This electronic thesis or dissertation has been downloaded from the King’s Research Portal at https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/ From the Light of Luxo The New Worlds of the Computer-Animated Film Holliday, Christopher David Awarding institution: King's College London The copyright of this thesis rests with the author and no quotation from it or information derived from it may be published without proper acknowledgement. END USER LICENCE AGREEMENT Unless another licence is stated on the immediately following page this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ You are free to copy, distribute and transmit the work Under the following conditions: Attribution: You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Non Commercial: You may not use this work for commercial purposes. No Derivative Works - You may not alter, transform, or build upon this work. Any of these conditions can be waived if you receive permission from the author. Your fair dealings and other rights are in no way affected by the above. Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Download date: 29. Sep. 2021 1 FROM THE LIGHT OF LUXO: THE NEW WORLDS OF THE COMPUTER-ANIMATED FILM Thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at King’s College London by Christopher David Holliday Department of Film Studies King’s College London September 2013 2 Abstract Emerging at the intersection of feature-length animated cinema with computer- generated imagery (CGI), and preceded by a cycle of preparatory shorts released during the 1980s, the computer-animated film has become the dominant form of mainstream animation. But while the field of animation studies has expanded dramatically in the last twenty years, reflective of increased levels of academic interest in the subject, the computer-animated film as an example of feature-length narrative cinema remains rarely investigated. This research argues that computer-animated films, including their continued evolution and mutation, can be critically evaluated through the rubric of genre. An approach is developed which elaborates upon their unique visual currencies and formal attributes, reconceptualised and organised as a generic framework that supports the study of computer-animated films as a new genre of contemporary cinema. This thesis is therefore centred on locating where the features of this genre may reside, individuated across three chapters concerned with issues of fictional world creation, performance and animated acting, and comedy. These subjects have been identified for their significant, and often highly problematic, relationship to traditions of animated filmmaking. Each chapter sets out to situate the computer-animated film within these traditions, before pursuing fresh lines of enquiry that target directly it’s determining generic codes, narrative conventions and common aesthetic tropes. Informed throughout by focused textual analysis of individual computer-animated films, the genre is discussed and debated through its relevant connections to a variety of topics. These include cinephilia and intertextuality, anthropomorphism, junk art, puppetry and the Western tradition of performing objects, film sound theory, narrative literary theory, and seventeenth-century Mannerist art. Animatedness is a term that is developed across the thesis, invoked to promote the key specificities of this new digital cinema and the richness, energy and vigour of its film worlds. This thesis is framed by the question of 3 the particular ‘animatedness’ of computer-animated films, and my research reveals the distinct terms and novel perspectives through which this otherwise undiscovered genre of contemporary film can be examined. 4 Table of Contents Introduction: Animating the Boulder 5 Chapter One: Classifying Nemo Genre theory and the computer-animated film 27 “If it ain’t an adventure, it ain’t worth doing”: The computer-animated film and journey narratives. 49 Swimming in a Sea of Stories: intertextuality and cinephilia 68 Chapter Two: Stepping into a Luxo world Computer-animated films and fictional world creation 90 “I’m not a real boy, I’m a puppet!” Rethinking the anthropomorphic tendency of computer-animated films 118 “You can shine no matter what you’re made of”: computer-animated films and new object transformation 138 Chapter Three: Performing with Puppets Acting and performance in the computer-animated film 161 Monsters, synch: the star voices of computer-animated films 189 Emotion capture: vocal performances by children 210 Chapter Four: From Wile E. to Wall-E Taking the comedy of the computer-animated film seriously 236 Tangled? Metalepsis and computer-animated film comedy 260 Despicable them: the Mannerist games of computer-animated films 277 Conclusion: Satisfying the Spirit of Adventure 298 Filmography 309 Bibliography 316 Appendix 348 5 Introduction: Animating the Boulder The rise of the computer-animated film On the screen, a short film showed an oversize golden sun hanging on the horizon while glistening waves caressed a deserted beach. Another depicted a beach chair dragging itself across the sand, dipping an aluminium toe in the water and timidly scampering away. Still another presented two Luxo desk lamps playing a friendly game of catch, stretching their springy arms and butting a rubber ball with their warm, cone-shaped heads. To the audience of 6,000 gathered last week in the Dallas Convention Center Arena, these final images were irresistible. The crowd had greeted some earlier offerings with hoots and good- natured catcalls. But when the Luxo lamps appeared, bathed in each other's light and seemingly imbued with human emotions, the hall burst into prolonged and enthusiastic applause.1 ----- Philip Elmer-DeWitt, “Computers: The Love of Two Desk Lamps” We don’t roll many boulders except in Road Runner cartoons. [...] Since I’m in the business to enjoy myself, I wouldn’t call on a computer to animate my boulder.2 ----- Chuck Jones, Warner Bros. animator, speaking in 1969 Why, you don’t even know who you are, do you? ----- Stinky Pete to Woody the Cowboy, Toy Story 2 Emerging at the intersection of feature-length animated cinema and computer- generated imagery (CGI), and preceded by a cycle of preparatory shorts during the 1980s, feature-length computer-animated films have become the dominant form of mainstream animation. The rapid ascendency of computer-animated filmmaking has prompted the progressive phasing out of traditional cel-animation methods, with digital technologies having now dislodged the hand-drawn style as the animated film’s principal language. The abandoning of cel-animation was widely greeted with a degree of scepticism among both critics and animated practitioners alike, and signalled what John Canemaker called the end of an “indigenously American contribution to the international art form of animation.”3 But the arrival of the computer-animated film into filmmaking practice has since been critically recognised for the positive contribution this animated form has made to the fortunes of the U.S. animation industry. Paul 6 Grainge, for instance, has argued that the first wave of popular computer-animated blockbusters inspired an animation “revival.”4 Terms such as “rebirth,” “rediscovery” and “renewal” have also been employed by scholars to describe the profound impact of digital technologies upon animated features during the 1990s. There has certainly been an exponential growth in the number of animation studios involved in the production of feature-length computer-animated films. The market response to the release of Toy Story on 22nd November 1995 was, as Scott Kirsner points out, the expansion of an animation industry almost immediately populated by “would-be Pixars”; a reference to the creators of Toy Story, Pixar Animation Studios. A number of companies, facilities, divisions and subsidiaries soon emerged, making the transition from visual effects companies offering “customized services on a contractual basis to major clients,” to those specialising in computer-animated film production.5 With the gradual expansion of the computer graphics community, the production of computer-animated features has never been easier. Technical innovation, software availability, workforce expertise and augmented computer power has enabled computer- animated films to be produced more rapidly, efficiently and cost-effectively. The economy of production afforded by new digital technologies was one of the many reasons that the Disney studio turned to computer-animated filmmaking after its forty- fifth (and, at that time, final) cel-animated feature Home on the Range (2004). Shifts from traditional techniques to exclusively all-digital animation were also undertaken by DreamWorks Animation (a division of the DreamWorks SKG Studio), Crest Animation Productions and DNA Productions. As DreamWorks co-founder Jeffrey Katzenberg put it, “traditional animation is a thing of the past.”6 British animation studio Aardman, whose reputation had been founded upon stop-motion ‘claymation’ techniques pioneered in Chicken Run (2000) and Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (2005) also entered the computer-animated film market in partnership