With the aid of computers,mainstream animation has become more and more complex over the years as eachstudio tries to outdo the other with eye-popping 3D effects. While the renowned animator Taku Furukawa hasalways been open to tinkering with new technologies, at heart he has alwaysrecognized the value of animation in its most basic form of putting pen topaper and drawing a series of images.
Furukawa’s 2005 animated short PaperFilms (Le cinéma sur papier / ペーパーフィルム, 2005) harkens back to his explorationof early animation in his 1975 award-winning film Phenakistiscope(Odorokiban/驚き版). InPhenakistiscope, he imitated the 19th century circular spinning toy of the samename. With Paper Films, he takes animation back to its even more ancient form of a horizontal sequence of images that depictstages of motion.
The illusion of motion isdemystified in Paper Films as Furukawa first shows the paper pictures that makeup his animation on a gallery wall, before setting them into motion. A row of just over half a dozen images of asun pop up and down like ponies on a carousel. Furukawa then moves the camera in to capture just one of the animatedimages to reveal that instead the pupils of the green-nosed sun are actually people.
This pattern of showing the miniature imagesin a row then moving in closer to reveal a surprise repeats throughout thefilm. In one instance we see what lookslike a couple consuming a heart-shaped cake, but when the camera moves incloser we see that it is no ordinary couple but a centaur and a mermaid. Another sequence appears just to be that of acrescent moon lying down, but then the camera moves in closer to reveal anaked woman popping out of the moon like Momotaro from the peach.
Paper Films is a useful film for teachingstudents the principles of animation and the significance of perspective in animation. When seen in an animated sequence onscreen,some series of images give the impression of horizontal movement. However, when the camera focuses on just oneof the series the movement appears to be vertical: a Humpty Dumpty figurewearing an anti-war slogan on a T-shirt is not really moving sideways, but plummetingonto a row of tanks like a bomb; a car that looks like it is moving from left to rightis actually moving from the distance into the foreground; and so on.
As ever, Taku Furukawa is having funwith animation and he playfully drops references to historical antecedents thatshaped both his artistic aesthetic and his sense of humour – everything from Muybridge to theMarx Brothers. The playful nature of thefilm is emphasized by the lyrical score by his daughter Momoko Furukawa (official website) andAkihiro Yoshida.
The title of this film is occasionally rendered as "Paper Film" because of the ambiguity of the katakana English title. I chose the plural "Paper Films" for the title because that is how it appears in the opening credits of the film. The plural makes sense because the 6'21" short is actually made up of many seconds long animated short films.
The title of this film is occasionally rendered as "Paper Film" because of the ambiguity of the katakana English title. I chose the plural "Paper Films" for the title because that is how it appears in the opening credits of the film. The plural makes sense because the 6'21" short is actually made up of many seconds long animated short films.
Paper Films appears on the Anido DVDTakun Films 2.
