Practically Infinite Manipulability: Domestic Dogs, Canine Performance and Digital Cinema (original) (raw)

The performing lives of things: animals, puppets, models and effects

2019

This chapter addresses how critical analysis might describe and evaluate non-human “performances” in television fiction, and how they affect distinctions between actor and role, and between character and narrative function. Across the history and genres of television, there have been very many “objects” that narratives make expressive but that are not human, nor even, in some cases, alive at all. The chapter considers the balloon-like Rovers of "The Prisoner" TV series, the kangaroos in "Skippy", and the puppets and models in "Thunderbirds", arguing that if they are to play their part in the fictional world, each of these things needs to function as an expressive “performer”. It argues that the boundaries between self and other, human and non-human, are thus destabilised and reflect on the work of creation in television.

The Most Mimetic Animal. Notes on the Philosophy of Acting

Encounters in Performance and Philosophy. Theatre, Performativity and the Practice of Theory, Laura Cull & Alice Lagaay (eds.), 2014

In this article theatrical performance is considered from the point of view of the bodily performance of an actor. The way actors act, how they view their art and how it is estimated by others, is dependent on our shared understanding of human agency. “What is human and how does it appear?” is a philosophical question to which every theatrical performance offers one possible answer. Most often this happens unnoticed. But even there where this question is faced most consciously in contemporary theatre, we may still remain captured by a certain “anthropocentricism”. Drawing most centrally on the Le paraxode sur le comédien by Denis Diderot and Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe´s reading of it, the article is dedicated to the deconstructive analysis of acting.

“I’m not a real boy, I’m a puppet”: Computer-Animated Films and Anthropomorphic Subjectivity

This article rethinks anthropomorphic representation and animated animality within the context of the contemporary digital era and, more precisely, against the rise of the computer-animated feature film. By interrogating the fractured identity of the anthropomorph as a necessarily hybrid figuration, it suggests how popular computer-animated films have rejected ánthrōpos and instead exploited the non-human morphē element to manipulate virtual space through anthropomorphic subjectivity. The anthropomorph is here refined into a more prescriptive and functional agent, absorbing viewers into a spectatorial game that sharpens their awareness of the digital realm. Films such as Ratatouille (Brad Bird, 2007) and Bee Movie (Simon J Smith and Steve Hickner, 2007) are offered as case studies that reflect the shift towards the form or morphē element, one that is registered through a particular mode of subjectified address. Drawing on Gilles Deleuze’s notion of ‘gaseous perception’ to elucidate this delivery of enlivened space, this article argues that the computer-animated film is implicated in a hierarchical switch away from humanlike behaviour to embrace the possibilities of the anthropomorph’s non-human morphē identity, thereby upturning the received narrative of how anthropomorphism has been conceptualized among critical studies of animation.

VIZACHRI_The human-animal dialectic in animated movies.pdf

2015

Animated features have a high appeal due to their technological craft, creativity and moral message. They have a significant influence on people’s imaginations. It is interesting to note that the protagonists of these movies are usually anthropomorphised animals. Adults usually understand these animal representations as metaphors for our society or humanity. So, we can ask ourselves: Is anthropomorphising ethically valid? What does it show about our culture? What about our relationship with other animals? Animated film can bring discourses of either reproduction or subversion of animal exploitation to viewers’ attention. This contradiction constitutes a Marxist dialectic because the films show us the different interests surrounding the human–animal relationship and seek a way to overcome this contradiction. But just like myths, such films seek to overcome the problem using the imaginary. Unfortunately, this is far from a full solution in a real or even symbolic sense.

FILM PERFORMANCE : The role of the actor within cinematic expression

2014

This work seeks to consider film acting as an integrated element of cinematic expression, a core aspect of film performance but one which gains additional meaning and commentary via combination and integration with the more traditionally considered aspects of filmmaking. Although ‘performance’ is a widely written and talked about aspect of cinema studies, a clear understanding of acting and performance, their relationship to one another and to the mechanism of filmmaking has until now been absent. When in recent years ‘film performance’ has been offered as an academic focus, the cynosure of the analysis has been the actions of the actor and a language to describe them, rather than the skills employed in relation to the specifically technical demands of the medium. What then do we gain when we consider in detail the organic relationship between those technical demands and the actor’s decisions? This foundational question is addressed here in a number of ways. A range of texts are acc...

'Animating with Facts: The Performative Process of Documentary Animation in "the ten mark" (2010)'

Abstract This article examines how animated films re-present and re-interpret real world occurrences, people and places, focusing on an area that has been overlooked to date: the process of performance and how this manifests itself in animated documentary films. Not simply a notion of ‘performance’ as we might understand it in an ‘acting’ sense (someone playing a role in a re-enactment), but that of the animator performing specific actions in order to interpret the factual material. The central questions addressed are: how does an understanding of ‘performance’ and the related term ‘performativity’ help us to frame animated/nonfictional acting? What ontological questions are raised by thinking about notions of acting in animation (and the performance instantiated in the very action of animating)? How do viewers relate to, interpret or ‘believe in’ animated films that are asserting real/factually-based stories? The article uses a recent film, the ten mark, as a case study to explore possible answers to these questions. Keywords animation, documentary, nonfiction, performance, performativity, puppets, alief.

Actors and Acting in Motion Capture

2016

Characters in movies and video games are created (in whole or in part) with the help of motion capture. The essay describes the characteristics of this technology and aims to verify whether and how motion capture has influenced the actor's work. Using heterogeneous sources (websites, online magazines, newspapers and essays) the essay lists the most influential opinions and the most relevant issues within the debate about acting and digital technologies in pre- and post-production. Starting from few considerations on how the digital manipulation has heavily intervened on the final outcome of the actor's work, and taking into account the proliferation of entertainment in which the characters are a mix of live action and digital animation, the essay concludes with certain practical and theoretical considerations on how we might re-consider the actor’s tasks in these new production contexts. The paper is accompanied by an overview of the technologies used, and by a series of selected videos from the web. The essay features also an interview with John Dower, a director who has worked for the motion capture and video games and is co-founder of The Vault Mocap in UK

Acting in the context of feature films

Linguistics and Culture Review, 2021

Acting is an ancient art form that has existed since time immemorial. Acting as a creative activity is one of several types of performing arts, and they all have three common phases of development; training/preparation, rehearsal/practice and performance. In addition, any study of the performing arts must take into account the reality that a performer is always embedded in the contextual environment and participates in one or more of the three phases of development. Acting in modern cinema remains an activity that involves instantaneous interaction with others, while maintaining the ability to draw from personal past experiences and imaginations about oneself, others and/or the environment. The purpose of this study was to identify the features of acting in cinema and to identify the difference with the work in the theatrical environment. The main methods of this study were analysis and comparison. Although theatrical and cinematographic traditions represent stylistic and aesthetic ...