Influences part 4: Jean-Luc Godard

Continuing on from yesterdays post about Tarantino and Godard, today I will mention some of the elements from various Godard films that are of interest to me, and that I tried to incorporate into my graduation film.

Within A Bout de Souffle (1959) the most notable experimental feature is the jump cut (1:50-1:58) , and it is probably the most important feature from Godard's work that has had an influence on my graduation film.

In Bande a Part (1964) Godard created several quirky set-pieces that are rather experimental but which also add a playful charm to the overall film, such as a 'minutes silence' in a loud cafe. I find these quirky features to be really rewarding but they seem to be missing from most modern films, so I would like to try incorporating similar things into my own film work.
Despite these wonderful quirky features, Anna Karina's beguiling performance as the naive Odile is for me the defining feature of Bande a Part. I always lose myself within Karina's youthful charm (even after however many repeat viewings).... And if I could capture just a tiny proportion of the essence of her performance for my own films then I would be a happy chappy!

I really like the futuristic styling in Alphaville (1965), but my favourite feature is one long continuous shot (2:39-4:39) as the camera follows the protagonist as he walks up to the reception and registers, enters two side-by-side glass elevators (one used by the cameraman, the other by the protagonist), goes up a few floors, out the elevators, along long corridors and around several corners, then up to a door. The whole sequence lasts 2 minutes, but the setting makes this shot feel natural and justified - whereas it would look terrible in a different type of film.
Godard plays with these drawn-out single shots throughout Weekend (1967) - where shots regularly run for at least 5 minutes, and a couple drag on for up to 14 minutes! Alfred Hitchcock even tried to film all 77 minutes of ROPE as if it were one continuous shot! I always find this style of shot quite amusing, and I tried incorporating it into my graduation film, but I did not have a shot suitable for this style - so wherever I tried it the shot would look really monotonous and just destroyed any excitement in my story.

Of all the elements in my graduation film so far, it is the jump cuts that I have found most intriguing. There are some scenes in my film where the quick dramatic montage style of jump cuts is not suitable for the nature of my story, but with conservative use of the jump cut I think it will be really effective.


Here are some links about Godard:
Extensive information regarding Jean-Luc Godard at Senses of Cinema

Article in The Guardian, August 2008: One Big Act

Article in The New York Times, August 1985: SCREEN: 'DETECTIVE,' BY JEAN-LUC GODARD

Influences part 3: Quentin Tarantino

I am really surprised by how much my artistic interests have developed over the course of my studies at eca. Three years ago I knew very few artists and artworks from outside American/British mainstream culture, and I had little enthusiasm for learning about anything different from what I was already aware of.
These days my artistic interests have changed drastically, so much so that I now find little of interest in American/British culture, and very few of my artistic interest are from American or British contemporary culture. It has got to the point where I now have no problem with criticising the work of Pixar (whom I considered almost God-like in 1st and 2nd Year), and I no longer worry about having to sit through an old, black and white, poor quality, foreign film that I've never heard of. It is perhaps unexpected then that Quentin Tarantino is such an influence on me, but here is why...

Tarantino successfully combined his own interest in elements of cultural cinema (like Film Noir, B-Movies, and French New Wave) with modern mainstream Hollywood, and he ended up producing highly individual films that motivated me to learn about different forms of cinema. He is therefore most responsible for my eclectic range of film influences.
Pulp Fiction in particular is his most important film to me because it sparked my interest in cultural cinema. The film is best known for the non-linear timeline that intertwines so many contrasting characters, but as is noted in the director's commentary, Pulp Fiction owes an awful lot to various films from the past. During the directors commentary Tarantino regularly relates so many interesting elements of his film to the work of French New Wave director Jean-Luc Godard.


Godard is responsible for several of those random quotes that I heard during 1st and 2nd Year at eca such as "film is the truth at 25 times a second" and "of course a film should have a beginning, middle, and end, but not neccesarily in that order", yet I never cared about who Godard was or what he did until hearing about him so often through Tarantino.
After spending part of the summer holidays in 2007 watching my Tarantino DVD box set, I began 3rd Year at eca with a strong desire to see some of the French New Wave films by Godard. My first Godard film was Bande a Part (1964) and I fell in love with it almost instantly (coincidentally, Tarantino named his production company, Band Apart, after Godard's film). Thanks to Tarantino's interest in the work of Godard and the extensive DVD collection in the eca library, Godard is now one my own most influential directors.
These two directors are responsible for the many other cultural films that I am now interested in, and I owe several design elements of my graduation film to the works of Tarantino and Godard.

If only I could get a dance sequence into my film...


Notes:
- Quentin Tarantino's debut film, Reservoir Dogs (1991), "loudly announced Tarantino as a talent to be reckoned with and remains one of the most important films ever made" (Reservoir Dogs DVD sleeve notes, 2004). And he has since directed Pulp Fiction, Jackie Brown, Kill Bill volume 1 & 2, and Deathproof.
- Jean-Luc Godard's debut film, A Bout de Souffle - AKA Breathless - (1959), "spearheaded the French New Wave of film making, recognised as one of the most stylish and influential movements in cinema" (A Bout de Souffle DVD sleeve notes, 2000). Other notable Godard films include Bande a Part, Weekend, and Alphaville (Aki Kaurismaki, another of my most influential directors, named his own production company, Villealfa, after this Godard film).

Influences part 2: Aleksandr Petrov

Russian animator Aleksandr Petrov is an artist whose work you either know or you don't know: his style is so stunning and unique that it's almost impossible to mistake for anyone else.
He won the Academy Award for Animated Short Film in 1999 with The Old Man And The Sea, and has been nominated for the same award in 1990, 1998, and 2007 for The Cow, Mermaid, and My Love. (He also made a Chirstmas advert for Coca-Cola featuring Santa taking a drink of Coke - but that is his least stunning piece of work!)

Petrov creates his films by painting a frame of animation onto a single pane of glass and then editing the painting with his fingers to create the next frame of animation, and so on, and so on, for about 3 years at a time... The results are astonishing, and if you were to only ever see one piece of animation, I would suggest something by Petrov.

I first heard of Petrov's work last year, but I was instantly charmed by the quality of his painting style (an Impressionistic form of Romantic Realism), the quality of the animation movement, as well as the dynamic camera movements and morphs that occur throughout his films to both condense time and create more interesting transitions between scenes. His films have a brilliant and unique visual style that deserves to be seen by everyone, but I think his commercials are even greater! Pascal Blais Studios in Canada have some of his commercials available for viewing on their website. (Follow this link to their website, click 'Directors' and go to 'Alexander Petrov', then click on the various thumbnails along the bottom to view each astonishing clip - I would particularly recommend the United Airlines The Night clip to the right of the Coke Santa thumbnail).

Check this short clip of Aleksandr Petrov's latest film, My Love (2006), to realise why he is my favourite animator (if not one of my favourite artists).

For those that are interested, here are some of his films available to view on YouTube:
My Love (2006)

The Old Man And The Sea (1999)

And here are some interesting links about Petrov and his work:
Wikipedia entry about Petrov:

AWM article titled: The Old Man And The Sea: Hands Above The Rest?

Article titled: My Love: Animation Urges into Psychology

An interview with Petrov for Animation World Magazine (AWM)

Article in RussiaToday titled: Oscar-winning director reveals secrets of his art

Article in RussiaToday titled: Russian animator up for second Oscar

Influences part 1: eca animation dept

The opening post dedicated to my artistic influences is in regard to the animation department at Edinburgh College of Art, because without it my knowledge of animation would barely reach past anything further than Disney, Hanna-Barbera, and The Simpsons.
Through the tutors and my classmates I have learnt about the wide variety of ways in which animation can be used, and how animated works can look like something other than an anthropomorphic blob of flat colour with a black outline... For example: the cool music videos by Michel Gondry; the highly artistic Paint on Glass films of Aleksandr Petrov; the beguiling films of Yuri Norstein; and the abstract craziness of Norman McLaren or Len Lye...
I have been able to work on many graduation films directed by my friends in the years above me, which has given me a lot of experiences and useful advice about how to make my own graduation film this year. Many of those friends have, in some way, helped to develop my graduation film (through their art, their advice, or both), so here I shall praise them:

Erica Weiste:
I did most of the scanning and colouring on Erica's lovely little graduation film The Gardener. Erica has one of the nicest drawing styles I have seen in animation; I just wish the Photoshopping didn't hide the beautiful line quality - but it's still a really nice film. The Gardener has been screened at the Flip Festival in Wolverhampton (England) and at the Kettupäivät Film Festival in Helsinki (Finland) both during November 2008. Working with Erica throughout the last year was a wonderful experience, and I would love to work with her again in the future.
My work with Erica last year has given me an extremely accurate timetable for all the scanning that I will need to do in my own film [does anyone want to test it to the nearest minute?], and she introduced me to some of the animators who I have found to be influential on my own work - such as Piotr Dumala and Michael Dudok de Wit. While I was searching for Dumala's version of Crime & Punishment (after Erica told me about it) I stumbled across the live-action film by Finnish director Aki Kaurismäki - who has also become a big film influence on me recently!

Alison Cross:
Ally made the beautiful 2D stopmotion film Tale Soup (in a style loosely similar to the work of Yuri Norstein). Although not complete, the film is visually stunning and is my favourite from last year [sorry to disappoint the rest of her class!].
Ally had a lot of great story ideas, was always friendly and approachable (even after spending a full month working RIDICULOUSLY hard on her film prior to the deadline), and she is also [to some extent] responsible for the sarcastic humour that I developed throughout the last year ("Ally, I've bought you a cake for your birthday. But I ate it"). This sarcastic humour culminated with my pitch for a short film called The Invisible Cat "where you see nothing, it's just a blank screen... but you might hear some cat sounds"). As I have written in an earlier post, Ally had a lot of those cool 3D bookcover photographs by Thomas Allen as research, and she did some early visual tests for her film using illustrations by Arthur Rackham - whose work recently influenced the drawing style of the storyboards for my graduation film.

Jessica Cope:
Jess has a really cool expressionist style in all her artwork, which I have always found really interesting. Her influences (as listed on the BBC Film Network) include Edward Gorey, Brian Froud, and Tim Burton - each of which I have found relevant to the development of my graduation film to various extents. I helped Jess with her 3rd Year museum project for the 20 Years Of Pixar exhibition when I was in 2nd Year, and through that work I learnt how to set-up the scanner for animation, how to colour frames of animation with Photoshop, and how her film would later get edited together in Premiere and AfterEffects (things I would otherwise not have known much about until at least a year later!) Jess' great graduation film The Owl House was a big influence on my desire to produce a 3D stopmotion film this year, but the story for my film no longer suits that technique, so regrettably I won't be doing it this year...
(Jess can share with Ally part of the responsibility for my sarcastic humour leading up to The Invisible Cat; so thanks you two, I really enjoyed last year!)

Lynn Gerlach:
Lynn came to eca on exchange from HGK in Luzern (Switzerland) for two terms of 3rd Year while I was in 2nd Year. Lynn was not here for very long, but she left a big impressions on me - I was fascinated with the film she made for the museum project (a 2D stopmotion style like Tale Soup but with a Japanese theme), she gave me lots of critical/interesting feedback about animation that I have not had from anyone else in Edinburgh, and she introduced me to the conceptual animations of Paul Bush (a part-time tutor at HGK) which uses various unusual techniques that I would like to experiment with at some point in the future.

Julia Petitperrin:
Since helping Julia with her graduation film Another Nasty Little Character last year I have realised that it can offer me a lot of relevant experience for my graduation film. Julia used an unusual colouring method for her film - of rendering everything in a minimalist grey/black tone with crosshatched pencil or ballpoint pen over a plain white background.
She was animating on 12" animation paper, whereas I plan on animating with a 35mm field size, but Julia's loose rendering style is directly linked to the look of my film. The colouring is voluminous and the lines are very noticeable, yet rather than looking messy and abstract, it created a very vibrant aesthetic for the film. With my film I plan on drawing with ballpoint pens on a much smaller scale than Julia, therefore on the cinema screen my film should also look really vibrant. However I am slightly concerned that my drawing style could become too vibrant and therefore make the film look really abstract - as I had initially feared would happen to Julia's film.

I will also mention:
- Lora Jensen whose graduation film Harold & Margaret I worked on while in 2nd Year, and which was recently screened at the Exposures Film Festival in Manchester. Lora's colouring technique inspired some of the colouring techniques that I later experimented with in my own work during 3rd Year.

- Bob Robinson and his graduation film STYX, which was shown at the Edinburgh International Film Festival in June 2008.
Bob recently e-mailed me some photos of the miniature sets that he built for his film and also gave me some advice about how to do it effectively because I was planning on incorporating a similar technique into my film.

- Ewan Green who has been a great classmate since 1st Year, always has lots of constructive feedback, and was a strong director when we worked together on a project for the 2007 Degree Show in 2nd Year.

- Our tutor Alan Mason who almost always persists with his Friday Film Show, and which has over the course of the past 3 years slowly been responsible for me spending a ridiculous amount of time and money buying/renting/watching films. I barely had any films on VHS or DVD when I was in 1st Year at eca, and my cultural acknowledgment of film back then probably went from the odd mainstream cinema release to Aardman animations on TV with little else in between! Nowadays I have a bookcase stacked full (and then some more) with DVDs and a few VHS tapes of films from countries including: Japan, Finland, Germany, and France - with directors such as Kaurismäki, Tarantino, Godard, Hitchcock, and Burton... (Don't ask me what my favourite type of film is, because thanks to Alan I now watch just about anything)!

- Dr Jonny Murray for the last two years of CVCS seminars/lectures. [In 1st Year and 2nd Year I never thought I would want to thank somebody who tries to lecture us about Modernism and Postmodernism and other random modern art nonsense; but for these last two years Jonny has been providing us with much more stimulating seminars focusing on Film & Animation]. 3rd Year's What's Up Doc? Introducing Animation module was interesting, and the big bad 4th Year project was great! Not only did the lectures/seminars get better as each year progressed, but they gradually became more and more relevant to my own studio work by critically analyzing processes and debating the reasons for animation being the way it is today... Unfortunately my CVCS research has given me a huge prejudice against all CGI work, but I'm now trying to remedy this.