LEARNING REPORT: THE TECHNIQUES AND HISTORY BEHIND DOCUMENTARY ANIMATION

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The Techniques and History behind Documentary Animation

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The process of exploring into documentary animation set out to help structure my understanding of emotive filming by combining fact and fiction together, to evidence through imagination what cannot always be factually shown through a documentary. The research delved into the basic history of documentary animation and the skill set needed to make a simple 2D film. This includes camera angles, lighting, colour symbolisation, character movement and development.

The inspiration behind my topic revolved around the book, ‘Animation: an Interdisciplinary Journal’ (Buchan, S. 2011) as it provided an in depth knowledge by filmmakers into what factors make a powerful documentary animation for beginner animators, such as myself, and how the genre has dramatically shaped animation through history. In essence, the basis of documentary animation teaches us how the past can re-join us in the present.

 

The Growth of Documentary Animation

 

According to (Buchan, S. 2011, P.203). in the editorial of ‘Animation: an Interdisciplinary Journal,’ “observers of the arts have witnessed a ‘documentary turn’ that entails a shift in creative methods to include documentary aesthetics, reflexivity and an increase focus on the personal and private issues of both its subject makers.”

The progression and growing interest formulates this idea that parallels to that of journalism. People want to share their experiences more due to the growth of acceptance of opinion, and the evolution of animation production through computer software has made it easier for them to do so in an imaginative yet memorable manner.

Documentary animation can range from anything, from science to economics, politics to religion, war to education and welfare. Essentially, it discourses into serious matters to speak the truth of ones actions and consequences.

 

Existing Animated Documentaries

 

In agreement to this discussion, my animation focuses on the very personal and private issues of anxiety and depression, which is why the form of a documentary animation has been chosen to explore it with. As discovered from the earliest existing documentary, “The Sinking of the Lusitania” (McCay, 1918), documentary methods, such as dates, maps, and interviews can factually explain a story to the best degree, whilst animation can fill in the gaps of memory and what the event could have looked like.

For example, this film responds to the propaganda of war with a German submarine torpedoing RMS Lusitania with drawings of what the devastating event could have looked like combined with factually correct dates and death counts.

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Essentially, the genre aids the reflection of ones experience, which is why it is fundamentally used to focus on factual personal issues rather than fictional ones. Another example would be, “My Dad” (Ermitage, M. 2014) who in his synopsis writes how the film ‘shows the destructive influence a father’s judgmental character can have on a young boy’s life.’

The documentary animation was a visual response to local street cultures in social medias. Its raw style and colours symbolise the conflict seen through a young boys eyes (by being shot at a low camera angle) that can be emotionally and mentally damaging but near impossible to evidence without animation. (Barbu, N 2015) from Animation-Magazine commentated that, “In only five minutes, the film manages to tell a story that feels strongly relevant to our times, “My Dad” is particularly attuned to issues of British identity.”

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In the case of my project, the animation is displayed in an interview style, facts regarding the places to receive help and the animation will influence the emotion one feels but cannot explain. Interviews record an individual’s personal experience and enhance the personal theme to a film that audiences can relate to and therefore be interested in.

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‘Actuality’ is the term referred to for an interview; it is raw film footage about real people, real life events in contrast to actors and scripted stories. Interviews pre date the early 1900s in the production of early films, however the experimentation of documentary animation over the decades has only begun to perfect this idea of voice-overs and constructing a realistic animated interview.

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Fatou (2015) Depression, Anxiety and Me [Online] Available from: http://www.thestylenarrative.com/narratives/82-depression-me#startOfPage

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When drawing voices, (Goss, J 2011, P.249). from ‘Animation: an Interdisciplinary Journal,’ notes that, “ It is easy to cut out the ‘ums and ‘uh’s’ of an interview, but leaving flaws reveal a lot about a person and the readiness they have to speak their mind.” Personally, the disembodied voiceover reveals a lot of how we imagine a person to look like and can often surprise us when we are wrong about our own assumptions. Sometimes, the best way to design an animated character is to listen to the raw footage of an interview and let our minds magine the hidden identity behind the person speaking.

Animating a voice this way has the advantage of protecting someone’s identity when discussing the subject of danger, such as love, depression or pain. An example of this would be the animated documentary, ‘Survivors’ (Sofian, s 1997), which blurs the animated heads of women speaking about their abusive experiences. The effect makes this animation all so more surreal when representing ones life. The overall ability to hide ones identity through animation increased the popularity of it being used as a genre form for documentaries.

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Modern generations of documentary animations have challenged and manipulated this concept of responding to actual real-life events however, in producing documentary animations from completely fictional stories utilizing facts in order for them to appear real and therefore, be engaging towards audiences.

An example would be the documentary animation, ‘Surfs Up’ (Jenkins and Darren 2007), which explored creating a documentary for children with character-designed penguins that loved to surf.

Their resourcing of fabricated evidence became a great inspiration in distinguishing how the right applied camera editing’s like ‘Polaroid’ and ‘Instamatic’ can provide the illusion of archived videos. For example, a blurred yet colourful photo like a Polaroid picture could portray that of a happy memory, whereas the photographic style of an instamatic may influence a distant culture or past that has been captured.

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Essentially, photographic styles highlighted how color can enhance the historical theme of something. In addition, it demonstrated how camera angling was essential in supporting the documentary nature of the film. (Bedrew, R. 2007, P.2.2). noted in ‘The Making of an Animated Documentary,’ “integration of a live-action hand held camera into the virtual world allowed the movie to be ‘shot’ in a documentary style.” In other words, camera angles are vital in setting a scene, telling a story, creating tension and an atmosphere.

Traditional camera filming techniques focus on visual composition by the type of shot used, as each shot produces a different outcome. For example, extreme long shots would be that of major buildings or landscapes to establish scenes, where as close ups would focus on the head and neck of a single character to emphasize the importance of their facial expression towards audiences.

The joining together of individual shots is referred to as a ‘transition’ and is a vital aspect of animation in ensuring the flow of a story. Once again, camera angles enhance the documentary modes of engagement both pensive and investigative.

Camera angles, fundamentally, can help audiences identify the form of an animation, in this case an interview style would include the majority of close ups as it is a very personal experience. According to (Nichols, 2008, P.281), in ‘Animation: an Interdisciplinary Journal,’ “A film maker is the one caught up in the sequence of images; it is his or her fantasy that these images embody.”

 

History of the Camera 

 

The history of the camera starts with William Henry Fix Talbot, the first person to invent a photographic device in the 1800’s. However, it was Eadweard Muybridge who was able to utilize this tool to capture movement that the naked eye could not register on its own. Muybridge was able to do this by capturing every movement of a ‘running horse’ (1887) in a study called the ‘Sallie Gardner at the Gallop.”

The study utilized twenty-four cameras thus meaning twenty-four framed shots to investigate if a horse lifted all four hooves off the ground when galloping, as many artists previously were unable to recreate a factually correct drawing of a horse in movement due to their speed being too fast for the eye to fully register. This is where the 24 FPS idea was first formed.

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The experimentation after this breakthrough led to other photogenic devices up until the early 1900’s, with the production of the Stereoscope, Thaumatrope, Phenakistiscope, Zoetrope, Praxinoscope and so on. The development of these photogenic devices allowed users to document what they saw and later use it for animation reference. Essentially, it was the start of the documentary lifestyle in animation.

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1. Stereoscope (Sir Charles Wheatstone 1838)

 

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2. Thaumatrope (John Ayrton 19th Century)

 

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 3. Phenakistiscope (Joseph Plateau 1832)

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4. ZoeTrope William George Horner (1834)

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5. Praxinoscope (1877 Charles-Émile Reynaud)

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Regarding the basics of the camera, a typical TV animation is made up of twenty-five frames per second (FPS), with motion pictures being twenty-four FPS of static images that merge together to create a smooth movement. Halving the frame rate to twelve frames per second causes the film movement to become erratic.

Within animation, achieving the right timing for a story plot or a character’s movement is essential when achieving realism within a fantasy, especially if you are trying to re-create the integration of a live action hand held camera to shoot a ‘documentary’ style. The frame rates need to be taken into consideration, with additional frames for an action movement, the slower it will appear, with less the speed is dramatically increased. A live action camera will flip between jagged and smooth movements.

Analysing my own animatic, I have learnt that you need a balance in which the speed moves quickly to keep the audience engaged but also have moments of a slow build up so everything can be taken in. For example, in the case of my project the girl gradually succumbs to the struggle of depression, suddenly reaching a breaking point, as she becomes anorexic, before slowly recovering again through the help of a doctor.

The balance of speed ensures a developed dramatic build up that keeps audiences engaged before reaching a pinnacle that knocks them off their seats. This is referred to as a plot line, which normally replicates the graph line of two ascending mountains, one bigger than the other.

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The Realism behind Documentary Animation

 

The focus of any animation is realism, but with documentary animations in particular you are responding and recreating an actual event and therefore the study of movement is a key aspect. Realism of a character’s movement can be identified and recreated through the study of ‘the twelve principles of animation,’ according to Disney animators Johnson and Thomas (1981).

The purpose behind the principles was so that animators could produce the illusion of their characters abiding to the basic law of physics regarding weight, gravity, speed and emotional timing to gain that overall realism. The twelve principles focus on squash and stretch, anticipation, staging, pose to pose, follow through and overlapping action, slow in and slow out, arc, secondary action, timing, exaggeration, solid drawing, and appeal.

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In contrast, the realism behind the colour, medium choice, and character design can be completely absurd in animation despite being the genre of a documentary. For example, the documentary animation, ‘Marcel, King of Tervuren’ (Schroeder, T 2012), follows the story of a boy’s cu-cu surviving bird flu in Belgium (2011). It responds to drawing the cu-cu and people through expressive lines to depict freedom (like the symbolization of birds), movement and emotion. In addition, the application of block colours and lines add to its depth and boldness. Highly unrealistic visually, however realistically empathetic in the way of showing emotion through striking brush stokes.

 

 

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The combination of realistic movement and visual imagination through medium choice and application challenge the hypothesis between reality and fiction, which is what documentary animation is all about. According to (Takeshi, T. 2011, P.236) from ‘Animation: an Interdisciplinary Journal,’ “material objects, material bodies, and media such as photography, film, video, paper documents, and digital newspaper photographs surround the subject matter and give it meaning.”

In other words, every application has a symbolism behind it, and has been utilized to emphasize something within the storyline. For instance, “My Dad” (Ermitage, M. 2014) applies a range of medium within the animation such as paint, charcoal, newspapers to enhance its meaning about cultural diversity in the tabloids.

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Another example would be the documentary animation, ‘A Kiss Deferred’ (Kulidzan, N. 2015) The composition includes mainly negative space and a simple white background to influence this idea of a memory in the animation, with details missing to highlight this sense of having a fuzzy mind, only remembering the most important aspects of that day.

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“The Sinking of the Lusitania” (McCay, 1918) was one of the earliest animated documentaries that used the ‘Cel method’ in which, images could be drawn on a transparent sheet, painted on its reverse side and placed on a static background to achieve an expressive finish, whilst reducing the time needed to be spent in having the same image repeatedly drawn and colour filled, (even if it was in black and white).

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Due to the darkness of this animation, which revolved around the events of 1,198 Americans dying in 1915, McCay utilized a black and white graphic style to specifically enhance the propaganda theme of death in this film, as children and other passengers drowned in murky waters. In addition, transitioning the film with alternative shots gave the impression of this documentary animation being a newsreel, enhancing the genre form. Fundamentally, his film merged live action with cartooning techniques.

 

Before digital layering in programs like Photoshop, the technique of ‘Cel Layering’ was incredibly popular amongst documentary animations, especially that of photographs being used as static backgrounds with images drawn on top to enhance the factual aspect behind the film. An example of this technique would be the documentary animation, ‘“All in this together” Are Benefits ever a Lifestyle Choice?’ (Dole Animators, 2013).

The static background of a run-down town adds to this sense of a darker realism in the animation, highlighting the avoided issues that are growing in our society. The effect of this mixed media provides an emotional and factual 3D depth to the storyline, which instantly draws your eyes around and into the film image.

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Reflecting on medium choice, I believe that imagery can speak louder than words after researching into the link between art movement and documentary animation. Many artists use colours to symbolise emotion, such as Vincent Van Goth in paintings such as, ‘Sunflowers’ (1888). We instinctively regard yellow as a happy colour and in contrast blue represents sadness. The way an animator utilises this symbolisation can alter the mood of a film instantly, which is why it is so important.

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Symbolisation can also enhance a factual matter, for instance when describing the prejudice and hate in ‘My Dad’ (Ermitage, M. 2014) the application of the color red is applied as a result, as audiences we instantaneously link it to the feeling of rage. (Skoller, J. 2011, P.211). from ‘Animation: an interdisciplinary level’ regards this theory, stating that: “to allow speculative and subjective imaging in situations for which there are no images or language to express experiences or a state of mind.” In other words, situations that cannot be evidenced or expressed by language can instead be symbolized through other means like color to depict ones feelings and emotions.

This concept is known as a documentary’s ‘expanded field’ when amalgamations of experimental medium and cinema are placed with that of documentaries. According to art critic, (Krauss, R. 1979, P.382). “Documentary animation cannot be bound up with any single set of forms, techniques, and genres, or with a particular medium.” Documentary animation has essentially, adapted due to contemporary art movements since the 1990’s in response to forming the hybrids of animation that create a revelation in our historical world through different artistic representations.

The purpose behind this range of aesthetic use is to help audiences emotionally register factual events. More so, this can also be achieved in audio aesthetics to evoke a greater understanding of emotion such as, uncertainty, anxiety or hope amongst audiences.

This technique is demonstrated in several modern day animated documentaries, such as ‘Still Born’ by Sandzén, A (2014), which focuses on anger, loss and sorrow. The documentary animation uses the sound of a heartbeat within the background of the film to highlight the fragility and fear the protagonist constantly feels as she awaits the birth of her child, which we later discover is a still born.

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Similarly, (Schroeder, T. 2012) who produced, Marcel, King of Tervuren uses non-diagetic sounds such as a humorous first person commentary mixed with ominous background music to create an uneasy atmosphere. The combination matches the film’s subject matter of a funny bird in a daunting time period of illness. The outcome influences how people have the ability to make the best out of situations where many others would struggle, and it gives those who watch the animation the ability to smile also, despite being in a dangerous situation.

Overall, the progression and amalgamation of social history, art movement, cameras and technology has shaped documentary animation into the popular film genre that it is today, achieving an emotionally deeper and more relatable outcome for audiences compared to just animation or documentary filming on its own.

The combination of reality and fiction allows people to evidence the invisible, such as emotion in a factual manner to achieve a better understanding and awareness about the people around us, and the World we live in, albeit slowly but effectively, through both hand drawn and digitally generated imagery.

According to (Honess, R. 2011, P.229). in ‘Animation: an Interdisciplinary Journal, “animated documentary broadens the epistemological potential of documentary by expanding the range of what and how we can learn.” In my opinion, the concept of being able to mix naturalism and expression in this form of genre has been a massive inspiration and eye opener regarding ways in which I can explore more sensitive topics, such as depression and anxiety through factual yet sympathetic techniques.

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