Acme Filmworks' Scott Ingalls Directs Cartoon Schizophrenia For Publicis/Bloom, Dallas.
By JEREMY LEHRER
If there were an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for the most animation styles used in the shortest period of time, Iron Kids Bread’s "IronKid n’ Wheel Skiddin’" may just take the prize. The :30 incorporates 23 animation styles ranging from clay animation to paper cut-out animation.
The spot, directed by Hollywood-based Acme Filmworks’ Scott Ingalls via Publicis/Bloom, Dallas, wasn’t the result of a crazed animation pledge. Publicis came to Ingalls with the idea of creating a commercial that featured an animation smorgasbord. "The way [the agency] originally presented it to me was they wanted the spot to look like Iron Kids had done its own festival of animation," Ingalls recalled. Howard Goldthwaite, creative director/copywriter at Publicis, wrote the lyrics to a song that provided the rhythmic foundation for the spot. "When I talked to Howard, he had the song worked out in his head, and for every line of the song, he wanted to cut to a different style of animation," Ingalls said. The agency added the constraint that the spot had to begin and end with snippets of live-action footage from previous Iron Kids commercials.
Goldthwaite explained that the agency settled on the pastiche approach after watching a sample reel of Acme’s animation, noting that using quick bits of animation was also a way of keeping children’s eyes on the ad. "The more you can keep something new in front of [kids], the more it reawakens their attention," he said. "[Many] of these scenes are just fifteen frames long, so every half-second you get something brand new to look at." The lyrics and the vignettes in the spot highlight different uses of Iron Kids Bread while portraying the active lifestyles of animated kids who eat it.
For Ingalls, figuring out how to get from one animation snippet to the other was nowhere near as easy as connecting the dots. He had to figure out all the steps in between the two live-action bookends, and develop scenarios for each section. To prepare, Ingalls elaborately storyboarded the spot so he knew exactly what would be hap-
pening in each section. To determine the animation genre for each scene, Ingalls chose the animation approach he thought would "maximize the payoff of each scene."
Ingalls and his Acme team then collected a range of samples and stills to be used as reference points during the animation process. Ingalls also worked in oodles of allusions throughout the spot. A scene that features a girl snowboarding down an incline was a reference to Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the classic stop-motion animation rendered by Rankin/Bass. "If you were to faithfully render a modern skateboarding girl as an elf from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, that’s how I saw [this character] looking," Ingalls noted. Another section featuring a cutout of Francis Bacon’s head swaddling atop a bacon-strip body was an homage to the Monty Python-era animation of Terry Gilliam, who is one of Ingall’s favorite directors. Another section, in which a smiling piece of bread jumps into a lunchbox, evokes early Fleischer Brothers’ line-drawings. Ingalls, who had recently become interested in woodcuts, also rendered a skateboarder sliding around a half-pipe in an imitation woodcut technique.
Ingalls had extensive praise for his "small but very talented crew" at Acme, which accomplished everything the director wanted within a limited budget and time frame. Perhaps the most time-intensive scene features a photo cutout/stop-motion piece in which a gargantuan slice of bread is hoisted by a construction crane and lowered onto a sandwich the size of an SUV. Because the shots involved complex camera moves and a preparatory photo shoot, Ingalls estimated the sequence as taking seven 20-hour days to complete.
Some animation styles fell by the wayside during the animation process. One section showcasing an Iron Kids’ rocket ship was originally going to be rendered using a puppet animation style reminiscent of Thunderbirds, a television program that ran in the late ’60s and featured what Ingalls described as "puppets and rocket ships with very thin plots." But Ingalls decided that it would be more contemporary to use an animé style for that piece.
Ingalls had many observations about the various animation genres. Of clay animation, Ingalls said that regardless of when the set-up began, the actual shooting never started before nightfall. "It’s a phenomenon I’ve witnessed many times," said Ingalls, who attributed the delay to the demiurgic tendencies of artists: "When you’re creating a whole world, there are always little bits and pieces that you can make better."
The team at Publicis included Steve Feldman, executive creative director; Kelly Scott, producer; and Dean Hlavinka, art director. At Acme Filmworks, Ingalls was assisted by Ron Diamond, executive producer; Gwynn Adik, producer; Keith Mack, assistant director; Michael O’Donnell, technical director; Darren Shaw; technical assistant; George Khair, postproduction coordinator/editor; Rick Potts, animator/painter; Youngki Yoon, animator; Evan Mack, background painter; Christiane Cegavsky, stop motion animator/model maker; Julie Stern, digital matte cutter; and Jennifer Nethsawath, cutter. Cel coloring was done at VirtualMagic Animation, North Hollywood, where VP Andrea Romero was executive producer; Chrisie Russell was production manager; Rick Moser was technical director; and Billy Mejias was assistant technical director. Tabletop shots of Iron Kids Bread were done at Sato Films, Santa Monica, where Gary Sato was director/DP and Rick Brown was executive producer. At 525 Studios, Santa Monica, Paul Bronkar was colorist and Eric Novisedlak was Henry artist/online editor. Los Angeles-based CIS Hollywood’s Steve Bowen was also a colorist. Music, sound design and audio post were done at Admusic, Santa Monica, where personnel consisted of John Adair, composer; Steve Sauber, sound designer; Rob McInteer, sound engineer; and Pat Weaver, producer.
Review: Writer-Director Adam Elliot’s “Memoir of a Snail”
It's not your typical stop-motion film when characters name pets after Sylvia Plath and read "The Diary of Anne Frank" — or when the story's inspired by a quote from existentialist thinker Søren Kierkegaard. And it's certainly not your typical stop-motion film when you find yourself crying as much as the characters do — in their case, with huge droplets leaking from bulging, egg-shaped eyes so authentic-looking, you expect the screen to get wet. But those are just a few of the unique things about Adam Elliot's "Memoir of a Snail," a film that's as heart-tugging as it is technically impressive, a work of both emotional resonance and great physical detail using only clay, wire, paper and paint. One thing Elliot's film is not, though, is for kids. So please take note before heading to the multiplex with family in tow: this film earns its R rating, as you'll discover as soon as young Grace, voiced by Sarah Snook, tells us she thought masturbation was about chewing your food properly. Sex, nudity, drunk driving, a fat fetish — like we said, it's R-rated for a reason. But let's start at the beginning. In this, his seventh "clayography" (for "clay" and "biography"), the Australian writer-director explores the process of collecting unnecessary objects. Otherwise known as hoarding, it's something that weighs us down in ways we can't see, for all the clutter. Elliot also argues that it helps us build constrictive shells around ourselves — like snail shells, perhaps. Our protagonist is Grace Pudel, voiced with a quirky warmth and plenty of empathy by the wonderfully agile Snook. We first encounter Grace as a grown woman, telling her long, lonely life story to her pet garden snail, Sylvia (named after Plath), at a moment of deep sadness. Then we flash... Read More