VSFX 406 Blog 3: Observation Analysis

The first film I picked from the list was the Czechoslovakian Short The Hand (1965)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cy3Xsd9GLBA

It's a beautifully animated short about state censorship, and the soviet government coercing artists into producing government/military propaganda.

There is a ton being pioneered here, the film has real sets and abstract backgrounds which contain a combination of stop-motion, live action, and film compositing effects, often all on screen at once.

The main character is incredibly expressive despite having no facial articulation to speak of. The hand is also incredibly expressive by virtue of being shot in real time, so the actor was free to flail and pose the hand with their own natural timing.

This is where my main critique lies. While very impressive for the time, shots which feature both the stop-motion character and the hand on screen at the same time require that the hand be stop-motion as well. The hand becomes jittery with unnatural momentum and flickering motion blur.

If we compare this to modern techniques, this kind of compromise is no longer needed. One of this years Oscars nominees, Marcel the Shell, contains frequent and inventive combination of stop-motion and live action shots. The animated Marcel interacts with people, dogs, and physical objects which are affected by real physics.

If I were to try to improve The Hand, I would isolate shots wherein the hand is stop-motion, paint it out of the frame (not too difficult since the camera is locked) and digitally composite new hand footage to try to emulate the hand's live action performance in the rest of the film. In theory, If I bought a glove and shot it myself, I could time my footage to match the on-screen character. I could also change the playback speed while I record, and apply the inverse speed change to my footage in order to have the hand's motion be more rigid or fluid in the shot. It's a white glove so it could be shot on ant background and isolated with minimal rotoscoping.

Despite this, I do still feel this short is stylistically perfect and I am only dedicating so much time to addressing this small inconsistency because it has been assigned to me. In that way I am like the potter, and Prof Pasquale is like the soviet puppet master instructing me to alter perfectly good art.

That was a joke.

Thank you and goodnight.