Working with Børge was fun, hard, boring, exciting, unusual, normal, and most of all educational. Over a year before leaving high school, in March 1978 I found out he lived in my neighborhood from a tv program about him and his wife Joanika. So I found him in the phone book (remember those?) and called him up. While studying art history, for a year I was his "pupil" doing animation tests, dropping by and having him correct them. Then, fed up with my art history professors, I moved my animation desk with my Neilson-Hordell disc into his Blaricum attic! (I am pointing at it in this photo taken last year:) Here, for almost four years, from March 1980 to November 1983 I smelled of his Douwe Egberts Red Amphora pipe tobacco and every day incl. weekends, Christmas and New Year from 10 to 6 we worked to the sound of BBC World Service if there were no jazz songs he had to listen to over and over again for an upcoming gig. I started doing simple non-production tests from his animation...
Hans- Your comments are right on target. I had a media teacher that was fond of saying "Technique should be the second thing a viewer notices" - the implication was that the message/intent should alway be first. The issue of technique and awareness always bothered me when watching Sleeping Beauty. There's no question that Earle's work is amazing, but I remember being so struck by this "new look" that I think I missed some of the more subtle ways that characters were handled...
ReplyDelete-bob
Bob, in my mind, your media teacher should have said "Technique should be the LAST thing a viewer notices!"
ReplyDeleteI know what you mean, about Sleeping Beauty. When I saw it in the cinema the first time in the late 70s, my mother whispered to me during the first scenes: "Are you sure this is a Disney film?!"
Børge felt that the quote best stand alone, and I can see his point - that is why I moved my comments to here - the comments section. Here is what I removed:
ReplyDeleteYou will realize that it also indirectly can mean that whatever style a picture is in, if the audience thinks about this style, they are lost for the story. Which is what killed hand-drawn animation, at least temporarily, a few years back...
I somehow also recall a similar quote from The Illusion of Life, which does not make it less important here. I really need to read this our Good Book again soon! Everybody should, actually...
It reminds me of the old James Stewart documentary on tv yesterday, in which he says something like "If you act so that the acting doesn't show through, you are doing a decent job."