FUNNY LIGHTING AND STAGING

This (above) is a dumb composition, isn't it? I mean that as a compliment.  It's for a comedy so the art director wisely violated the normal rules of composition. The picture's too symmetrical,  too much attention is paid to the tablecloth, and the three doors are distracting...but so what? It's funny.

I LOVE ignorant staging!

You don't always need funny sets to make live background elements funny. It's about how you shoot them and light them. 

Here's (above) two ways to shoot a cup, the normal way and the funny, ignorant way. The cup on the left looks fine, but you'd call it dignified, rather than funny. In the world of cups it's a solid citizen, a device that earns its way by being useful to humans, a cup whose mother is proud of it...but it's not funny.

The cup on the right however, the one in the wide shot, is lonely and insecure, and maybe something of a klutz. He's probably always spilling things on humans. How do we know? Because the world he inhabits is so awkward. The ocean of empty space around the cup, the funky table, the lip of the table and the awkward area underneath...it all says that this silly cup hasn't got the brains to sit closer to the camera.  He's funny.   

BTW, I'm glad the art director didn't show too much detail in the cup background. Too much detail would have hinted at a larger story, and taken our attention away from the simple ignorance of the situation.

Study the deliberately ignorant and theatrical staging (above) in silent comedies. It just shouts, "This is a funny picture!"

Too many people assume that sets were made this way (above) because the films were made in a primitive time, when nobody understood composition. That's not true. Old timers understood composition at least as well as we do now.  They simply thought this way of doing things was funnier..

Even the lighting (above) was ignorant in those days. Lots of film people knew how to light properly, but comedians favored frontal lighting, which flattened out the face and gave it a cartoony, graphic look.

Stan Laurel insisted on in it in the early films he did with Hardy. 

Later he allowed very light shadows on one side. Other actors in their films were allowed to have deeper shadows, but not the two stars.

Still later, they were forced to use the same stark lighting that dramatic actors used. By then, producers were insisting that comedy people conform to dramatic rules.

By luck or intentional skill, early TV used the kind of flat lighting that we saw in some silent comedies. It made everything more funny. 

Lighting wasn't the only thing that was funny in early TV. The sets were funny too.  You can see the influence of old silent comedy staging.   

Me, I think that ignorant composition is bliss.

BTW: Mike's the biggest Laurel and Hardy fan that I know, and he wrote the following comment: 

"When Laurel & Hardy - whom I revere - left Hal Roach Studios in 1940 to move to 20th Century Fox in '41, they seem to age 20 years overnight. This was the direct result of the new studio's intrusive and insensitive meddling with the team.

Fox, who seem to have been as determined to ruin Laurel & Hardy as Paramount was to ruin Popeye (and MGM was to ruin Keaton, Our Gang and the Marx Brothers), insisted on uniformly realistic makeup and lighting in all their films. It didn't matter if it was a drama, musical or slapstick comedy - an approach about as individual as a cookie cutter.

Laurel instinctively knew the team needed stylization to be believable in the special world they created and inhabited. Besides keeping them young - and preserving the comic illusion that they were overgrown children - the subtle clown-white makeup the team had been using since their silent film days also kept them slightly cartoony, and that much more removed from harsh reality. Stylized sound effects, lively music and flat lighting accomplished the same feat, exactly what the team needed, and had had at Roach.

Of course, the front office couldn't resist tampering with the scripts as well, and their literal, assembly line, sausage factory approach was exactly opposite to what L&H had been used to up until that time. These are just some of the reasons why the boys are still delightful to watch in Saps as Sea, their last film shot at Roach in 1940 - and already old and tiresome in Great Guns, their first one made at Fox only one year.

Unfortunately, corporate interference with creative artists is just as destructive now as it was then. In the words of Scotty Beckett: 'They'll never learn...' "

TWO VERSIONS OF "PORKY IN WACKYLAND!"

Wow! I discovered this on YouTube: it's Clampett's original Wackyland cartoon, side by side with the later color remake by Friz, "Dough for the Do-Do." Many thanks to "wecanstopnwo1" for taking the trouble to post the cartoons this way. It makes it lot easier to compare and learn from.

Of course, the original black and white version is better, that's obvious. The reason for comparing the two is that the same mistake in BG styling that's in the flawed color version is still with us today, all these years later: The color backgrounds aren't funny. No doubt producers believe that it's not the BG artist's job to be funny, but that's a mistake. Producers need to know that funny people are needed in all aspects of production, including backgrounds. Come to think of it, I wish they'd undertake more projects that would require funny people.

The newer BGs are technically more polished, but they're too literal, too unimaginative, too lacking in humor. Also, the color version horizons are too high. Why all the wasted space in the foreground? It's more ignorant, and therefore more funny, to place the character lower in the scene in a graphic-intensive story like this one.

I also like the newspaper strip feel of the earlier backgrounds. I'm seeing hints of Sterrett, Gross, Seuss and even a little Smokey Stover in the original BGs.

I like the way B and W Porky's plane is lower (and more ignorant) in the frame when we first see it, and I like the demented row of B and W trees more than the colored mountain silhouettes in the next scene.  The first time we see the Wackyland sign on a long shot (above) works better in the B and W, and the path the B and W sign is sitting on is more dynamic and ignorant, as are the trees.

Check out the next scene, which is a close-up of the sign (above). The energetic lettering and tonal contrasts in the B&W version make the scene funny, even with no animation. The color sign, on the other hand, is simply information. What a pity that this film fell into the hands of a humorless designer!

Well, a full comparison would take up too much space. I'll just close with one more point, which has nothing to do with backgrounds: namely that black and white is easier to make funny than color. It shows off funny drawings better. You'd never wish that Clampett's "Coal Black" and "Great Piggy Bank Robbery" were colorless, but aren't you glad his "Porky's Surprise Party" (above) was done that way?  Good old Bob! He doesn't get credit for it, but he developed two successful styles, the first one for the better cartoons done by his B and W unit.

LUNCHTIME BOOK CHAT #4

I just read a depressing book on the economic crisis and now I'm ready for something lighter, maybe one of the books on this page. Here's (above) a book that caught my eye: "The Girls of Murder City." How do you like the cover? it's good enough to be a poster!

The story is about the gaggle of beautiful female murderers (example, above) in 1920s Chicago. It was considered hip to be a female killer in those days and the press treated the girls like superstars.

Even prison guards would ask for autographs. 

The author got caught up in the whole thing, and frequently weighs in with lines like: "Just pleasantly buzzed, as usual, the kind of tingling warmth that held you like a new mother." Nice!  I've gotta check this out!

Steve lent me this book (above). It's by Leslie Carbaga, author of the wonderfully researched and beautifully layed-out Max Fleischer biography. It's all about breasts. I had no idea there was so much to say about the subject. 

It's full of charts like this one (above),  depicting the different types. Some men will no doubt use the charts as checklists.

The book isn't perfect. There's too much tacky language, and I don't agree with some of the points he makes. He blames religion for girls' reluctance to have casual sex, but the females of most species are like that. I don't think female turtles play hard to get because of what they learned in church. And he's down on marriage, which I think is the best thing since sliced bread...if you get the right person. Marriage means everybody gets somebody, and the richest man of the tribe doesn't get to grab all the girls for himself. 

But I'm nitpicking. Leslie makes a lot of good points and the book looks like a fun read.

Here's a new hardcover sketchbook by my friend, Tim Walker. Tim's done everything in the TV animation industry. Things were going great for him until a few years back when he discovered that he couldn't control the shaking in his right hand and was diagnosed as having Parkinson's Disease . Everybody concluded that Tim's professional life was over; after all he was right-handed, and that hand was useless to him now.  Everybody gave up on Tim except Tim. He simply refused to accept defeat.

The man sat down, and through sheer will power, taught himself to draw with his left hand, thus the title of the book, "Drawings From The Left." The book begins with drawings he made when his right hand worked, and seamlessly morphs into newer drawings done with the left. If the captions didn't tip you off, you'd never guess where the dividing line is. Tim had no history of ambidexterity. He just plain...did it, and now he's back at his old desk at Warners, rushing to meet deadlines like everyone else. Man, some people are irrepressible!

Examine the book at: http://jamestimwalker.com/about-tim-walker.html

BTW: If you have a blog of your own, have you noticed how well Blogger enlarges pictures? You'd have to fiddle around with Photoshop to get the same quality enlargements that Blogger gives you with the touch of a button. And Blogger doesn't even brag about it. Somebody at Blogger deserves a pat on the back!

SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT TUTORING

When I was in school I used to hate classroom discussions. The subject always devolved into who's more intelligent, boys or girls, or whose innocuous comment was actually indicative of closet racism. I could get that kind of stuff on the street. I thought the purpose of school was to be taught by people who know more than I do.

A while back I put this opinion into a blog post, and to my surprise, it provoked some pretty interesting replies. One commenter was obviously a teacher. He said that he could tell that I never had any first rate teachers in school, because if I had I would never have questioned the value of discussion.  He said a good teacher guides the discussion. The idea is to take a cultured, articulate, and well organized mind (the teacher's), and show the students in detail how that mind handles the topic at hand. It can only be properly done in groups small enough to allow some personal attention, and only with motivated students. Amazing!

Well, the guy called it right. I had some teachers who were okay,  but none who were really first rate. There just aren't enough first rate teachers to go around. The mind boggles to think how fast you could learn something, if you had the personal attention of someone who was really skilled in that subject.  And that brings me to the point of this post: teachers aren't able to give you individual attention...but tutors can.
.

I'm a huge believer in tutoring. It's not something that's only for slow students, it's something for the the brightest kid in class. There's no faster way to learn than to have someone personally talk you through a problem and digress if need be to teach you something you failed to pick up earlier. In the case where you already know the material, a good tutor can put you on a whole different level by exploring interesting tangents or by putting the material to practical use. A motivated student combined with a motivated tutor is a powerful combination.

Schools like Oxford used to teach almost exclusively by tutoring. There were regular lectures by professors, but the real education took place in the student's own quarters, arguing with, and being prodded and interrogated by the tutor (the don). In Japan after school tutoring is common, even for gifted students. I wish it were more common here.

There's another good reason for tutoring. If tutoring were widespread, if it transcended the remedial and got into some meaty subjects, if it was handled, not by the school bureaucracy, but by free agents and by private industry, then we'd have a chance to re-introduce imagination and competition into the schooling process. Who knows? You could even have tutors like the ones in the illustrations for this post!

HOW TO COOK CASHEW CHICKEN

Okay, we're going to make stir fried Cashew Chicken with vegetables! You'll have to pay a visit to a  Chinese market, but that'll be fun. Wait til you see what those stores are like!

 Tentacles, eyeballs (above), hooves, candied baby sand crabs... they're all there, many of them with cancer warnings pasted all over them!

Look into the freezer and it'll look back at you!

But I digress. About woks...you'll want to use a flat-bottomed wok, though in a pinch you can use a steel or iron frying or saute pan. Nonstick pans are dismissed by traditionalists because they require lower heat, but they make cleanup so easy that they're hard to resist. I have both kinds and I only use the nonstick now.

Ordinary frying pans usually have low sides and the constant stirring will push the food out and onto the floor, so watch out. If you're using a frying pan then it's best to cook the vegetables separately, after the chicken's been removed, so you'll have more room in the pan. If you have a old-style steel wok you haven't used in a long time it might be rusty, so you'll have some strenuous cleaning to do. For rust use steel wool and soap.

Here's (above) the recipe I use, from Helen Chen's "Chinese Home Cooking." I hope you can read it. Click to enlarge.

This recipe serves four. If I'm cooking the meal for myself only then I use half the amount of everything, not a fourth. Why the extra 25%? It's because I added added vegetables to the recipe. Believe me, this dish tastes twice as good when combined with vegetables!

About the chicken: To make it easy on yourself buy boneless, skinless breasts. At my local supermarket these are on sale at least once a month. The last time I shopped the sale price for a 2 1/2 lb. pack of four large breasts (unfrozen) was $5.50

If you're only cooking for yourself you'll want to use one breast and freeze the other 3. Remove the supermarket wrapping and re-wrap each one separately before freezing. If you freeze all four at once in their original wrapping they'll stick together and you'll need a flame thrower to separate them. When the chicken is thawed and ready to cook, dice it into small squares. The parts won't really look like squares, but that's what you should aim for.

For the rice you'll want long grain white Jasmine. I have a bag of short grain Japanese sticky rice that I have to finish up, so I use that. It's delicious and easy to eat with chopsticks, but I have to admit that it's so good that it competes with the taste of the main dish.

Oil: peanut oil used to be popular for stir fry because it resists smoking at high temperatures, and smoking can give food a scorched taste. I use grape seed oil because it's almost as heat resistant, and is more healthful. The taste is about the same.

Soy sauce: Kikkoman has the best taste of all, but it's too thin and watery to stand up to the high heat of stir frying. For that you need something thicker. Try "Pearl River Bridge Superior Dark Soy Sauce (above)." obtainable at Chinese markets. Gee, that's a beautiful name isn't it?

Sesame oil: two Chinese cookbooks I've seen recommend Kadoya brand Japanese sesame oil (above).

Ginger root: buy it hard and firm.  For one meal you only need a single small root.

Vegetables: 1/4 lb. snow peas, bean sprouts (a big bag usually costs a dollar), shitake mushrooms (shown above; cheap if you buy them at a Chinese market), and spinach.  No bamboo shoots or water chestnuts for this recipe. They're for Almond Chicken, which is made differently. Add a small chili pepper if you like hot food.

Hoisin sauce: this is one of the things that gives Chinese dishes their distinctive flavor. The supermarket kind in a jar is fine. I like to add a little Chinese oyster sauce (Lee Kum Kee Premium Oyster Flavored Sauce) and pepper, but these are optional.

Okay, that's it. Before cooking have all the ingredients prepared and easily accessible. If you have to stop to look for something while cooking the food will overcook. BE CAREFUL NOT TO OVERCOOK. It's frighteningly easy to cook the flavor away, or give it a scorchy taste.  If you're not sure about the cooking time, it's best to error on the side of undercooking.

Take care to be sure the important areas of the wok are thoroughly oiled before subjecting the wok to high heat and garlic. Constantly shake the wok when cooking; constantly stir. Wok cooking uses intense heat for short periods of time. Have the table set, have the rice already cooked and on the plates, and have drinks at the ready. The cooking will go very quickly and you or your guests will want to start eating the instant the food is moved onto the plate. Guests should never wait for the cook to be seated. The food is at maximum flavor the moment it touches the plate.

Oh, I almost forgot the vegetables! If you cook them separately then cook them last of all, over medium heat, and almost all at once. I say "almost" because you'll want to add the most delicate things, like spinach leaves and sesame oil, last.

The drink? Beer or a moderately sweet white wine is most common. I tried a Gewurztraminer (spelled right?) and that worked fine. Trader Joe's Two Buck Chuck version of Sauvignon Blanc worked fine too. Helen Chen says the Chinese don't drink alcohol with meals unless they're celebrating something. They prefer to drink chicken broth, with a little tea afterward.

So there it is! You can find videos about seasoning and cleaning a steel wok on YouTube. You can also find videos  on the making of Cashew Chicken, but none of them agree.

For the time being I'll stick to Chen's recipe. Chen's version wins the coveted 'Two Day Glow" rating that I bestow on only on the best recipes, the ones that incite you to hippie bliss (above) and the feeling that all men are your brothers for a full two days after eating the meal.  I love Chinese restaurant meals, but they've never given me the glow that Chen's recipes have.

CARTOON ANATOMY: COMPLEX UPPER, SIMPLE LOWER

NOTE: 'NOTHING OBSCENE HERE, BUT THIS POST IS NOT OFFICE OR SCHOOL SAFE!

In a lot of women interesting shapes are distributed all over the body. The head and torso dominate, but there's still a lot to see everywhere else.

Some women, on the other hand, have all the goodies (ie., non sexual goodies) crammed into the upper torso, and the rest is...well...simplicity. That part is devoted to...."art." It's a case of one design concept being grafted onto another: a complex top onto a super simple bottom. 

Look at the woman above. Her torso above the bottom of the ribs is compact and full of detail. Below the ribs she's all clean, long, flowing lines.

BTW, I like the way this woman dresses to emphasize the contrasts. I even like her slouch because it favors her legs. 

Long legs and a short, compressed torso are a cartoonist's dream. Thank Heaven there really are people like that!

Actually, in the picture above the long, graceful lines begin just under the breasts. 

This idea that complexity ends with the bottom of the breasts (above) was exploited by Art Nouveau artists like Mucha and Klimt. 

If a woman is brave enough (above) she can dress in a way that really calls attention to the smooth nature of the lower two thirds. A martini and a pack of cigarettes complete the look. 

MY BEST POST EVER, AND IT'S ALL TRUE!

This is a revised version of a post I did way back in 2007. I'm very busy and cheats like this will allow me to continue posting for the next week. I don't feel guilty, though. It's the best post I ever did, and it reads a lot better now. Here goes...

My friend Mike hates fast food restaurants. He won't set foot in them. I understand that: most of them are crowded and noisy, with plastic seats and bad food, and who needs that? Alright, they can be terrible, but my local Carl's Jr. isn't like that. For at least half the day it's quiet and comfortable, and you can nurse a cup of coffee while reading, and nobody'll bother you.

Anyway, one day I caught Mike in a weak moment and he let me talk him into going to Carl's. Big mistake! I picked the wrong time because the place was full of retar...er, "mentally challenged" people...with shopping carts filled with "Lion King" memorabilia.  Maybe they'd raided a dumpster. Maybe there was a convention nearby, I don't know.  They were all shouting incoherently and arguing about who owned what, and of course they all gravitated to Mike.

I tried to take Mike's mind off the din by talking about movies and what not, but it was hard to tune out what was going on all around us. At the door a man appeared with a Lion King doll, but he couldn't get in. I don't think he understood the concept of doors. He could see his friends inside, but there was this big old slab (the door) in the way.

After making a few tentative little pushes he opened the door about 20% of the way, then tried to squeeze in through the narrow opening. The door, which had a normal amount of spring tension, began to close on him every time he stopped pushing, and it pinned him by the shoulders. The frightened man turned sideways to get more room but the door closed on him in that position too. Finally he  painstakingly wheedled through sideways, like a crab.

I'm ashamed to say that I was so surprised by what I was seeing that I forgot to offer to help. Besides I was distracted by a little kid who was trying to hit Mike with an empty DVD box.

Things got worse. A man settled into a booth nearby with a cup of coffee and looked wistfully out the window. Nothing wrong with that, I thought, just a citizen enjoying a cup of coffee. "Ah!" you could hear him thinking, "Life is good!" He took a sip then went to take another sip and was shocked to discover that his cup was empty. He glared at the kitchen then got up and filled it again...but with only a little bit of liquid.

Back in the booth he took another long, relaxed sip. "Aaaaah!", he thought again, "That's good!" But wait a minute! He went to take a another sip and the cup was empty all over again! Wha...? What kind of scam was this place running!!!??? Once again he stormed up to the counter to get more coffee.

This went on and on, with him looking surprised that his cup was empty then filling it again with the wrong amount of coffee. Once again I didn't offer to help because the kid was back hitting Mike with the DVD box again.

I should add that Mike was sitting close to the aisle. Every time the coffee man passed he would fart in Mike's face. And when I say "passed," I mean passed in both directions. Mike would get a fart in the face on the guy's way up, and a fart in the face on the guy's way back.

I suggested to Mike that we slide farther in on our seats so we could get away from the aisle, but when we did it was revealed that the woman in the booth behind us was regarding Mike with a murderous stare. Maybe he reminded her of the father who abused her and who now deserved to be stabbed. It was really intense. Regretfully we slid back to the aisle where Mike was promptly farted on again.

So that was my lunch with food snob Mike. (Sigh!) I guess we won't be eating at Carl's again any time soon.


BTW......many, many thanks to Charles Brubaker for the nifty spinner. What a hoot! I'll post a picture of it when I'm able. I can't wait to use it!