CRITERIOS DE CAMBIO CLIMÁTICO EN EL MODELO DE GESTIÓN DEL PDOT

The realm of stop motion animation is unavoidably indivisible from the lens-based world as it does not exist outside of the act of shooting, the camera does not simply record the movement of inanimate objects as the camera is an integral part of the making of the inanimate move. Therefore, part of the strangeness and denaturalisation of stop motion animation is in how the camera shows these accumulations of distorted cues of scale and how they occupy cinematic space. Notable lens-based effects include a shallow depth of field, which causes an exaggerated amount of the blur that viewers of live action cinema would equate with distance, and is unavoidable when shooting objects which are centimetres, not meters, apart. A shallow depth of field leaves only a thin strip of an image in focus, an effect that most viewers would understand to indicate a small physical space.141 _{Other effects particular to the photographic image include the magnification of} real world objects, in which their textures and patina will appear in crisp and highlighted detail by virtue of being impossibly large relative to their normal real world size.

The miniature sets in All The Nice Things Come From Here are mostly photographic images papered onto MDF. They are really tiny miniature theatrical flats which operate in much the same way as those described by Cubbit, as an indication of a narrative space rather than a descriptive simulacra of an actual space.142 _{The design and use of sets is a} crucial part of stop motion animation as they create the visual world of the film. Because

141 _{This implicit understanding of photographic convention can be seen in the popularity of tilt-} shift effects, which can be achieved with special lenses or approximated with digital

manipulation. Using the technique, it is easy to make a large building or vista look like a toy or model simply through manipulating the amount of focus present in the image. It has been used by artists such as Olivo Barbieri and has entered the amateur photographic lexicon through articles in the popular media such as The New York Times 2007 article “Fake Tilt-shift Photography” http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/09/magazine/09_19_tiltshift.html

142 _{Cubitt, The Practice of Light: A Genealogy of Visual Technologies From Prints to Pixels,} 185.

they are frequently miniature constructions, they have a distinct visual appearance, and create a quite different type of cinematic space to their full-scale live action counterparts. The cinematic spaces of stop motion animation are like, but also unlike, other forms of film, and that friction of the visually expected combined with the visually unexpected is part of what sets it apart from live action film.

Like live action film, stop motion animation is comprised of real objects (whether they are puppets or everyday objects), but unlike in live action, the space that these objects occupy is miniaturised and the time they occupy is staccato, and it is these physical and temporal dimensions that are the crucial two points of stop motion’s divergence from cinema. The shift from human-size to miniature creates a whole new physical reality as the optics of shooting and capturing small scale sets is quite different to that of their full-scale counterparts. Elements such as depth of field and frame rate are also notably dissimilar to their real world equivalents when the subjects of the shot are miniaturised.143 This might be smoothed over in a commercial mainstream film, for example in a high- end animation like Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox (2009) the miniatures allow for incredible set pieces (cut-away sets, beautiful textures and intricate puppets) but there is a unifying aesthetic, in terms of the scale and camera work, that makes the onscreen world whole, complete and visually consistent. While Fantastic Mr Fox has a different (and differently crafted) aesthetic to live action film, the aspects of scale are not emphasised as a part of the overall look of the film. Other film-makers exploit the other-worldliness of unusual shallow depths of field and the potential for huge camera moves to create a more unsettling theatrical space with obvious changes in scale. An example of this is seen in the ghostly self-winding screws in the Quay Brother's The Street of Crocodiles (1986),

143 _{Rickitt's overview of special effects techniques in Special Effects; The History and}

Technique lists three major considerations for shooting models: scale, speed and depth of field.

There are the formulas of frame rates and aperture sizes that help the cinematographer account for some of the differences between photographing life-sized and miniature sets.

which appear outsized next to the puppets, and are complimented by more subtle comparisons from the use of everyday objects in miniature. The doll-parts character, The Tailor's Apprentice, caresses an out-sized kidney (taken from what animal? A mouse? An elephant?) and his hand is wrapped in threads of cotton that would be the size of ropes if scaled up to human size (see Figure 36).

Figure 36. The Tailor’s Apprentice feels his way around a kidney in the Quay Brother's The Street of

Crocodiles (1986)

The cotton threads read both as familiar and then unfamiliar when placed in a puppet world of uncertain scale. Regardless of the materials of manufacture, any variations of scale, no matter how subtle, highlight and expose the material and tactile nature of the set's construction, and the usual scale of objects becomes distorted through unusual applications. As Michael Atkinson wrote, the reminders of scale and their relationship to the outside world permeate the entire production:

All Quay films celebrate their own exploding miniatureness in similar fashion, by locating within their tabletop cosmos unsounded depths of image, allusion,

and atmosphere. The hallways of Street of Crocodiles go on forever, though we never see to where, and we know on the right side of our brain that it's a matter of inches to the table edge.144

What Atkinson has called a “right side of the brain” understanding of what is inside and outside the frame is the metaleptic conceit of stop motion animation, and it is part of the disruption inbuilt into the style.