Lögberg-Heimskringla - 06.12.1985, Blaðsíða 7

WINNIPEG, FOSTUDAGUR 6. DESEMBER 1985-7
Central Animation
Continued from page 6.
now regularly shows and which Neil
Mclnnes and Andrew Schultz give
strong hints of developing. The lit-
erary equivalent of their work would
be the couplet. Though the animators
have not yet developed to the sonnet
or even the limerick stage, their
accomplishments are worthy of more
notice than from just their relatives
and friends.
To extend the literary analogy a
step further, Winnipeg does not have
an epic-producing animation group
such as Nelvana Studios in Toronto
— capable of feature-length cartoons
and regular half-hour television
specials. Nor does it have sonneteers
of the stature of Frederick Back of
Montreal or A1 Sens of Vancouver or
some of the headliners of the NFB'S
headquarters (Co Hoedeman, Ishu
Patel and the now retired Norman
McLaren) — animators with a unique
personal style whose reputations
have been earned through a series of
successful short films done over a
number of years. But Richard Con-
die is probably right on the verge,
and Brad Caslor could vault immedi-
ately into prominence on the strength
of his tour de force animation in Get
A Job.
The clever oxymoron of The Big
Snit should at least win Condie an
award for best title of the decade. His
ten-minute cartoon pivots on an
elaboration of this absurd contradic-
tion; it's about a petty lovers' quar-
rel between two house-bound odd-
balls (one vacuums the bathtub, the
other saws the furniture com-
pulsively) who are oblivious to the
fact that nuclear war is about to
destroy the world. And The Big Snit
combines the apparently incompati-
ble qualities of Condie's two most re-
cent films: the speedball zaniness of
Pigbird and the offbeat dilatoriness of
Getting Started. Condie’s strengths as
a cartoonist derive from his wacky
and original sense of humour. The
Big Snit is a showcase of his comic
talents. His characters are amusing —
visually, emotionally and behaviour-
ally. He gets laughs from sounds
(teeth clattering like castanets when
a sleeper exhales, a cat that yells in
pain like Hulk Hogan), from ideas (a
yellow sad-face button alternates on
television with a mush-room bomb
explosion to indicate a nuclear alert,
Noah's ark floats down the street in
the nuclear panic) and from just gen-
eral weirdness (the quarrel takes
place during a lopsided Scrabble
game over the fact that the woman
shakes her eyes like a baby rattle).
His satire on television (a quiz show
called "Sawing for Teens" is inter-
rupted by the nuclear alert) is quick
and casual.
What makes The Big Snit impres-
sive is the advances Condie has made
in both his storytelling abilities and
his 'camera placements'. The Big Snit
moves beyond the single character
enactment of a situation that char-
acterized his previous work into a
two-character comic drama. Thus
more attention had to be paid to char-
acter, dialogue, interplay, and timing.
And action is here presented more
ambitiously. It doesn't just happen
on a single plane in middle and long
shot at a 90° angle to the camera.
Where the moviejs less successful is
in its conclusion. The Big Snit takes
on a bold subject, nuclear annihila-
tion, for a cartoon and handles it in
a marvelously black comic way. But
the end is disappointing. The lovers'
reconciliation is rather trite as an idea
and in its execution. And the payoff
is too short, restrained and unclear.
Nonetheless, The Big Snit will un-
doubtedly win Richard Condie many
new fans and more animation
awards. Though the influences on his
work is visible in his films, he is
unique and irreplaceable, a true Win-
nipeg treasure.
Brad Caslor's debts are much more
obvious and his individuality more
subtle, but his Get a Job is such an
ambitious and fully-realized work
that it quickly deflates any quibbles
about its being derivative. It is an un-
abashed homage to the golden age of
animation: Disney and Warner
Brothers cartoons of the late thirties
and early forties. Get a Job took six
years from conception to realization,
and it's easy to see why. The care and
artistry of the animator are visible in
every frame. If cheap and clumsy
Saturday morning animation de-
presses you, Get a Job will put you
on cloud nine.
Originally conceived by Caslor and
Derek Mazur as a parody of Disney's
"How to" cartoons featuring Goofy
learning to swim, play baseball, etc.,
Get a Job takes its title from the old
fifties rock and roll classic by the Sil-
houettes. The opening sequence is
like an animated rock video of this
song as produced by animation idols
Bob Clampett and Tax Avery. As a
bloated pig, an oily rat, and a wolf
serenade him, Bob Dog is booted out
of one shop after another in his quest
for employment. The timing is so
snappy and the drawings are so lively
that it is immediately obvious that
this is an animator who has absorbed
the secrets of the masters. No vague
single-sketch backgrounds here;
these are drawings that create a 360°
cartoon environment. And the an-
thropomorphized animals have
weight, dimensions, and pliancy to
them.
The rest of the ten-minute cartoon
is a series of songs and mini-sitcoms
aimed at showing and telling Bob
Dog what to do to Get a Job. An
Elvis impersonator (flawlessly
dubbed by Ray St. Germain) croons
that "You Gotta Have a Plan". A
Carmen Miranda look-alike asks the
musical question: "What Are the
Things That You Like to Do?" A sing-
ing frog offers advice about resumés.
And three porcine Andrews Sisters
tunefully insist on following a
schedule. Although all but the Elvis
clone are rather old-fashioned and
banal as characterizations, the action
and animation are full and inventive.
Inanimate objects like phones and
hammers and pencils develop
mouths that not only serve as back
up accompaniment for the singerí
but are intimidating to Bob Dog ir
their towering insistence. In fact, one
of the remarkable things about Gel
a Job is that it is not only a clever in-
structional movie and a Looney
Tunes entertainment, it also effec-
tively recreates the urgency, humilia-
tion, and rejection of the job hunt.
The movie is like an animated ver-
sion of Woody Allen meeting film
noir: a schlemiel swept along by a
series of comic-horrific experiences
that he can’t control.
If Get a Job has a fault, it lies in the
fact that the narrative is a bit too
modernist, its pacing too slam-bang,
its animation too rich to be absorbed
on one viewing. And perhaps the
ending is too pat. In an age of such
pallid and meretricious cartoonery,
however, this is hardly a criticism. If
you yearn for the glory days of ani-
mation when intelligence, wit, and
artistry were part of a cartoonist's
arsenal, then get a look, or two or
three, at Get a Job.
Of the other two NFB animated
films to be released this year, Cordell
Barker's movie The Cat Came Back is
still too early in the drawing stages
to be fairly appraised. But if the bang-
on parody of K-Tel ads that he con-
tributed to Brad Caslor's movie is any
indication, then this will be some-
thing to watch for. Though the song
is familiar and has been set to images
before, Fred Penner is a warm,
attractive singer and Barker an
experienced hand at animation.
Of all the animation done in Winni-
peg recently, Alan Pakarnyk's Car-
ried Away has the advantage of be-
ing completely different from the
work of his colleagues. In washed-
out grey/sepia tones a wandering
character (an animated Alan himself)
walks through a wasteland. A
brightly-coloured butterfly turns into
a pair of glasses; when he puts them
on, he is transformed into a magician
in a rainbow cloak dispensing col-
oured bubbles. A menacing male
head forms out of a blue storm-cloud;
in an explosion of yellow a woman's
head forms out of the clouds and
Alan is assumed into it..Though it is
pleasant and dreamy and attractively
visualized, it is too quaint in its six-
ties hallucinatory mysticism. It is also
reminiscent of an early Jackson Five
rock video though without that
group's more invigorating music and
fecundity of imagery and ideas.
Pakarnyk's film highlights one of
the real dangers that the animation
community in Winnipeg is now fac-
ing despite the upbeat mood gen-
erated by a four-film year. And that
is that animators here must work
quickly and must keep abreast, not
only of films done eisewhere but also
of changes in technology. Computers
can do, have already done, similar
things and more things in a tiny frac-
tion of the amount of time it took to
complete Carried Away. Winnipeg
animators must not avoid the chal-
lenge of the computer, as a potential
helpmate or serious threat.
The government-sponsored organ-
izations that support the local ani-
mation community, i.e., the CBC and
the NFB, have some responsibility in
this regard. Computers are expen-
sive, and no individual or small group
can easily afford the capital outlay for
such a constantly changing tech-
nology. More importantly, these
organizations must be vigilant in
maintaining the level of support for
animators that is now in place. The
Prairie production office of the NFB
has gone out of its way to encourage
ani:írction, more so than any other
regional NFB office. But last year
Winnipeg had forly Sesame Street
segments; this year there are only
twenty-seven. If this source of work
is allowed to dry up because of CBC
cutbacks and centralization, ani-
mators will be forced to find work
elsewhere. An important part of the
cultural life of the community will
disappear. And a chain of animation
history stretching back seventy-five
years to Jean Arsin will lose a vital
link.
Gene Walz teaches in the Film
Studies Program at the University of
Manitoba. He has written a book on
Francois Truffaut and has contri-
buted articles to Cinema Canada and
Arts Manitoba.
Courtesy Border Crossings, Autumn,
1985
Sun Over Darkness Prevail
An album of Stephan G. Stephansson
poems in translation put to folk music
settings by Alberta songwriter
Richard White
featuring translations by Jakobina
Johnson, Thorvaldur Johnson,
Paul Sigurdson, and others
"... kept the strength ofthe original poems
and added the beauty ofmusic to them."
Winnipeg Free Press
Available for $11.00 postpaid ($13.00 first class) from
Tonic Records Box 9631 Edmonton Alberta T6E 5X3