MEMO
To: Animated Short Film Directors
From: John Tarnoff, former Head of Show Development, DreamWorks Animation; Adjunct Professor and Head of Industry Relations for Carnegie Mellon University’s Masters of Entertainment Industry Management graduate program; Strategic Advisor to the ACME Network.
Short films aren’t so different from feature films. The rules of storytelling still apply. But the beauty of short films is their ability to distill, in just a few minutes, the essence of an idea, and concentrate that essence in such a way that the audience is moved and stimulated in as strong a fashion as if it had just sat through a full-length feature film.
Animated short films provide even more opportunity to engage the viewer. Animated films are distinguished by the uniqueness of their artwork, and this completely invented and imagined aspect is what sets animated shorts so resolutely apart from live-action shorts. This is your challenge and your opportunity in the realm of animation—a realm where it takes both a graphical, painterly talent (and skill), in addition to a photographic, cinematic, and narrative inspiration. Because an animated film has so many more visual possibilities than a live-action film, the bar is significantly raised for the animation filmmaker to attempt something truly integral and affecting.
What makes for a good idea for a short animated film?
To fulfill their inspiration, the filmmakers have many options to express the one idea. Just as mash-up videos show how it is possible to create different stories, genres, and styles out of existing material, at the concept stage in developing a short, the filmmakers need to balance their inspiration with a format that, to their mind, best expresses the impact they want to make with their film.
This can mean that the film is narrative or non-narrative (poetic), that it draws from a particular artistic style, uses a particular style of animation, mixes up styles and genres to create something unique … the possibilities are endless.
While there are rules of good artistic composition, good storytelling, good character development, good visual design, and of all the large and small elements that go into the creation of a film, filmmakers must not get bogged down by too many conventions that can be creatively stifling.
Animated films are films first and foremost. Films exist in five dimensions: the two dimensions of line, tone and color, the third dimension of space, the fourth dimension of time, and the fifth dimension of content. It is this fifth dimension that unites and binds the other four and, if successful, touches an audience and resonates with it in a mental, physical, emotional and artistic (some might say “spiritual”) way.
How should fledgling filmmakers proceed? Assuming they have learned the basics, and spent time cultivating their eye, their techniques, their tools and most of all, their own creative voice, there are a few guidelines before jumping in. For me, a good film is always an exercise in contrasts and in the unexpected: a conventional story with unconventional characters or situations, or, conversely, an unconventional story with a conventional character. It can be a conventional story with a surprising punch line, or maybe an unconventional, nonlinear story that concludes in a familiar way. The point is to create a particular, definitive and definable dynamic. Perhaps the film displays a specific, evolving color palette as it unfolds, and that palette reflects the precise evolution of the story or characters as they transform over the course of the narrative.
It is the dynamic (or dynamics) that supports the execution of the film and makes it intriguing beyond merely one’s inspiration that it “seems like a good idea.”
For the two-dimensional elements, there are centuries of artistic references, and a whole world of physical references for artists to create the look of their film. Care should be taken to draw from multiple sources in synthesizing a single vision, and to weigh those sources in comparison with one another. The filmmaker uses references to build the look of their film, and can create sketches or workbooks of ideas based on these references. This visual development phase is key, no matter what the size of the film is, as it must co-exist with the story in a highly compatible way for the film to work. Various design elements assist the filmmaker in creating a visual script for the ultimate look of the film. Set designs, whether in rough line sketches or fully rendered paintings, establish the locations or environments where the film will take place. Color and lighting keys establish the flow of visual elements over the course of the film. Character designs and turnarounds establish the look of the characters, and their visual relationships to one another. While a short animated film is arguably less complex than a full-length feature, because it is short, it is subject to perhaps increased scrutiny or attention as all of its design elements will be so much more important in proportion to the length of the overall film. People will look more closely at a short film, and expect more from it, merely because it is expected or hoped to be a gem.
The third dimension is where animation has branched off into a new realm over the last 20 years, and the medium has never been the same. Whether one is creating a 2D film by hand-drawing, or in the computer in Flash, or creating a 3D CG film, the visualization possibilities of working in 3D have irrevocably changed the way animation is made. Audiences are now so much more attuned to seeing animation in virtual three-dimensional space that their expectations have been altered significantly from a time when everything was basically flat. Even Disney’s Multiplane system from the 1950s, where layers of animation elements were photographed in real depth, one behind the other, still created an essentially “proscenium” experience, where the audience was looking at a stage-like environment and action was taking place largely in a horizontal, right-to-left-to-right space. In addition to allowing shapes to have a greater sense of weight and dimensionality, 3D animation allows the camera to explore and to light these objects and their environments with a much greater degree of variation and movement.
The fourth dimension is the truly cinematic dimension, the dimension of time. No other art form has worked in the fourth dimension in the same way as cinema. From the early revolving zoetropes to today’s high frame-rate digital projectors, the element of time, of beginning, middle and end, is the hallmark of this medium. The editor is the high priest of the filmmaking process, taking the raw elements of shots and scenes, and piecing them together so as to create rhythm, pace, and narrative coherency. Indeed, the juxtaposition of images, as the early master directors like D.W. Griffith and Sergei Eisenstein discovered, is the highest expression of this art form. This juxtaposition of image, and juxtaposition over time, creates emotions, from joy to sadness to suspense and fear. The addition of sound, both music and sound effects, further dimensionalizes the timeline, making the pace seem longer or slower, punctuating the visuals and improving the flow.
The fifth dimension, content, what the film is about and how it unfolds, is the keystone that brings the other dimensions together and gives them life. Without a compelling visual or dramatic narrative, the graphical elements are static, the 3D elements are distracting, and the timeline is boring or frenetic.
Every film really needs some form of beginning, middle and end, whether it is a short tone poem or a character-driven narrative.
Key images, “movie moments,” establish the tone or the essence of the film: a great opening shot, signature lighting, a musical theme. This tells us what the film is going to be about, about the world we are about to be immersed in. Remember that you are communicating with your audience. For you to touch them, you’re going to have to make your expression understandable, whether this is through your use of visual language, choice of artistic style, cultural reference, or otherwise. So from the first frames, we the audience need to know where we are and feel like something is happening that is engaging. From there, the filmmaker has to stay “on point.” Everything that follows must serve the purpose of the film. This process of choosing and editing what goes into the film is the most painstaking part of the process and will challenge you to really discover what it is you are actually saying in your film.
Having laid down these ground rules, it is now important to say: Break them! Trust your instincts, trust your experience. Don’t get bogged down by anything that stands in the way of your vision. This is perhaps the most important lesson: Dare to fail, because in your failure is always the seed of your eventual success. Be open to the lessons and dare to try again.