Transcript: Animation discussion with Duchamp & Sons, 23 November 2016
Renee: So in terms of how your ideas have progressed it will be good to discuss where you started from, where you are now, what you’ve enjoyed about the process and what you’ve found challenging.
Did you find your ideas changing from when you first initiated them to when you began to make props and characters?
Sonam: They became more coherent and there was more of a structure there. It made us think of what realistically we could actually do with the media as opposed to wild ideas.
Dan: and obviously even when you’re talking through the ideas, drawing and sketching, everyone has their own idea and a clear vision of what they want in their mind but when you actually begin to make it becomes clear to everyone it’s actually going to look like.
R: Did you ever feel like you had an idea but when you had to translate it visually you felt you couldn’t express that through drawing or through the material or did you feel it was easy to convey your ideas?
Sonam: It wasn’t easy, no. I felt there was a lot of compromise from the original idea and what you produced but that’s not necessarily negative. Sometimes something nice comes out of the fact that you can’t create how you wanted to and you have to work around that and that can become quite an interesting thing to do.
R: Can you talk about the compromise- where did your idea start from and how do you compromise?
Sonam: So in terms of our initial idea, it was a little bit too complicated. The idea was to have it more three-dimensional and produce a stop motion animation; there were a lot of things going on. To make it as realistic as possible wasn’t pragmatic within the time frame and the medium so we compromised and it became a little bit more conceptual, experimental which was quite nice in a way.
R: Anyone else wants to add to that?
With your group (4), in terms of materials and how you are working with them, did you always think you start off with paper and then go on to clay, did you have a clear idea of how it was going to work?
Dan: Yeah, with our group we went with our original idea and stayed true to it in a sense but we didn’t think a lot about the transition between the medium and the other one so we had to improvise that today.
Dan: We … I don’t know how to explain it but we managed to kind of show a transition and it actually makes sense now that we’ve done it but we wouldn’t have thought about it or conceptualised it but when you actually have to do it you find a way.
R: Yeah, could you describe visually what that looks like?
James: What I think is because were having trouble thinking about how we were going to transition from 2D drawings to the clay we came up with this idea where we would zoom into his face, then using a bigger face which we created, we will rip it up in the middle, causing a 3D-ness, and then inside that head the clay will come out. The 3D parts will come out into this different kind of world we wanted to set up.
R: What about the group (3) over here, what have you been working on so far?
Mo: I’m the same as Sonam. There was a bit of improvising in terms of how we presented all the images throughout the different times and the transitions. We had to go through different ideas on the spot and propose as a group, and then decide on five different kinds of props to make the idea work, creating different things again to make the animation work as a whole. So I guess there was a difference between the conceptual aspects and the physicality… I think you have different challenges but I mean at the end of the day it’s come together nicely.
R: Madeleine you’ve just joined the group today, how did you find it?
Madeleine: Yeah, it was interesting coming into an already half-done project but it was good. Like I got into it and I enjoyed making, carrying it on and becoming part of it, and putting my ideas forward.
Sonam: It was quite nice having a fresh pair of eyes here because I think we were quite set in our ways on how it was all to carry on and then having someone new to kind of alter our ideas was quite nice.
Madeleine: Just like having someone who’s never seen it before and doesn’t have any predisposed ideas.
R: Same with you Ettie, were you there when your group’s idea was first formed?
Ettie: Yeah I was, although from when we first began making the stuff and talking about it that idea changed quite a lot. Initially it was about a child being inside an adult and ways we could visualise that- so in child’s clothing dressed up as themselves or as a younger person. Then when we began to make it became about fashion and fashion history and a clock going back in time. I think I wasn’t here when they did their first lot of shooting but today we went back to our original idea of identity and not really knowing who you are. We had to change the idea again because we didn’t want to jump scene so we just started a new scene and it kind of became less about fashion history.
R: So you went back to the original idea, what motivated that?
Ettie: I think hmm, people were here today who hadn’t been since when we were making the props and thought we were making the original thing and that made us reconsider what that idea had become and how it could link back to this idea of identity.
R: So what are your plans for now and going forward?
Ettie: This time we’ve written a narrative of what’s going to happen which kind of grows as we take the pictures (for the animation) but we’ve also written a text- they’re writing a text, like a voiceover or a narrative as we go through. So it’s a bit more continuous and not just two ideas.
R: And what about you guys (Group 1)? We saw Lettwan’s ‘you’re fired’ moment on the screen but how did you carry on today?
Akraam: I feel like after two weeks you realise that when you take a step back and you look at your work again, you see things differently. We realised that there was nothing, like we see a story or the presumption made but there’s no subject, no concept so it’s like giving away too much information about the character. What we’ve done to tie it together is to reconsider how everything looks together, and then we started shooting someone getting onto the train, someone that looks awkward. Even though we wanted simplicity we realised that things may work with a bit more information than we originally planned.
Leia: Yeah it’s a bit hard to keep an idea is simple but then keep it in a way that the audience is going to understand without already knowing the story.
Akraam: The reason we find it easy to understand this is because we know the story but that is hard to translate to the audience. Luckily some of our group members haven’t come to all of the sessions so the same way you lot (Group 3) had a fresh pair of eyes it was also kind of like that. They can see that there are a few things that we need to perfect. So what we started doing today is trying to flesh out our work, really tying it together. Now we have a foundation and a structure so we can speed up next session because we know what we’re doing.
R: So what is it you’re doing now?
Akraam: We’re looking at the clay people and they’re going to get on a train and it’ll transition into darkness, the story we’ve created about each will play, once it finishes it will transition into light again. The train moves from stop to stop and another person gets on and we’ll look at his story. We’re just perceiving different people’s stories and assuming what they’ve kind of been through.
R: So what have you found challenging in the process so far?
Madeleine: It’s like you can’t really have a plan for this kind of thing. You’re sort of just always working and thinking and combatting new challenges and just working with what you’ve got and facing difficulties that just kind of appear, but you just have to keep working with it. That’s the most difficult thing I’ve seen so far.
Akraam: It’s very physical. You can have many ideas as you want but you don’t know how it looks like on the screen. So it’s very experimental which is what is kind of difficult because you want to refrain from that, from not having an idea or plan and just jumping into the work but that’s how animation works I guess, you have to see it on the screen.
Aisha: I think it’s being quite sensitive with everything you’re doing, like we were taking shots and someone turned the lights off, that kind of affects the image. It’s just the little things you don’t think about, it happens and you think oh maybe we haven’t done this, yeah.
R: So it’s kind of paying attention to all the different little bits?
Aisha: Yeah, it’s all the little details you’d normally be very dismissive of.
Hannah: It’s quite a time-consuming process, you can’t just come up with an idea and make it. It’s really long and afterwards you get tired I guess and lose focus, or at least I do but yeah.
R: Does it help that you’re working in a group?
Hannah: Yeah, I don’t think I’d do it on my own.
R: Are there any highlights you’ve found from the process so far?
Mo: Creating and adding to the work you have and the feeling of something coming together, that’s the best part about the process.
Sonam: It’s also quite a playful medium. It’s quite nice to be able to create something that’s like entirely your own as opposed to working within the world you live in.
Ettie: It’s really imaginative, yeah you can just imagine anything or you could do anything. You could be set in space. It’s quite fun.
James: I just really enjoyed the whole process of making the animations, constructing your own universe through a simple medium. I really enjoyed it.
Sammara: I really like the brainstorming and ideas part of it. There were so many different ideas and you could see they were all quite individual to the person who had them. Also you do you have to compromise when you’re in a group so not every idea could be included but it’s still enjoyable as it’s a collective effort.
R: One last question, how did you find seeing your animations for the first time moving on the screen as opposed to shooting behind the camera? Did it change the way you worked this time around?
Dan: I guess if you watch it on the screen it becomes more real whereas when you’re shooting you’re thinking about how to construct every frame and not necessary how the story is progressing or how to solve specific problems so it’s not a very immediate storytelling process. It builds very slowly and you can see it in action when you’re done but you don’t have a clue about how the story is going to unfold until you actually watch it.
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