This has been making the rounds for a year, but I just caught up with it today. Being a nut for the 1966 Batman TV series (and a fan of the recent Chris Nolan movies) I just had to post it here on the Brew. Tip of the Bat-cowl to Ohio-based animator David Rose for a job well done.

UPDATE: MARCH 15, 2012: Bla Bla won the SXSW Interactive Award.

Is it a film or a game? Interactivity and non-linear storytelling have been more the realm of gaming than short filmmaking, but the two fields are slowly merging. In the coming years, interactivity promises to become a valuable tool in the short filmmaker’s arsenal. Bla Bla created for the NFB by Montreal director Vincent Morisset is one of the more ambitious and successful interactive film experiments I’ve seen. The press release below contains lots of details about what it’s all about. But first, be sure to spend some time exploring the film itself by going HERE.

Vincent Morisset’s BLA BLA is an interactive tale that explores the fundamental principles of human communication. The viewer makes the story possible: without him or her, the characters remain inert, waiting for the next interaction. The spectator clicks, plays and searches through the simple, uncluttered scenes, truly driving the experience.

Each of the six chapters in the story depicts a different aspect of communication: learning a language, making small talk, expressing emotions, etc. Rich in opportunities for discovery, BLA BLA illustrates these concepts through endearing yet perplexing characters. The figures were designed by Caroline Robert using a variety of techniques, both traditional and hi-tech.

“BLA BLA uses xerography, drawing on paper, ActionScript-generated animations, puppet stop-motion combined with real-time 3D mapping, etc.,” Morisset explains. “I am inspired by projects that feel free aesthetically. I wanted BLA BLA to feel hand-made, imperfect, fragile, so we forget about the technology.”

The music as well as the characters’ speech were fragmented into tiny clips and then scored through programming. Composer Philippe Lambert designed a progressive soundscape that uses “controlled randomness.” Morisset relied on the skills of software developer Édouard Lanctôt-Benoît for the programming of BLA BLA.

The work stands apart in its emphasis on achieving an emotional response in the viewer/actor. “I wanted to create moods and generate emotions through an interactive piece,” Morriset says. “It’s quite hard to do dramatic crescendos on a website… I thought it would be an interesting challenge.”

As part of the creative process for BLA BLA, Morisset extensively researched interactive narrative. Seeking a filmmaking language specific to the online realm, he defined a new grammar of non-linear editing. Through the very format of the work, he therefore questions the challenges of communication and of telling a story in which the spectator is a participant: “The project in itself explores the grammar of a new medium,” he says.

BLA BLA thus offers a new vision of communication in the wider sense, of how our natural behaviours and interactions with others play out in the world. “The relation between the user and the film is part of the message,” Morriset explains. “We wrote and created it based on universal stuff: the social nature of humans, our fear of the unknown, the desire for appropriation and freedom, and paradoxically the love of being taken by the hand.”

Morisset has been exploring the narrative potential of interactive art for twelve years now. His pioneering work in the field has included several collaborations with the group Arcade Fire, including “be oNline B”, widely considered the first interactive music video, and MIROIR NOIR, a documentary portrait of the band. With the support of the NFB, he now offers us BLA BLA, a one-of-a-kind experience that further refines his hallmark: re-imagining “once upon a time” for the digital age.

CREDITS
Direction, Animation and Compositing
Vincent Morisset

Sound, Music and Voice
Philippe Lambert

Programming and Technology
Édouard Lanctôt-Benoit

Visual Design and Animation
Caroline Robert

Puppet Armature Design
Jean-François Lévesque

Rotoscopy
Vincent Lambert

Photography
Minelly Kamemura

Additional Prototype Programming
Mathieu Campagna

Prototype 3D Modelling and Animation
Joshua Sherrett
Jonathan Fleming-Bock

(Thanks, J. J. Sedelmaier)

Resistance is futile! Pat Kirkham’s long-overdue book about graphic design legend and motion picture title innovator Saul Bass is finally out. Saul Bass: A Life in Film and Design is an epic 440 pages and includes nearly 1,500 illustrations. Designed by Bass’s daugher Jennifer Bass, the book is quite unbelievably the first major American retrospective of Bass’s work.

Bass had a long and infuential career in graphic and corporate identity design, but today he is perhaps best remembered for his groundbreaking motion picture titles, of which there are 70 examples in the book. To create those, Bass collaborated with many animators throughout his career, including Bill Melendez (It’s a Mad Mad Mad Mad World titles), Bill Hurtz (Around the World in 80 Days end titles), Fred Crippen (The Sale of Manhattan and Why Man Creates) and John Whitney, Sr. (Vertigo titles).

The book is $45 on Amazon.

We all remember Ren and Stimpy, but where is the love for Disney’s The Shnookums and Meat Funny Cartoon Show?

The American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre in Hollywood will remedy this situation when it holds Kopptoberfest: A Tribute To Bill Kopp on Saturday night November 12th. It’s a fund raiser for the Cinematheque, with Kopp in person and numerous clips from his work including episodes of Eek! The Cat, Toonsylvania, his violent retelling of the Three Little Pigs from Tales From The Crypt, Roger Rabbit in Roller Coaster Rabbit, as well as scenes from his live action features and Oscar-winning student films. Prior to the screening, hand-painted animation cells will be sold, with all proceeds going to the American Cinematheque.

Voice actors Brad Garrett, Tom Kenny, Jess Harnell, animator Jeff DeGrandis and producer Margaret Loesch will join Kopp on stage in a panel discussion. It’s FREE admission (with suggested donation of $10.) and starts at 7:30pm at The Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood, CA. For more information, click here. For a refresher on Shookums and Meat, see video below:

These screen shots were taken with my iPhone off my cathode-ray tube television set. The images are from the new Looney Tunes Blu-Ray disc set, the Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Vol. 1, which I just got my hands on. Don’t judge this set on my blurry shots above. I actually ran out and bought a $79 blu-ray player and hooked it up to my old TV set so I could start watching all the blu-ray discs I’ve been accumulating – even if it’s NOT the correct way to watch them.

That said, the cartoons on this collection look incredibly good. Obviously I’m a bit biased as (#1) I love Warner Bros. cartoons and (#2) consulted on the set and wrote the liner notes. We’ve previously posted about the contents of this collection (official press release here), but seeing and holding the actual packaging in my hands is pretty incredible. It’s almost worth the price of the whole set just for the restoration of the (previously lost, now found) 1955 Chuck Jones Air Force re-enlistment film, A Hitch In Time. It’s got incredible animation and layouts by Ernie Nordli that go beyond what they were doing in the regular Looney Tunes of the time.

I’m not a regular blu-ray collector, but here’s what I appreciate about this technology – and this is something I tell my film collector friends: Blu-Ray the equivalent of the studios selling you a mint 35mm print. As someone who grew up during a time before VHS, when the only thing the studios would sell from their cartoon libraries were cut-down 8mm black and white (of color) cartoons, Blu-ray discs clearly are the gold standard for home video. With proper projection or a huge HD flat screen (two things I still don’t have), watching Looney Tunes at home will never be the same.

So consider this an unabashed plug: Looney Tunes Platinum Collection Vol. 1 goes on sale next Tuesday and is highly recommended – whether you have a blu-ray player or not.

As much as I love classic animation, I rarely (if ever) enjoy modern-day revivals and tributes to classic animation styles. I shudder every time I see a Tex Avery “take” imitation, a stylized “cartoon modern” character design, a Milt Kahl-ish performance, or yet another rubber-hosed Fleischer-style animated piece. Of course, building on these elements to achieve something new is fantastic, but too many animators view the act of recreating and referencing past styles as an accomplishment in itself. It’s an artistic dead end, explains animator and teacher Mark Mayerson in this must-read blog post. He analyzes a relatively recent Tom & Jerry short The Karate Guard to illustrate his point. It all boils down to this, he says:

Creative works are not only the product of people, they’re also the products of a time and place. As the world keeps changing, it is impossible to recreate something from the past. While artists often wish to duplicate what they love, they can only approximate it. Paradoxically, the closer they get to it, the more they’ve succeeded in doing nothing more than an good imitation. And since the originals are everywhere to begin with, is an imitation necessary?

Pixar/Disney’s John Lasseter received a star on Hollywood’s Walk of Fame yesterday – in front of the El Capitan Theatre – surrounded Pixar voice talent including Bonnie Hunt, Owen Wilson, Brad Paisley, Emily Mortimer, John Ratzenberger, Patton Oswalt, Don Rickles, Randy Newman and Cheech Marin. However, those photos you can see anywhere online. Here on Cartoon Brew we congratulate him with this photo snapped on my iPhone (above) with Lasseter surrounded by Pixar colleagues (including Ed Catmull, Pete Doctor, Bob Peterson and Pixar GM Jim Morris). And instead of the glossy promo video piece prepared by Disney (to essentially plug Cars 2 on DVD), we’ll embed this fan video below showing how his star was made…

Congratulations to John Lasseter!

The low-brow La Luz de Jesus Gallery in L.A. is celebrating its 25th anniversary with the largest art exhibition in its history – including this piece above by artist José Rodolfo Loaiza Ontiveros. The current show, La Luz de Jesus 25, features more than 120 artists including Gary Baseman, Tim Biskup, Al Farrow, Chris Mars, Elizabeth McGrath, Mark Mothersbaugh, The Pizz, Mark Ryden, Shag, Peter Shire, Mark Todd and Eric White. The exhibition opens on November 4th and will remain on view through November 28th. The gallery is located at 4633 Hollywood Blvd. (near Hillhurst).

(Thanks, Karl Cohen)