Saturday, May 05, 2007
THE PRICE WE PAY FOR STORY
[NOTE: Blogger (or is it YouTube?) doesn't support archived YouTube videos that are more than a year or so old. This post relies on video reference and suffers from the loss. Even so, the text is still worth reading and the subject is an important one.]
I like a good story, even in short TV cartoons (this page is about TV shorts), but I sometimes have to remind myself that story comes at a price, sometimes a very high price.
It's a case of losing something to gain something. With story-emphasis you lose or drastically reduce the likelihood of humor, good music, memorable performance, innovation, atmosphere, funny cartooning and funny animation. What do you get in return? So far as I can tell...momentum. You're less likely to get up to get a cheese sandwich if you're wondering whether Scooby Doo and his friends will discover that corrupt real-estate dealers are behind the so-called haunted house. Is the price worth it? Watch the story-light cartoons on this page and judge for yourself.
One of the greatest casualties of today's extreme story emphasis has been music. Can any story that animation writers are likely to come up with match the entertainment value of Cab Calloway's band in the "Snow White" film above (topmost)? Nowadays studio musicians are given a cartoon after it's already been written and animated. Musicians are almost an afterthought when budgets are figured out. Does that make sense? Isn't music the most fundamental of all the arts?
And what about atmosphere and texture? How do you like the atmosphere in "Mysterious Mose" (second film from the top, above)? Would a cartoon with story emphasis have had time to play out the rich atmosphere and gags in Betty's bedroom? Would the story that replaced the atmosphere likely have been as memorable or as funny? Would "Bimbo's Initiation" (above) have been improved with the addition of more story?
[Chuck Jones came up with a memorable story for "Scaredy Cat" (later remade as "Claws for Alarm") but that was more a situation than a story. Arguably situations fit short subjects a lot better than stories.]
Another casualty of story has been performance. Great cartoon performances need time to play out. Story-emphasis cartoons are always racing ahead to the next plot point. What's the rush? We have to remind ourselves that stories exist to justify and give context to great performances. Audiences crave great performances, that's why we have the Oscars every year.
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17 comments:
I don't understand the emphasis on story nowadays either. Lots of young filmmakers, whether it is live action or animation, always go on and on about how all they want to do with fimmaking is tell a good story.
Max, I am pretty sure that the emphasis on "story" you're thinking of is in feature length films, where if there is NO story, people are going to get pretty bored because they're sitting there through 90 minutes. Personally I think any feature movie, animated or not, damn well better have a good story.
What Eddie specified he was writing about is the short cartoon, nowadays seen only on TV. And IMHO the TV cartoon is unfortunately a kind of a third animal.
Eddie, there's only one reason that virtually all the current animation on TV has that story fixation, and it's because they're based on the first succesful H-B shows, which were really animated sitcoms. Nothing Bill and Joe did in their heyday were standalone, plotless short either, and they started the trend.
Some of them had very very sharp, funny writers, who as we all know had worked in top-quality shorts for MGM etc....anyway, it's because your average episode of the Flintstones had a "plot" rather than the loose form of the Betty Boops that there's such a heavy emphasis on scripts like that today.
What's a real shame is that so many of the brand new shows, made by people who are very, very talented, are still always inevitably forced into that form-because they aren't working for themselves, but for a huge corporate entity that is paying for the shows to be made after a specific model.
I'm sure there are artists who'd love to do Fleischer-type of plotless fun animation. That said, there's two other things that are big hurdles for TV animated shows: first, in America they have to make dozens more episodes, much longer shows than Max and Dave would have tried to do in a year--22 minutes x 30 episodes! How many 7 minute shorts is that?
The other obstacle is part of the overall aims of the powers that be: a show, to them, must have a template. How are they going to sell it to advertisers? To the FCC(that old educational requirement that the government is getting more and more insistent about)? They want a cast of the same core characters with a series "plot" built in(she's a teenage girl who fights crime between classes; he's a 12 year old boy with an identifiable ethnicity who turns into a mythical animal and fights bad guys). Looking for plotless, musical animation a la Boop in those areas is hopeless. And the market today is so glutted with so many shows that it's much harder for even a Ren and Stimpy to stand out. When that show, Tiny Toons and Darkwing Duck or whatever were on the air, there were basically a few channels and a couple of specific animation blocks that kids watched: Fox, Disney, the WB. That's it. Things have really ballooned since 1993.
Only independent animators today can and do try for purely fun, sometimes "plotless" cartoons. On TV, in the US, fuggedaboudit.
The problem with talking about "story" is that people think you mean "good story".
The movies and cartoons we are talking about don't have emphasis on "story" at all.
They have an emphasis on boring stuff happening, when interesting fun original stuff could be happening.
There is nothing wrong with "story" per se.
We just don't have any stories in animated features or most cartoons today that are interesting.
They are all formula stories about an unlikey crew of characters that shouldn't like each other being thrust together in a common goal and they all end up finding the true meaning of friendship.Yeesh!
None of the characters are sincere entertaining characters that we'd actually want to see in a story. They are executive-friendly formula one note characters in a formula plot loaded with filler.
Look at that Hedge thing we couldn't get through last night.
Nothing remotely sincere, fun or interesting.
I think all that stuff can be intergrated into a story, you just need to allow time for breathers.
Dropping subplots in sitcoms would be a good start, those things are nasty. 20-30 minutes is a tiny amount of time to get a story and all the other stuff across as it is without adding ANOTHER unrelated story.
this blog is great not only because of the good posts, but also because it attracts all sorts of interesting comments.
I totally agree with Camus about story and feature films. One exception i can think of to that principle is David Lynch. Some of his films seem to be more concerned with mood than plot. I love them, but they're not everyone's cup of tea.
I think you hit the nail on the head, Eddie! Story, or good story as John K is arguing, gives momentum and impetus. It makes people want to keep watching. I think that it's easy for cartoonists to get really wrapped up in non-story cartoons. I know that I can watch hours of Bosko with my animator friends.
But that isn't really the same thing that happens when I'm with NON-cartoonist friends. People get bored and antsy after a couple nonplot cartoons, even sometimes during the first one. I'm talking people my age, of course (I think non-linear are PERFECT for children).
I think there are levels of people's sophistication for being able to handle nonlinear entertainment. There are people that can listen to free jazz or fusion like Ornette Coleman or the Mahavishnu Orchestra, but then again there are people who turn it off right away.
I don't think story and entertainment are on opposite sides of the fence. I do, however, think that crafting a story specifically FOR funny situations and animation is infinitely harder (as witnessed by the current market). Because if people are likely to turn it off, or go to another website, they might miss the real gold or memorable performance that was later in the toon.
why does "Bimbo's initiation" bring to my head Super Nintendo images?
Camus: Interesting comments! Maybe you're right about Hanna Barbera convincing everybody that stories (bad stories) were the way to go on TV.
I never thought about the current glut of new TV cartoons making it difficult for innovative shows like Ren & Stimpy to stand out. You're probably right but on the other hand the internet opens up new ways for cartoonists to promote what they do.
I probably shouldn't have used all Fleischer cartoons to illustrate my point because they convey the unintended message, "You better not try situational (as opposed to story) cartoons unless you have the same amount of money the Fleischer's had."
Actually you don't, though money always helps. I'll talk about this later.
John: Your stories are the best that TV animation has ever had and are proof that story isn't incompatible with humor and performance.
Actually I wasn't trying to say that we should abandon stories, just that story should attempt to incorporate the advantages of non-story cartoons...as yours do.
Katz: Good point! People like stories and have a limited capacity to absorb non-story cartoons, even when they're as good as the Fleischers'.
I wish someone in town was making musical cartoons like the Betty Boops but mostly I was hoping to make writers aware of the dangers of letting plot run away with their stories. Cartoon stories exist to justify great, funny performances. Plot writers need to study non-plot cartoons to see what they can learn from them.
Max, Alex: Thanks!
I think the idea of stories is to simulate an entire lifespan.Feeling as if you just lived through a whole life with a conclusion is very satisfying to most people. The problem with trying to simulate this feeling is that you have to squeeze a lot of time into a small space, thus eliminating everything but the major plot points.
A lot of people claim that movies are like life with the boring parts cut out. I dunno bout you but a lot of the most fun parts of my life have absolutely no point except as amusement or whatever. The dogma of story-telling overlooks a lot of potentially entertaining moments. Good entertainment more often comes from describing a funny thing that happene dont eh way to work, rather than your life's story.
For that matter, when the hell does real life really follow the classic story structure with expositions and denouements? Not that all film should be realistic, but i think it closes off a lot of real-life inspiration when you are only looking for things that "would make a good story".
I copied this from Wikipedia's page on Howard Hawks:
Though he won himself a reputation as one of Hollywood's supreme storytellers, he came to the conclusion that the story was not what made a good film. After making and then remaking the confusing "The Big Sleep" (1945 and 1946) from a Raymond Chandler detective novel, Hawks came to believe that a good film consisted of at least three good scenes and no bad ones--at least not a scene that could irritate and alienate the audience. He said, "As long as you make good scenes you have a good picture - it doesn't matter if it isn't much of a story."
I love them, but they're not everyone's cup of tea.
I think you just nailed it. The only shows anyone wants to pay for are expected to be EVERYONE'S cup of tea. Let them eat cake. No imagination at decision time.
Katz: Good point! People like stories and have a limited capacity to absorb non-story cartoons, even when they're as good as the Fleischers'.
I don't know if I believe people "have" this, or that they have been conditioned to have it.
Fleischers were popular once.
There are executives who believe that a cartoon for adults shouldn't have too much motion in it. It should be sedate, but funny-looking. There's a lazy shorthand mythology that gets circulated around those offices instead of appreciation for knowlege and craft. It's a throwaway product for a throwaway audience and I think something like that undescores the whole process.
People want to be surprised by entertainment. I do, anyway. Sometimes if the surprise is too surprising, an TV audience won't even know how to respond. If they yank the show before the audience warms up, as they often do, you never even find out if it woulda blown up big.
Whether your're making a short or a feature, the empathsis should not be on the story but the storytelling. No matter what your subject is, the important thing is to keep your audience entertained. It's not easy--everyone doesn't have this skill, it's like some people can tell a joke and some people can't--and some people,like a Rodney Dangerfield, can take a joke that's older than dirt and turn it his own personal routine. Even those Gleason clips that John K is running on his blog-- the situations are thousands of years old---A guy suspects his wife is unfaithful and he tries to catch her and in the end it's all a big mistake. Comics have been doing variations on this theme since the dawn of time. Any comedian could take this situation and find the comedy potential, what makes it unique and entertaining is how Gleason uses it with his Ralph Cramden character. It's his performance that gets the laughs, not just the situation. If it were say, Rob and Laura Petrie in the same curcumstances, the scene would play out in a completely different way because the whole scene would be driven by Dick Van Dyke's personality and his own personal gift for physical comedy. So don't think that story is the be all and end all of making a successful cartoon. Some of the best cartoons have almost no story at all ---look at DUMBO for instance, the storyline could be summed up in less than a paragraph and it's one of the best films Disney ever did--and it doesn't have ANY of the filler that mucks up their modern cartoon films. The story is a very simple fable strung together with some of the oldest cliches in the world: storks deliver babies, elephants are afraid of mice, when people get drunk they see pink elephants, but it's all presented so well that the audience doesn't question it-- the audience buys into the cartoon's reality. Lady and the Tramp is another good example of a film with very little story, but every single scene is played for maximum entertainment value, but they're always careful not to overstep the boundries set up in the film--even though they think and reason like people, the dogs remain dogs throughout the film. They don't do anything too far out, like jump in a vechicle and engage in a long life threating chase (like Oliver and Co.)they also don't rely on celebrity voices to create stereotypical personalities, the personalities are a real part of the storytelling.
Now, how does this relate to the Betty Boop cartoons? Only in the most superficial way--you have to keep your story entertaining. Most of the Betty Boops here defy any real description, you have to witness them for yourself. You have to buy into their reality, and be entertained like you would with a magic show. I'm sure you've all seen really bad magicians and you've seen at least one really good magician. It isn't necessarily the magnitude of the trick, but how uniquely the trick is executed, that's what makes a real performer stand out, that's what made the Fleischer cartoons such a joy to watch, compared to say, an Ub Iwerks cartoon, that was just as loose and rubbery and just as interested in delivering as many crazy gags as possible. Too often an Iwerks film would be paced so badly or laid out in the least imaginative way that the cartoon would just run of steam somewhere around the middle. You couldn't say that about a Fleischer cartoon from the early thirties, they knew how to keep their audiences entertained right up to the last frame.
I would go further and say most great films don't have complicated stories, and yes, it's the storytelling and not necessarily the story that matters. But often the terms get mixed up, and people say/write one when they really mean the other.
Not just "Dumbo"(which truly barely has a story--and btw is also perhaps the shortest Disney feature at barely an hour long) but most great films have premises that are anything but high concept. To describe them in their basic terms would result in a very unimpressed audience: Some mail pilots in the Andes are divided by a woman and their own fears/demons. A private detective has to investigate his partner's murder. Any John Ford film. Etc.
On the other hand, a "complicated" film of more modern vintage doesn't necessarily have to be awful, either--if the incidental events and characters and the stuff that happens to them along the way are convincing and entertaining. What I mean is that every plot--the high concept as well as the low--can be told poorly or well. It depends on any of a million choices that are made in the telling.
Another group could have made Dumbo and it could have been a very forgettable, "meh" film. Same sure goes for Hawks' and Ford's films.
Kent: very interesting! Thanks for putting that up!
IDRC: "A throwaway product for a throwaway audience!" Well said!
JohnA: True, so true. Iwerks hits occassionally though.
Jenny: In my opinion that's half true. True, a good crew can sometimes plus a bad story but you still want the best story you can get. Really, TV animation writers have been getting away with murder. They write stories where good performances are almost impossible.
Damn, Eddie! I love this blog.
Characters & plot are like mass & energy. If you slice it down to the sub-atomic level, you'll find that they are 2 aspects of the same phenomenon.
Personality, choices characters make in a given situation is what drives the plot.
The plot is the character's destiny. In a non-serial show, you may need to reverse-engineer characters so that their big choices (big plot-turnings) will first seem surprising & then inevitable given what we know about who they are. Hopefully, the audience won't see it coming.
No destiny. No free will. It's like life only deliberate.
Hmmm...I didin't mean to allude to crews plussing bad stories when I said that it's the telling--I just meant that a story can be simple and work brilliantly(as I thought a couple of other guys said too).
Sure, people like the great story artists we know can plus bad material, but that's not going to result in a great end, um, result. As you say!
it's best imho to start with the simplest situation--for any story. You've GOT to have room for the good stuff--the stuff that happens organically, not mechanically--that's what audiences truly love and always respond to.
It really sounds like it's a case of 'it's not what you do, but how you do it.' and 'Keep It Simple, Stupid'. Or am I wrong?
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