that goes on between the tourists and the security staff. There is a no photos policy here, which I understand if people are using flash, but I don't really understand if they are not. I can't think of any technical reason of how people snapping soundlessly, flash off, from their smart phones, harms a painting? Anyway a lot of the visitors seemed to agree; as soon as the Security guard turned to chase some other young girl lining up her phone, then everyone in the room whipped theirs out and snapped away. The sport of this seemed to preoccupy many visitors more than actually standing and looking at the painting! I kept my phone in my pocket and many thoughts came to me. Firstly my revelation of the day before was confirmed, that there was more depth in his work than you can appreciate from reproductions. The outstanding example of this was Undergrowth,

 http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/zoom.jsp?page=3206&lang=en,  and surprisingly Still Live with Bible.
 

(source: wikipaintings)

The best thing about the exhibition at the hermitage was that you could look at the ground floor paintings from the balconies above, over the heads of the 1,000's of people. From this distance the Bible and table were actually there, you felt that you could reach in and pull out the massive grey tomb, or the battered much-thumbed Zola book perching small it at its feet. This painting was not the first that openly addressed his father's death. He had completed the haunting 'The Old Church Tower at Nuenen', but this was at Theo's suggestion, and he initially had resisted the subject. Still the result is very arresting, and you can sense the emotional depth in the painting. But 'Still Life with Bible' is the outstanding reflection on his father's demise. Six months after his father's death his mother asked Vincent to post Dorus's Bible to Theo, as their father had left it to him. A pastor's bible is a significant heirloom, and Vincent, the eldest son, was yet again forced to hand the baton on to his younger brother. Apparently the bible 'fell open' as he was sorting through his clutter on Isiah 53. By this time Vincent had gone full circle and was back to being an atheist, but during his period of religious fanaticism he effectively memorised the entire bible, and so he would have had no trouble in knowing just from sight of the heading what was contained therein: "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief". Vincent's position in Nuenen was getting past the point of being untenable, he was now under siege from all sides: long ago rejected by polite society; and since his father's death completely frozen out by his famil;, hounded by the catholic priests for immorality; pursued by creditors and shunned by the peasantry. In amongst this, he sat down, and in a day, by his account, painted a painting on a whole new level, that oozes emotion. The imagery is not subtle, with the heavy darkness of his father's bible, dwarfing, but not outshining, the ragged Zola tome at its feet, with a snuffed out candle standing to the side of the bible, but it is heartfelt, and for me in a day achieves more than months of working and re-working delivered in The Potato Eaters. (I have to say this is my personal opinion and Dorota along with the majority of art historians would disagree)

Other things that struck me, was transitions. Seeing the paintings in real-life you notice the smaller elements much more vividly: the falling leaves; the irises at the perimeter of a field. And there were at least two new characters that we wanted to add, not sure where or how, but they have to be added. First, the One Eyed Man…wow, this one passed me by. He looks like a crook from a Dickensian district, or a gangster from a film noir, and it is a great painting. For sure we have to get this shady character in there. In fact he was a fellow patient at the St Remy sanatorium, but maybe we can put him somewhere else, maybe Paris, he would fit among the brothels and cafes that Vincent frequented. All we have from Paris is the ex-muse/hooker turned club-owner/pimp-Segatori, whom Vincent got on the wrong side of, and the paint shop owner Pere Tanguy, who was reputedly a gnarled ex-communard, but looks more like a cherubic fat buddha in Vincent's painting. The second potential new character, is Camille Roullin, Postman Roulin's 11 year old son. Postman and his eldest son, Armand, feature centrally in our film, but now we should look for a place for Camille, as this is a fabulous portrait. Thirdly, Old woman of Arles, the first portrait in Arles, and perhaps the starting point for the greatest series of portraits by any artist. When I looked at this old woman I felt sure she would have something wise or mysterious to say about the little red painting fellow from the North!

This time I didn't spend much time in front of favourites like Wheatfield with Crows; Bridge in the rain (no idea how to get that into the film); the yellow house; The bedroom; Gaugin's Chair; Sunflowers; Almond Blossom; and Irises, as it was 1330, and we still had the ticking clock of Kroller Mueller, and the expired clock on our parking metre. We walked briskly to the tram stop, and saw our tram pulling out, we ran through the streets to see if we could catch it at the next stop, but it trundled along slightly faster than it was possible to run. Panting and red-faced we waited the 10 minutes for the next one. Our car retrieved, free of fines, we made a whistle-stop tour of the furniture shops on Overtoom, which had us salivating. I like Warsaw very much, it is a much under-rated city, but the fact that barren communism relinquished its hold on it only 20 years ago means that you just don't get the range of shops that you can get in places like London, Paris or Amsterdam. We can choose between Ikea and expensive imports that take weeks to pre-order. Half of our furniture came back with us from India. The furniture was cheap, but getting it into Poland was a nightmare, it was sealed up in customs because of dots and dashes that were out of place on our forms, and all the while I was being charged €30 a day rent for the privilege of the customs authorities completely unnecessarily rejecting my paperwork. Anyway you just don't get the same shops with great interesting furniture and fittings, reasonably priced, in the whole city, as on one block of that road in Amsterdam. And it turned out that some of the furniture in the shops was actually made in Poland. Made in Poland, but you can't buy it in Poland, the shop owner said he had a Polish couple come in and buy some furniture, made in Poland, and exported it back to Poland - you think given the fact that Poland is basically a building site, well all the roads and the major cities are, e.g.. in our block of flats out of 32 flats two thirds are currently being renovated, the dress code of my building is white or orange or blue overalls; and right now one of the main arteries in central Warsaw is closed as a second metro line is added; and construction of motorways and high speed rail links means that journey times are twice what they were (but with the promise of being half what they were and a quarter what they are)… anyway you would have thought someone in this thriving construction market would have sought to make it so you could buy quality Polish goods in Poland. Dorota, in amongst such innovative design, instantly re-imagined us going into import-export of the lights that we had just bought, which admittedly was incredibly cool, but I told the venture of Loving Vincent was quite mountain enough for us, and I just had to think of the customs impounding our India furniture to get shivers down my spine.

An hour behind schedule we careered off as fast as our plucky little car would take us to the Kroller Muller Museum. Still we arrived with an hour in hand. The Kroller Muller, looks like the hideaway of a bond villain, a low slung glass and brick building in a clearing of trees. There was a re-assuring graphic- VINCENT IS BACK- plastered over the windows by the entrance, but then the chief security guard was the spitting image of Odd Job (James Bond villain in Goldfinger), and eye-balled us as we passed, and I wondered if it was because we had arrived just before closing time, or if he did that to everyone. For a brief moment I imagined we were art thieves with some cunning plan to lift the goods from under the noses of the guards. We again by-passed a whole collection of magnificent art, not allowing even 5 seconds for this Picasso or that Gaugin, and bee-lined for the Vincent room.

Stunning… simply one of the most relaxing and wonderful ways to spend an hour. 40 or so of their 130 Vincent pieces were up, in simple wooden frames, against white walls. In the whole hour that we stayed in that room perhaps 4 other people walked through, and for a whole 20 minutes we were alone in the room. As you enter you find Madam Ginoux, M. Ginoux, Lieutenant Millet, Vincent, Mme. Roulin (Berecuse), and Postman Roulin all staring at you- that is half a billion dollars or so staring down at you! Heading left around the internal walls you have two walls dedicated to his dutch period. It starts with Girl in a woods, 1882. Mysterious, has something in common with the haunting Couple in the Woods from Auvers, painted just before his death, and while this early work is not a shade on the later work, still this is an intriguing painting. And then further back in time, with some paintings from the Borinage, and the one that I referred to in my first blog.

Not long after this his rough drawings gain a unique blockish style, and even though he still struggles with technically depicting the human form, he has worked through this somehow, and as a result he gained a unique style.

Vincent knew that his lack of formal training, his isolation from other artists, his late start, and even the fact that art-making just didn't come easily to him, as it did to the artists he crossed path with, many of whom are all but forgotten to history, at some level he knew that all of this wasn't necessarily a disadvantage. While still in Holland, he wrote: "As I have been working absolutely alone for years…I shall always see with my own eyes and render things originally."

Well moving around the square I arrived at a wall full of his later work. Wow, this was a real privilege, to sit down and have in front of you: 'Langlois Bridge', 'Pink Peach Tree' (the painting that Vincent gave to Mauve's widow discussed in Blog 2), 'Enclosed Wheatfield with Rising Sun', and in the centre of the wall, Terrace of a Cafe at Night. Each on of these is staggeringly affecting, interesting and involving, but 'Terrace of a Cafe Night' I think is deservedly the most famous. It is the first time he depicted a starry night; you want to hear know the conversation going on between the couple in the centre of the square, behind them, drawing you in, is a dark alleyway, out of which comes a horse and carriage, and also a lady in red is materialising out of the shadow, and in the middle a blur of ghostly green (?). The light from the night cafe dazzles, and when you get up close it looks as if he has actually carved it out of a block of yellow paint, it sticks out so much from the canvas, as do the stars, which look like they were squeezed directly onto the canvas from the tube- this bold thickness gives them their brightness. We had traversed half of a continent to get here, rushed from place to place, pushed our car, and ourselves, to our limits to cover everything in a weekend, and all on the first weekend that Europe descended into snow, but if for nothing else it was actually worth it just to be in that room. To see the rise and rise of a self willed artist from clumsy depictions to images that were part of a wholesale revolution in art, and which permeate to some extent into the visual consciousness of every one in North America, Europe and Japan. perhaps as interesting as witnessing the progress of his draftsman hand, which gained considerable craft and skill over his short career, you can also see his subjects by contrast were the re-hashing, re-expressing, re-rendering of images, ideas, literature, and ideals that he had held onto dearly in his former lives: as a boy living in nature; as a preacher's son; as a young dapper art dealer; as a boarding school teacher; as a religious fanatic, and finally as an artist. Images such as the reaper, the sower, the church spire, the worn out shoes, and the man of sorrow (Isiah 53). On adjacent walls at the Kroller Muller they had a drawing from 1882 and a painting done perhaps 2 months before he died.

(source: wikipaintings)

He was someone who had something he wanted to express, and what he wanted to express remained remarkably consistent even as his style evolved; and shortly before his death he actually found the means to express "it". Why after a life time of struggling to express yourself and communicate with the world, why would you, when you had just found the means to express what was in your heart to the world, would you then, at that point, choose to kill yourself?

At that point Oddjob, and seven other guards swept into our room and, for the last time on this trip, we were escorted from the premises, the last people in the museum. By the time we had reached the end of the path the museum had been shut down, and we were in the darkness of a winter forest. This is a special museum. The building is spacious, allowing you to really absorb what is around you, the collection is phenomeal, Mrs Kroller Muller had a limitless account and an artists eye, and the fact it is in the middle of a forest, a whole hour outside Amsterdam means it is often over-looked. I kicked myself for being one of the many who over-looked it on previous visits to Amsterdam; in the future I will make at least half a day to stop by this museum if I visit Amsterdam.

Our Journey had given us new energy for our endeavour, and had exposed us to new ideas for the film: new paintings that we want to include and new ideas for developing our visual approach. But it shed no light on the biggest mystery of all, the mystery surrounding his suicide, in fact quite the opposite, it made it even more unfathomable. This would be something we would have to grapple with back on our building site. We climbed into our car and started out on the 1,400 km drive back to Warsaw.

by Hugh Welchman

Bringing legends to life...

BreakThru Films are currently preparing their own version of the Cúchulainn legend, one of Ireland's most popular mythological tales drawn from the Ulster Cycle. We look back at a few of the most famous and infamous attempts to bring a legend to the screen...

1. Beowulf (2007)

Ray Winstone as the Old English hero

With a script co-written by Neil Gaiman and Roger Avery and the direction of legendary Robert Zemeckis, this mega-budget motion capture blockbuster proved to be an unexpected hit that was far smarter than early previews had suggested. Based upon the famous Old English legend of the Danish hero who wrestles with the hideous monster Grendal and his even more hideous hag of a mother, the film managed to skirt the dead-eye Uncanny Valley problems which had haunted Zemeckis's Polar Express to provide a gleefully silly but also visually impressive tribute to one of the English language's first recorded texts.

 2. Excalibur

John Boorman directs an Arthurian classic which melds together a number of classic tales with a fast-paced and violent tale of magic and chivalry. A story which had been mined for comic effect by films such as Monty Python and the Holy Grail was here treat with deadly seriousness, and the result was one of the most spectacular and timeless fantasy films of the 1980's.

Nigel Terry retrieves the legendary sword...

The film was shot in Ireland, and though it achieved a modest critical and box-office reception, it gave a much-needed injection of interest for the Irish film industry. The beautiful location work and the lush green scenery proved to be extremely attractive to filmmakers keen to recapture the mystical atmosphere of lost ages.

 3. Clash of the Titans (1981)

Before the pitiful 3D remake came the classic original, featuring some of genius Ray Harryhausen's finest stop-motion work. The legend of Perseus, the first of the great Greek heroes, provided the inspiration for the film, which sees him battle giant scorpions, defeat Medusa the Gorgon and rescue Andromeda from the Kraken.

Medusa with her hair of stop-motion animated snakes

A sequel was promised, but by the time Clash of the Titans was finally released the world had moved on from the combination of swords and sandals epic and Harryhausen's animation style; the popularity of films such as Star Wars had whetted their appetite for more 'sophisticated' special effects. Today, however, his work is rightly lauded as truly revolutionary, with the effects he created for Clash ranking among some of his very best.

4. Gladiator

Based on segments of the late-Roman collection of biographies the Augustan History, Ridley Scott's Gladiator turned the history of Commodus into a bloody epic in which one man struggles to regain his freedom against a backdrop of inequality and inexcusable cruelty.

Oliver Reed resurrected for Gladiator

Russell Crowe shines as General Maximus Decimus Meridius, who is reduced from proud general to abused gladiator, and fights to overthrow the tyranny which has betrayed and felled him. With a mixture of spectacular grand guignol combat sequences and the revolutionary use of computer generated effects to sketch in not just the rampaging tigers unleashed in the ring but also to patch in the face of Oliver Reed, who died part way through production and was replaced in his final scenes with a CG simulacrum!

- BreakThru Films

Filming Vincent - 56 years of Van Gogh on Screen

As the trailer for BreakThru Film's upcoming Loving Vincent debuts at Cannes, we take a short look at earlier representations of the great artist on film.

BreakThru Films upcoming animation Loving Vincent

Lust for Life (1956)

Presented in splendid MGM Metrocolor, the first major adaptation of Vincent Van Gogh's tragic and tumultuous life stars Kirk Douglas as the artist tormented by his obsessive personality and eventually driven to suicide by an inability to realise his aesthetic ambitions. Lust for Life relies on the now unfashionable assumption that Van Gogh painted as he saw the world, that his paintings are intended to be accurate representations of a hallucinatory world which he was uniquely privilaged to. This view tends to work reductively against his achievements as a painter, suggesting as it does that his work is more the product of a fevered imagination than artistic skill.

Kirk Douglas makes for a dashing young artist

The film does have its strengths, however, Douglas is commanding as the tragic painter, and the film's warm and sometimes sickly colour palette is an excellent match for Van Gogh's style, and both the scenery and the many reproductions visible throughout the film look beautiful. 

Vincent (1987)

This US production, directed by Paul Cox, uses a vast range of images in a strange but moving documentary narrated by John Hurt. Making extensive use of Van Gogh's own diaries, Vincent tells the painter's story in his own words, and in combination with the startling and vivid visuals, the simple approach is remarkably powerful. Far less sensational than the MGM drama which preceded it, Vincent is indicative of Van Gogh's gradual movement into the centre of the global art canon.

The poster for Paul Cox's 1987 documentary

Illustrated with works created throughout Van Gogh's career, it also offers an opportunity to appreciate the development of his style, the labour he poured into finding his true direction in life and his struggles with poverty and the blank incomprehension and apathy of his peers, and the art world he at once despised and desperately sought entry to.

Vincent and Theo (1990)


A less well-known TV drama directed by Robert Altman, Vincent and Theo is notable for its concern with the wider Van Gogh family. Telling the story of the painter's brother, and the support he gave throughout his life, it is a stirring family drama that strips away a few of the layers of myth which had accumulated over the Dutch master in previous decades. Theo Van Gogh's own ambitions as an art dealer are dealt with, and the image of Vincent as a lone voice bellowing in the wilderness is dispelled.

To save money, art students were employed to paint many of the
film's numerous reproductions in their various states of completion

Tim Roth makes for an often despondent Vincent, while Paul Rhys excels as his beleaguered brother, whose life and home are gradually swallowed up supporting his brother's apparently directionless talent. A meditation on the conditions genius needs to prosper, Vincent and Theo is something of a neglected classic.

Vincent and the Doctor (Doctor Who) (2010)

Matt Smith's first series as the mysterious Time Lord took his TARDIS to the fields of Provence where, together with his companion Amy Pond (Karen Gillan) he encounters the artist at the height of his powers, but plagued by a vision of a strange beast that only he can see. Tony Curran is a superb Vincent, with shades of wicked humour to balance out his darker moments, particularly in his brief and unrequited passion for flame-haired Amy. There are shades of the 'magical eyes' trope last seen in Lust for Life, but the manner in which they are delivered, in a spectacular animation that sees the night sky morph in imitation of his most famous landscape, more than justifies it.

Vincent takes a trip in the TARDIS

Best of all is a time-bending finale in which Van Gogh finally gets to see the praise his art attracted years after his death, as the Doctor takes him on a trip to a modern museum where a present-day art-critic (Bill Nighy) unwittingly tells Van Gogh that he is regarded as 'the greatest painter of them all'. Richard Curtis penned this unashamed love-letter to the artist, and it's filled with beautiful images and highly intelligent writing.

Loving Vincent (coming soon...)

Loving Vincent is a spectacular animation composed of over 57,600 individual oil paintings. Every frame of the film has been hand painted in oils by a team of 30 painters, led by Polish painter-director Dorota Kobiela.

Famous images are brought to life in ground-breaking
painted animation

The story takes the form of a murder mystery and an exploration of Van Gogh's tortured imagination. More information is emerging all the time, but with the film in pre-production an early concept trailer has been released, revealing the incredible undulating style created by the pain-staking technique.

- Stewart Pringle

Tim Allen - Interview with an Animator

BreakThru talks to animator extraordinaire Tim Allen about his life in animation, Tim Burton and his incredible work on Peter & The Wolf and Magic Piano.

Tim Allen on the set of Corpse Bride

- When did you first become interested in stop-motion animation? Were you interested in art as a child?

Yeah, I was always drawing, making models and reading comics. I think my earliest ambitions were to make comic strip cartoons along the lines of Garfield, and I copied this format with vampire and ghost characters. As a teenager I’d moved on to Batman and my dream had now progressed to drawing superheros (or maybe being one!). I opted out of conventional A-levels in favour of a 2 year Art Diploma, as we knew I was going down the road of an artistic career. At this stage, I honestly can say I hadn’t even considered you could animate for a living!  

Somewhat lost for what to do after my art course, I was looking at modelmaking degrees and accidently stumbled upon an animation degree. At this time Nightmare Before Christmas had recently come out in cinemas & the idea of working on something like that just blew me away. Cheesy as it sounds, it was a moment of complete certainty, a true calling. I looked around & found a very good stop motion course at Glamorgan University and my very first animated steps began...

- How did you first 'break into the industry'? Was there a particular project that helped solidify your interest into a career?

It was tough getting going and those that get a break shortly after college I think are the very lucky ones. As I graduated, the industry was just starting a quiet patch which was leaving lots of established professionals on the job hunt. I contacted & tried to visit pretty much every stop motion company in the UK. In retrospect it was good experience in that it taught me who was who in the stop motion world as I literally knocked on almost everyone’s door. I did a fair bit of work experience & trainee model making where I learned quite a bit about studio practise.

I guess I did the classic of casting my net wide and after 1 and a half years I finally made a catch! I was asked to come for an animation audition for Ealing Animation in London. I think I got the job for two reasons - I would work very hard to impress and I was cheap!

One of Tim's first jobs in animation came with the BBC's
fondly remembered stop-motion education show 'El Nombre'

It was a low budget educational programme called El Nombre and so long as we told the educational part properly we had some creative freedom within the rest of the episode. For months, my animation was mostly long drawn out shots of gerbils counting money, very slowly. Fortunately the characters were charming and I had some very interesting and challenging sequences to work on for the action parts of the story. I was one of only two animators on the show so had my fair share of variety and tricky animation. A junior animator wouldn’t normally get the difficult stuff, but they only had two of us to delegate to! After 8 months the series finished & I was looking for work again, but this time I had some half decent shots under my belt & could pretend I was a professional!

- How did your involvement with Tim Burton begin? Were you a fan of his work before you were recruited for Corpse Bride?

I’ve always had a huge appreciation for Nightmare Before Christmas as it was the project that inspired me into this business. I loved Tim’s visual style and to work on a giant set from a Nightmare or Corpse Bride movie felt like the ultimate career moment at that time. Back then the only place that made feature films was Aardman. They already had a full time animation crew in place, which left most other animators around the UK (myself included) working on children’s TV series. This meant that when Corpse Bride came along it was a big deal – a chance to work on a big Hollywood size Tim Burton movie! I’d now been animating children’s series for 6 years and this movie felt like the opportunity of a lifetime!

However my showreel was rejected, as was my second attempt and only 6 months later did my third showreel (I kept working on it and updating it) earn me an audition. I had to do a nerve-racking 3 day test, but this time around, I made the right impression. It didn’t end there of course as you need to continue earning the directors trust for him to delegate what sequences you get to animate.

- Can you describe what an average day is like for an animator? Do you specialise in one particular area of it or is there a lot of variety?

On a film you often get typecast and could spend most of your time with a handful of characters. On Corpse Bride I was mostly cast as Barkis the sinister psychopath for 6 months. On Magic Piano I developed how to animate the Flying Machine & spent a good 6 months pushing it to the limits! On children’s series & commercials you can get a lot of variety quickly which is great for learning your craft.

An average day? It always depends on the project and the company you’re working for. Each studio has slightly different working practices so I could answer differently for each production. Here’s a generalisation:

Tim worked extensively on bringing the villainous
Barkis Bittern to life in Corpse Bride

As an animator my role tends to function like that of an actor in a live action film and I must be cast for the role. This is all based on what the director needs and I will work to his/her instructions to try and find the best way to approach the shot. From here I’ll plan the shot out with the camera crew to ensure I’ll be keeping the puppet in focus and making good use of the lighting. Next the model/puppet makers and riggers will help me with any details so that I can create the shot as close to the director’s needs as possible.

A quick note about time keeping: There’s normally pressure to get things done as quickly as possible (for understandable financial reasons!). In fact the key to making beautiful stop motion fast is all in the preparation time. It’s like struggling through an obstacle course when you’d be better off removing the obstacles and just sprinting to the finish line. You’ve got to take responsible decisions to get the balance right.

Once I start animating, you’re kind of on your own – for many many hours until the work is complete. You have to embrace & love the creative freedom to ‘perform’ your shot as a live action actor would. You have specific instructions that you need to get right but at the end of the day you’ll be relying heavily on your instincts. In truth you’re normally under pressure to get it done as quickly as possible!

- Could you tell us a little about your involvement with BreakThru Films? How was it working with Suzie on Peter and the Wolf?

I came onboard Peter & the Wolf about 2 months into the shoot and it was quite an exciting time in those early stages. I was the first animator to come over from outside Poland for the project. Suzie was great and had such a clear vision of how every detail should be. The challenge for me was being able to give her the detailed performance she needed in the limited time we had.

Initially Suzie was hoping I could do lots of work establishing the wolf, but the puppet wasn’t quite ready and I started working with Peter. She liked my close up acting work and basically I think most of my time was spent doing close-ups of Peter face. It was tricky as only the eyeballs could move and Suzie needed very specific emotional reactions from a completely static face! The shot that stands out in my memory is where Peter sees Duck, his childhood pet and closest companion, eaten alive right in front of him. Suzie asked for Peter to display utter shock, then overwhelming horror, followed by a shiver creeping up his spine, climaxing into trembling realisation. All this when the only facial movement I can get is moving the head and eyeballs!

- And what are your thoughts on The Flying Machine?

Oh quite simply it’s the most challenging project I’ve ever worked on! It wasn’t just because I was animation supervisor this time round, though certainly that in itself was an interesting new challenge. It wasn’t just that it was my first time shooting in 3D or that every action had to naturally sync with Chopin’s music. No the film had so many unbelievably ambitious but potentially beautiful sequences. To try and coordinate shots with thousands of flowers blowing in the wind, or epic long shots or the entire junk yard coming to life was complexity on a grand scale - and I didn’t even animate those pieces myself!

Most of my time in the studio was taken up trying to get a 2 metre high flying machine puppet to soar through the sky convincingly. It was a fascinating yet intimidating character/machine/force of nature (we called it all these and more!). We had a lot of practical hurdles to overcome (I sense I’m making a gross understatement here!) and it was really tough getting such a big complicated model to do what I wanted. I sometimes get more satisfaction seeing the shots before post production than after, the only reason being that you can see all the rigs moving that control it. Then you get a very real sense of what a technical accomplishment it was.

But the real beauty of the film was that Director Martin Clapp had worked so hard to make these sequences flow to the music and tell some beautiful moments. Each shot was utterly complex, but you knew it was justified and would be worth it. I’m very very proud of all we did on Magic Piano and feel lucky to have been so heavily involved with it.

- You've most recently completed work on Burton's Frankenweenie, can you tell us a little about the animation approach in this new film?

The cloth will come off Tim's work on
Frankenweenie when it's released this October

Well I can’t give too much about the film away yet, but again I’m really excited to be a part of this gem of a movie. It may initially look similar visually to Corpse Bride, but the animation is much more dynamic and lively. It really tested your timing as an animator. I did a lot of work with central characters Victor and his pet dog Sparky. This meant animating a four legged character who had to behave like a loveable but realistic dog. I looked at live action videos of real dogs regularly to try and get Sparky’s running and mannerisms accurate.

- Do you think there's a bright future for stop-motion animation, and if so, what can explain it's continued appeal?

It looks like we’re starting a golden age of stop motion now. There’s going to be a lot of films coming out of America, as well as several European ones on the cards soon. After a dry spell for children’s series, there’s suddenly many happening in the UK simultaneously. Aardman continue to keep as busy as ever too. We could be looking at 6-10 years rife with stop motion productions.

As for the appeal, I guess it’s the age old tangible quality, that you feel you can touch it and you can see it’s not perfect. I think people find a model set and a puppet very immersive. You can literally walk on that set and more easily imagine being in that world. We all had toys or dolls we had a close attachment to as children & perhaps puppets tap into this primal bond with our imagination.

It’s been such a blast working with so many different talented people and I feel so Iucky I found an art form I love and can earn a living from. I even went to Ray Harryhausen’s house recently to discuss stop motion techniques with him – I mean how cool is that?! It is not an easy career and won’t suit most people but there can be a lot of highlights. I’m trying to settle down more but there’s a lot of stuff tempting me right now. I believe even BreakThru Films aren’t done with stop motion...!

Tim’s website: www.TimAllenAnimation.co.uk

Follow Tim’s adventures in the world of stop motion on Twitter: @TimAnimation

Happy Birthday Peter! - 86 years of Prokofiev's classic

Peter and the Wolf is 86 years old this week - BreakThru take a look at the creation of Prokofiev's family masterpiece - and its less than enthusiastic early reception!

Sergei Prokofiev

On May 2^nd 1936, which has its 86^th anniversary this week, there was a disappointing opening at the Moscow Philharmonic. Sergei Prokofiev had recently enjoyed his 45^th birthday, and had earlier that year settled permanently in a city which had only two decades before been wracked by revolution. Already the acclaimed composer of great operas such as The Fiery Angel (1919-27) and The Love for Three Oranges (1919), he had won acclaim for his revolutionary technical and artistic achievements, as well as notoriety for his dissonant and controversial musical experiments. The composer was given leave to travel from Russia to America, to Germany and to Paris, and when he returned it was as one of the world’s most celebrated artists.

The Moscow Children's Theatre, now the Nataliya Sats Theatre
named after the formidable woman who comissioned Peter and the Wolf

Settling back into life in Moscow, Prokofiev was glad to take a small commission from the Children’s Theatre. He was no doubt convinced to take up the modest project by the strong and determined Nataliya Sats, who ruled the theatre with a strong business sense and absolute artistic determination. Sats was immensely well-respected, and when she asked Prokofiev to produce a work which could fulfil the pedagogical role of introducing children to certain aspects of music and of the orchestra, he was happy to oblige.

The work he produced was a piece which gradually introduced the audience to elements of the orchestra, giving space and identity to each instrument in such a manner as to illuminate their individual characters as well as their purpose within the wider orchestral framework. The work was to incorporate a spoken-word element which told the story of Pioneer Peter who ‘sets wrong to right by defying an elder’ (Simon Morrison, The People’s Artist). This was a simple morality tale with obvious political implications in post-Revolutionary Russia. The 1920’s and 30’s were filled with this kind of children’s literature, which taught a questioning attitude to authority, which demonstrated youth and energy triumphing over ignorance and age. The original text was drafted by poet Nina Sakonskaya, who had considerable experience writing stories in verse for young readers.

An autographed score from its 1938 US premiere

Prokofiev rejected Sakonskaya’s draft, feeling that the story was too rhymed, the rhythm of the words claiming a dominance over the music which was entirely inappropriate to his project. While acknowledging the importance of words in his tale, Prokofiev insisted upon their proper and properly delicate balancing against the music. Too much rhyme and rhythm and their jangling would drown out everything else. Prokofiev, choosing instead to draft the text himself, insisted ‘Words must know their place.’ They found their place in his own version, drafted rapidly under the title How Pioneer Peter Caught the Wolf. The plot borrows from folklore, from propaganda, and even from Disney, reflecting the concerns of animal-based morality shorts such as The Wise Little Hen.

Donald Duck greets The Wise Little Hen (1934), one of
Prokofiev's more surprising inspirations

It took less than a week for Prokofiev to create the piano score, it took a further 10 days for him to complete the orchestration. Peter’s theme came first, the anchor for the adventure, and one which is flexible enough to bend into a march, a pastorale and a waltz as the narrative dictates. The other themes came next, inspired by the key sounds and techniques of the individual instruments. Prokofiev’s lightness of touch, his sympathy for the whimsical imaginations of children and his skill in pictorialism all combine to make for an enchanting tale that belies its roots in didacticism. The enduring and global success of what would come to be known as Peter and the Wolf demonstrates the power of its simple story to move beyond a simple delineation of a pioneer’s responsibilities and virtues into something which resonates with the fundamental thrills, fears and triumphs of childhood.

There was little triumph in that first performance, however, as Prokofiev’s new work was greeted with profound indifference by the stiff adult audience at the Philharmonic. His work seemed minor and unchallenging, the audience had little interest in being educated about the mechanics of the orchestra, or the trials of boyhood. It wasn’t until Prokofiev presented the work at a mixed audience of old and young at the Children’s Theatre that it’s incredible journey to international renown began.

The wolf  in BreakThru's own version of
Prokofiev's classic

Though adult audiences were eventually to warm considerably to the work, giving it an almost unique status among classical music as a piece beloved by audiences of all ages, it is among children that its true magic remains its most potent. When BreakThru present Suzie Templeton’s version with a live accompaniment, the loudest laughs still come from the children, the humour of that final oboe quack from the depths of the wolf’s stomach never fails to bring the house down. Prokofiev’s achievement is a truly universal one, it translates into any language, it rings true with any audience, and shows so sign of falling from its place in the hearts of young and old alike.

- Stewart Pringle

The Rebirth of Frankenweenie and Tim Burton's Stop-Motion Dreamscapes

With his full-fledged zombie dog remake on its way to cinemas, BreakThru Films examines Tim Burton's ongoing love affair with stop-motion animation.

The revivified Frankenweenie makes his
 way to the cinemas this October

It seems fitting for a director whose career is so shrouded in darkness and long creeping shadows that Tim Burton's first film is not merely lost in the mists of time, but may in fact exist only in myth. If Burton's own account in the 2006 book Burton on Burton, his film-making began with The Island of Dr. Agor, a stop-motion animation based on H.G. Wells similarly titled story of genetically modified body-horror The Island of Dr. Moreau, however many have speculated that the film is little more than an April Fools Day prank. Whether fragments eventually emerge or the myth is dispelled, one fact seems certain, that by the tender age of 11 Burton was already deeply interested in the art of animation, just as he had immersed himself in classic American B-movies, Japanese mega-monster extravaganzas as the peculiar camp of Roger Corman's Edgar Allen Poe films, with their lugubrious star Vincent Price. While he was dropping out of Burbank High School he was also expanding his knowledge of film-making, taking in the stop-motion masterpieces of Ray Harryhausen as well as traditional hand-drawn animation. On graduation, Burton proceeded to the California Institute of the Arts, where he was to make his first surviving animated short, the punningly titled Stalk of the Celery Monster.

Dark, disturbing and deliciously comic, Celery Monster
showcased Burton's emerging distinctive style

Though only images and fragments of the film remain extant, the influence of German expressionist cinema and Universal Pictures monster movies is clear in Burton's surreal aesthetic. Shadows leap in points, architecture and design has a touch of the European art nouveau and the characters are irrefutably ghoulish. Burton's film caused quite a stir, and soon caught the eye of Disney Animation Studios, who rapidly hired Burton as an apprentice animator. He cut his teeth at Disney creating story-boards and concept art for a number of their less successful early 80's animations, but it was with his first solo film, 1982's animated short Vincent that Burton was able to indulge his passion for gothic horror and his admiration for stop motion animation and its potential to realize the playful yet unsettling aesthetic of his pencil drawings. Though Celery Monster had been successful in capturing some of the scratchy, nightmarish intensity of Burton's drawing style, the slightly jerky, marionette-like quality of stop-motion, suggestive of the early days of silent cinema and the expressionist horrors of F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu or Robert Weine's Cabinet of Dr. Caligari gave Vincent an instantly recognizable yet utterly fresh aesthetic.

Vincent is haunted by animated visions from Burton's
twisted imagination

Adapted from one of Burton's own poems, Vincent was originally intended as a children's book, however the director was afforded a modest budget to create the short film, and in many ways the aesthetic which he established in it would come to define much of his work through the 1980's and beyond. Though Burton's next film, the original live-action Frankenweenie was judged a money-wasting flop by Disney executives and led to Burton's firing, he was soon to return to a wilder visual style with the major cinematic hits Pee-Wee's Big Adventure and Beetlejuice.

The original Frankenweenie has gained something of
a cult following despite a disastrous initial reception

Both of these mega-hits brought Burton back to the world of stop-motion animation, which they used to add an exaggerated Tex Avery-style strand of mayhem to the live action proceedings that surrounded them. In Beetlejuice, the central couple who find themselves suddenly thrust into the Other Side are trapped in their house by a monstrous plasticine sandworm, and at one point twist their faces into grotesque elastic monster-masks in order to perform their 'bio-exorcism'. The stop-motion effects in Beetlejuice contribute hugely to its success and its ability to maintain a light carnivalesque visual tone despite the themes of death, suicide and the bleak Kafka-esque bureaucracy of the afterlife.

The stop-motion sand worm strikes in Beetlejuice

The success of these two films, both critical and commercial, reinvigorated major studio interest in Burton, and he went on to direct two blockbuster Batman films and the surprise smash-hit Edward Scissorhands, an elegiac gothic romance which saw Burton's dark aesthetic clash brilliantly against the pastel and picket-fence world of American suburbia. It was in the writing and production of Disney's A Nightmare Before Christmas, however, that Burton would return to stop-motion animation in a film which was to become his trade-mark. Part Christmas-film, part Halloween-horror, part-musical and all rendered in exquisite stop-motion, Burton's film was practically a love-letter to the medium, and is often credited with sparking a major resurgence of interest in its potential for film-makers and advertisers. 

Henry Selick and Tim Burton with the set of
A Nightmare Before Christmas

The story of the King of Halloween's bungled attempts to try his hand at Santa's role, it involved the use of highly stylized puppets, performing against a backdrop composed of the twisted hills and spiked gratings of Burton's idiosyncratic drawing style. Burton chose this style of animation partially to reference the American favourite Rankin/Bass Productions, whose holiday specials included stop-motion renditions of classic stories such as The Little Drummer Boy. This gave the film a direct relevance to those audiences which had grown up watching these classic Christmas treats, and made Burton's subversion of Holiday iconography all the more delicious.

Still from Rankin/Bass's Little Drummer Boy, a far-cry from the
twisted world of Jack and Sally

A similar style of stop-motion animation was used in Burton's co-production James and the Giant Peach, where Burton's flair for the macabre was kept on a tighter leash, but which nevertheless displayed some masterful animation, particularly in the huge flock of seagulls straining to keep the peach afloat. James returned to the mixed-medium approach of Beetlejuice in its use of stop-motion to bring to life the more fantastical elements of the young boy's adventures once he has entered the peach, while his more prosaic life with Aunt Sponge and Aunt Spiker was presented with live action. It's a successful approach which acknowledges the slightly numinous quality of the form, its suggestion of a world of the imagination or the unconscious which exists at right-angles to prosaic reality.

There was a cameo for Jack Skellington in Burton's next
stop-motion animation, James and the Giant Peach

Though budgetary concerns scuppered Burton's ambition to realize the alien invaders of Mars Attacks! with stop-motion, he was soon to return to the form in a major way with the creation of dark fairy-tale Corpse Bride. A conscious successor to Nightmare Before Christmas, Corpse Bride took the same aesthetic and animation style and set it to a more serious and in many ways more adult tale of love and loss. Corpse Bride was also the first Burton film to feature Tim Allen, who has worked with BreakThru  on both The Magic Piano and The Flying Machine, on its animation team; he has recently returned to work with Burton on Frankenweenie.

Burton chose a more muted and cold aesthetic for Corpse Bride, demonstrating
the flexibility of stop-motion and its ability to achieve a variety of tones

Corpse Bride was a big hit for Burton, and though his subsequent films displayed a stronger reliance on computer generated animation techniques, the upcoming Frankenweenie is a clear indication that he still holds stop-motion in the very highest regard. Just over a week ago another exciting announcement indicated that Burton's next major project will also be of interest to fans of traditional animation, as the director indicated that he was looking forward to moving into pre-production on a new ghoulish stop-motion feature titled Night of the Living. Cheerfuly tweaking the conceit of George A Romero's zombie classic, this new film boasts a script from Burton's Dark Shadows collaborator Seth Grahame-Smith and is expected to go before the cameras in 2013.

As well as proving one of Hollywood's most bankable directors, with a slew of box-office smashes and oodles of critical acclaim to his credit, Tim Burton is also worthy of respect for his constant and vocal championing of the magic of stop-motion and other hand-animation techniques. Time-consuming, labour-intensive and often expensive, these could easily have fallen from fashion and from the radars of major studios had they not boasted such a credible and imaginative advocate.

- Stewart Pringle

The Études, Fantasia and the magic of musical education

How we hope The Études can help introduce children to the magic of classical music...

A still from Chopin's Drawings by Dorota Kobiela, set to
Chopin's Opus 25, No 2

Music education in the UK is something BreakThru feels very strongly about. Ensuring that children are fired up about the magic of music is one of the driving forces behind the Études project, in which the music of Chopin's elegant piano studies is paired up with a virtuoso animation, and we are currently exploring a variety of ways to aid teachers in the classroom and parents at home to reach out to their children's musical potential.

The Études are 27 short piano pieces by Frédéric Chopin intended to both advance a new technical form of playing (Études translates as 'studies') as well as offering pleasure and variety in their own right. BreakThru Films founder Hugh Welchman became interested in their potential during his immersion in the world of Prokofiev during the production of Peter and the Wolf. Their beauty and the range of emotions they conjure made them the perfect fit for Welchman's desire to create a varied body of cutting-edge animations in a variety of differing mediums. Each of Chopin's pieces is a challenging task for any pianist, and BreakThru sought to work with visual artists and animators who were themselves challenging and pushing formal boundaries.

The minimalist madness of Anne-Kristin Berge's Pl.Ink,
 set to Opus 10, No 4

The Études can be viewed separately, as each tells an individual story, or as a set, as many of the individual films share aesthetic or thematic elements in common. They are intended to appeal to children, containing bright colours, attractive characters and constant movement and rhythm, but also to resonate with adults. Scarecrow tells the pathos-filled story of a soldier's death in Poland's November Revolution, while Chopin's Drawings gives us an insight into the composer's incredible childhood through moving sketches which emerge and blend through his elegant musical notation. As with Peter and the Wolf the Études seek to offer an engaging and fulfilling experience for audiences of all ages. Pl.Ink and Fat Hamster both use vibrant physical comedy to tell simple stories which capture the frenetic and energetic tone of the music. They show that classical music does not merely have to be beautiful and life-affirming, but that it can also be playful and genuinely comic.

Fat Hamster by Adam Wyrwas,
set to Opus 25, No 8

The clear ancestor of the Études is Walt Disney's ground-breaking Fantasia, produced in 1940, in a world which was scarcely ready to accept the collision of animation and classical music. As Disney historian Hugh Trimble eloquently argues in his blog, this was also perceived as a clash of low and high culture. Fantasia is set within a mythical theatre, where the 'greatest hits' of classical music are presented in a variety of animated settings and styles. It was intended as a showcase for Disney's multi-talented animators, but also to promote his conviction that the worlds of music and animation were never far apart. Disney had been producing his 'Silly Symphonies' for 12 years, and indeed Fantasia started life as one such vignette, the now famous 'Sorcerer's Apprentice' sequence. Fantasia demonstrated that like classical music animation could take a simple motif or idea, and owing to the elasticity of the form, twist it into surprising or inspiring narratives.

Mickey as Paul Dukas' 'Sorcerer's Apprentice'
in Disney's Fantasia (1940)

Owing to the popularity of Fantasia since its release, and most particularly the life its short segments found on television as regular components of the studio's popular 'Disney Time', it has offered generations of children their introduction to classical music. Mickey's antics have demonstrated that classical music does not have to be dry or dusty, that it does not require a musical education but rather inspires one, and we hope that the Études project can provide similar inspiration for a new generation of musicians and music lovers.

- Stewart Pringle