EXPERIMENTAL ANIMATION: CREATING A DVD

by Deanna Morse


A NEW OPPORTUNITY FOR PRESENTING SHORT FILMS
I am a film artist: an animator and experimental filmmaker. I have been making short films and videos regularly for the past thirty years or so. I was approached by Ed Anderson from Trillion Digital in Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, (www.trilliondigital.com), who offered to compile and publish a retrospective of my film and video work on a DVD. Ed made this offer because he had seen me give public presentations about my work. In these, I showed slides, talked, and screened my short animation films and experimental video pieces. Ed felt that a DVD presentation would offer a higher quality viewing experience. All the media (slides, films and videos) would be on one format: a high quality disc. The interactivity of the DVD would provide flexibility in presentations. For instance, based on audience response, I could easily add or subtract a film from the program, or change the order of my screenings.

Trillion had authored several DVDs, but they were for competing furniture companies, with proprietary information that could not be shown publicly. Ed was interested in having a piece that Trillion could use to showcase their company's DVD design and authoring talents. He offered to do it for free during times when the company was between clients. We've worked on this project on and off for about two and a half years.

FIRST STEPS: COMPILING THE RETROSPECTIVE
I found the best copies of my films and videos, and arranged for transfer to Beta SP. For two early films where I had used copyright protected music, I replaced the tracks with cleared and legal music.

This first step was difficult. Since I am continually in production, at various stages on a few projects, it was hard to think that my newer work wouldn't be included on the DVD. It was difficult to set a "stopping point" for my films. In the past, I had made a few video compilations, but these always seemed more fluid, and temporary. It was not easy to commit to the finality of putting the work on a mastered DVD. I hurried to finish two projects for inclusion. We ended up creating some new material just for the DVD: an overview table of contents, and a "signature" piece with time-lapse of animation intercut with the final films segments.

During the production, I worked closely with Trillion employee Eric Oehrl. Eric set deadlines, kept the project moving, and did the encoding and authoring for the DVD. He brought in graphic designer Grey Christian (Grey/Berlin Design Studio) to design the interface. I recently realized that Eric was serving as producer, although when we were in production, it felt like collaboration. (This is probably the mark of a good producer!)

I began thinking about how to organize thirty years of films and videos for the DVD. I made a notecard for each title, and juggled the stacks to try to find common threads or themes.

We ended up including 36 short films, organized into eight categories. The total video running time is over 2 1/2 hours. In addition, the disc includes over two hundred production stills with captions, five storyboard to film comparisons, and interactive and animated motion menus. We created a six panel supplementary booklet, primarily as a table of contents for the disc.

We ended up not including my dance-film collaborations, a few shorts, and some early work.

THE INTERFACE: A MESSY ARTIST'S DESKTOP!
We decided to use the desktop metaphor to visually organize the films. The films are grouped into 8 sections: Fun Shorts!, More Fun Stuff!, Dreams and Visions, Handspeak, Early Films, Visual Poems, Commercial Stuff and Introduction. Each section is full of objects, toys, photos, cut-outs and drawings that represent the films. These are spread over what appears to be a very large cluttered artist's desk. Everything looks real; the objects cast shadows on the wooden desk and on each other. In the center of the desk is the main menu, a legal pad with a list of the eight areas. If the clipboard was the actual size, the desk would be at least 20 feet long. Now that would be a good animator's work space!

Grey and Eric scanned many objects and images from the films, and cleaned up the edges in Photoshop. Grey resized and placed the objects, added shadows and built the huge and cluttered virtual desktop. The desktop is a bit like my desk: with papers, drawings, shells, leaves, trinkets, and souvenirs. But the object placement on this desk is much more pleasing: cluttered, but designed!

Later, Eric drew invisible highlight boxes around objects on the desktop which defined the areas for interactivity, and programmed it so that the viewer could jump from choice to choice, from film to film, and from section to section. In each section, a pencil lays on the desk near the bottom. Selecting it takes you back to the main menu (the legal pad list).

TARGETING TEACHERS AND STUDENTS OF ANIMATION
The target audience is educators and students who want to learn or teach animation. A primary goal of the project is that viewers will see that anyone can animate, using simple tools, if they just have the patience to do it. It does not take a giant company with teams of folks and big budgets to speak with this medium.

The DVD includes five films with "angles": a technical possibility unique to DVDs. In these five films, the viewer can press the angle button on their DVD remote controller to toggle between the original storyboard and the finished animation.

More than half of the films include production stills with captions: behind the scenes comments on how the work was produced and animated.

My films include many collaborative efforts. There are films made with school children, and collaborations with sculptors, ceramists, puppeteers, graphic artists and musicians. There are many personal film shorts. Somewhat like visual poems, my films explore place, dreams, and memories. It's a wide variety of work. Some has been screened at festivals, in museums, some on public television, some on commercial and cable television.

There are several animation techniques represented in my work: cut-out, cel, model animation, computer supported animation, and 3-D animation. The experimental films include documentary approaches and optical printing. The production stills/captions often describe challenges or elements distinctive to working with these various techniques.

DESIGN INCLUDES SURPRISE ANIMATIONS
I was surprised by the animations that Grey Christian came up with to enhance the interface.

My animations often use cut-out and object animation. Our interface designer, Grey Christian was fluent with computer animation, but he had never worked with traditional methods. At one point when he was scanning objects for the desktop, inspired by my under-the-camera animations, he decided to do an object animation himself. He used stop motion animation which animated a doll twirling in a box. Eric Oehrl, Grey and I were delighted by how alive it was, and thought we should include it on the DVD as a surprise. Later, Grey decided to animate little surprises for each section. These animations were so fun that we didn't want to hide them, so we moved them near the beginning of each section. Eric suggested adding an audio bed that included matched sound for these animations, and we brainstormed audio possibilities.

Adding the audio brought a new set of surprises for me. I had seen several DVDs that had annoying repetitive sound tracks on their menus. I decided that I wanted to use nature sounds and bird noises as the background audio bed, with sound effects to highlight the animations. Sound designer Joe McCargar, River City Studios (www.rivercitystudios.com) offered to assist me with digitizing and building these audio elements. The first day I went to work with him, I played some of the tracks, and he surprised me by naming the birds, "Oh, there's a Robin. A Flicker. Cardinal." It turns out that Joe had studied Ornithology in college before changing his major to Communications and becoming an audio designer! He had a wonderful sense for bird calls and their timings. Each section features a different bird-call background. Astute birders will recognize these highlight birds as they wander through my oversize desktop!

TECHNICAL PROCESS
The basic step of this DVD included:
• Generating the original video/film materials
• Technical fixes: cleaning up that material as needed
• Transferring to high quality video for encoding into the computer
• Organizing the material into sections: determining all elements of the final project
• Developing a "bit budget" for the project (how much material, what size disc is required)
• Encoding the video from analog to digital (tape to computer)
• Scanning slides and graphics for the production stills
• Scanning storyboards for the "angles"
• Laying storyboards to video, matching timing with finished production
• Designing the user interface
• Generating the visual elements of the interface: scanning and cleaning up those elements
• Production of the graphic interface (including layout, resizing, adding shadows)
• Grant writing to support the costs of commercial replication
• Writing captions for the production stills,
• Testing captions, and production stills
• Determining the "active screen areas" for interactivity
• Programming the interactivity
• Programming other elements; such as angles, captions, chapter stops
• Testing the discs for bugs and errors
• Transferring all materials to DLT tape for replication
• Designing the label for the DVD disc
• Writing and designing the booklet for insert
• Writing and designing the cover of the disc package
• Planning for the Premiere Celebration Party

SHARING THE ANIMATED WORLD
When this DVD was first conceived, we had thought about pressing only one copy for my use in presentations. But it turned out that with this quantity of material, when Eric did a "bit budget", the movies wouldn't fit at high quality on a single disc. We decided to undertake a commercial pressing, which would allow for a dual-layered disc. I began grant writing to support it. I received some funding from my University. Digital Video Services in Grand Rapids, Michigan (www.dvs.cc) offered me a significant discount that allowed us to undertake the commercial pressing.

Many people came to this collaboration with the best they had to offer: they shared their art, they shared their skills, they shared their strengths. I feel honored by their gifts, and the final DVD reveals this positive energy.

Only a few people have seen the test discs. The response to this project has been overwhelmingly positive. When you rent a DVD from the video store, you just put it in and it "plays". This project is different. With many choices, and the fact that the films are short, it is by nature INTERACTIVE. The disc does not just "play". The viewer makes choices, selects the areas to explore.

The motion menus make the desktop come alive. In this animated world, nature and bird sounds surround you, and surprising little elements on the desktop come alive. But the experience feels grounded in reality because the elements look physical. The desktop looks like a desktop and the objects look real.

For me, this DVD is a wonderful gift. It has it's own life: it created an animated and interactive world for my animations to live in.