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Upstream: Drawing Truth: Animation in Documentary

Published on March 18, 2008

When Richard Linklater's philosophical exploration Waking Life came out in 2001, animation was still largely considered to be "kid stuff" by American audiences. Aside from anime enthusiasts who had long-known the power and potential of the medium, viewers weren't used to the idea that an animated feature could make them think and perhaps even shed light on historical events and contemporary struggles for social justice. But the tide is changing. Marjane Satrapi's 2007 animated feature Persepolis provides a much-needed glimpse into Iranian life and culture, and has been embraced by audiences and critics around the country, suggesting that the time for serious animation is here.

This shift comes just in time for the release of Brett Morgan's Chicago 10, which melds animation and archival footage to tell the story of resistance and repression surrounding the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Morgan is not the first documentarian to use the technique in recent years. Michael Moore worked with the creators of South Park to present his take on the United States' origins in Bowling for Columbine, and the Bulgarian-based Zographic captured the grotesquery of McNugget production in Morgan Spurlock's Super Size Me. But Chicago 10 takes the integration of animation into documentary to a new level, which begs the question: if documentary is a reality-based medium, one which seeks to present some version of "truth," how does the highly-creative art form of animation fit in?

The Pinch-Hitter

When filmmakers Judith Helfand and Daniel Gold were editing Blue Vinyl back in 2001, they hit a wall. While their vérité footage was telling Judith's personal story with humor and nuance, they simultaneously had a lot of information that they were trying to communicate to the audience about polyvinyl chloride and its effects on people and the environment, and they were struggling to find an elegant way to say it all.

That's when one of their editors introduced them to animator Emily Hubley. The daughter of animation icons John and Faith Hubley, Emily had helped directors Peter Friedman and Jean-François Brunet visualize the phenomenon of programmed cell death in the award-winning 1995 film Death by Design. In other words, she had the unique ability of being able to transform really complex, hard-to-explain concepts into beautiful and easy-to-comprehend images.

Hubley, in collaboration with animator Jeremiah Dickey , was able to help Judith and Dan solve major problems they were having in the editing room.

"There were these really difficult spots that either seemed too didactic or too information-heavy," Helfand recalls. "We could have easily overwhelmed folks or put them off — tone was so essential."

Emily Hubley and Jeremiah Dickey illustrate the effects of PVC on the body in Blue Vinyl.

Hubley and Dickey used the same hand-drawn technique that they used to make the animations in John Cameron Mitchell's Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Individual drawings were scanned or digitally photographed and stitched together using Adobe After Effects.

It turned out that animation was just what they needed. "Animation is this extraordinary, liberating art form that can connect the dots in this unbelievable way and set people at ease," Judith explains. "Perhaps when they watch it, they remember being a kid and being told a simple story, and they think to themselves, 'Okay, I'll listen, I'll go there. You can take me there.'"

In a way, that's the ultimate challenge in documentary filmmaking – getting an audience to go along for the ride. Sometimes animation can be just the thing you need for viewers to go that extra step. As animator Jeremiah Dickey puts it, "It is literally another dimension. You can really do anything, anything you can think of."

Multimedia Conversations

Helfand and Gold had such a positive experience working with the medium in Blue Vinyl that when it came time to make their next feature documentary, Everything's Cool , they knew from the start that animation would play a key role. Starting early in the production process, the directors would meet with Hubley and Dickey to have what Dan Gold calls "multimedia conversations."

They would get together at a café with laptops and pens and paper and discuss the big ideas of the film. And while they were talking, the animators would be sketching and doodling. "We would go back and forth with words," Gold explains. "And then they'd hold up a drawing and we'd look at it and say 'That part is right, but this part isn't quite right because it's doesn't fit with some truth we knew from interviewing people or from the verité.' And then the image would evolve."

As much a media analysis as an exploration of environmental issues, Everything's Cool is about the gap between what scientists have known about global warming and the information that has actually penetrated public consciousness. Because the animators were so involved from the earliest stages of production, their work played a major role in shaping the film.

The final sequence that the audience sees right before the closing credits is an animation of what the filmmakers call a "clockotine," a combination of a clock and a guillotine. "We wanted the viewer to get the feeling of 'Oh my gosh, we're running out of time. We have to deal with this,'" Helfand explains. "If we had just had someone say that, it wouldn't have worked. Words and language just get you so far, but then you need a place where people can have a moment of repose, where they can take everything they've just learned and have it work on them in a much more visceral way."

The Art of the Experiential Documentary

Filmmaker Brett Morgan also strives for a visceral encounter with audiences. While he himself "can't even draw a happy face," Morgan has found that animation is the perfect tool for him to create what he calls "experiential documentaries." Eschewing many of the mainstays of conventional documentary – talking heads, historical dates, third-person voice-over narration – he makes films that attempt to embody the spirit of his subjects.

Morgan's 2002 The Kid Stays in the Picture drops viewers into the whirlwind world of Hollywood mega-producer Bob Evans. To bring two-dimensional images to life, artists used a photo animation technique that literally moves the viewer through the images. The result is a mesmerizing experience that, for Morgan, captures the essence of Bob Evans' charismatic personality. "For me the style of the film is dictated by the subject matter. As filmmakers, I think that's where we need to take our cue."

His latest feature, Chicago 10, employs a combination of archival footage, a rousing soundtrack and a variety of animation styles to tell the story of the famous group of activists who were accused of inciting riots during the 1968 Democratic Party Convention in Chicago. The titular "10" includes those commonly referred to as the "Chicago 7" (Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin and co.), as well as Black Panther Party leader Bobby Seale, who was pulled into the trial even though he only made a brief appearance in Chicago during the time of the Convention, and their defense lawyers, William Kunstler and Leonard Weinglass, all of whom Morgan considers to be partners in action.

Brett Morgan used motion-capture animation to bring to life the infamous 1968 freedom of speech trial in Chicago 10.

While many have heard stories of the explosive atmosphere of the trial, cameras were not allowed in the courtroom at the time, and Morgan had to come up with an engaging way to bring the court transcripts to life. After concluding that hand-drawn animation was beyond his budget, he decided to use motion-capture, the same technique used in video games, for these scenes.

While some reviewers have been confused, this is not the same technique used in Richard Linklater's Waking Life. While in rotoscoping illustrators trace over live-action video, motion-capture involves recording the live action of actors through markers attached to their bodies and then using this information to animate three-dimensional models in a digital environment (the same technique used to create the character of Golem in The Lord of the Rings trilogy). Brett Morgan actually did much of the motion-capture body acting himself. "I was maneuvering the characters and driving them emotionally. I had absolute total control in a way that I wouldn't have had in any other animation style."

With actors Hanka Azaria, Liev Schrieber, Mark Ruffalo, Nick Nolte and Jeffrey Wright lending their voices to Abbie Hoffman and the other activists and people involved in the trial, the film allows audiences to experience the court case in a way that was not possible before. While medium purists might question the role of actors and animated reenactment in a documentary, Morgan feels that these were the best tools to tell the story. "I'm not a journalist and I'm not a historian," says Morgan. "I believe that acknowledging the subjective nature of the medium can create a more honest approach to documentary."

Working with three different animation studios, Asterisk, Curious Pictures and Yowza Animation, all in all more than one hundred and fifty people contributed to Chicago 10's numerous animated sequences. According to Morgan, different scenes called for different styles. While motion-capture was used for the courtroom, a more hand-drawn approach was used for other segments, including a dramatic night scene in which riot police descend on Lincoln Park.

As the film plays, the viewer gets dropped into ever-changing environments, each with a different look and feel and each exposing them to a different perspective. "They weren't supposed to work cohesively," according to Morgan. "It's a mash-up. It's an appropriation of all these different imageries into something new and in a way post-modern...I wanted to break the audience out of the illusion in the Brechtian sense, to constantly keep them guessing and to constantly remind them that these are mere representations."

Inspiring Action

Ultimately, all of these techniques are tools of engagement. Morgan wants young people in particular to be inspired by Chicago 10, and his aesthetic choices were always informed by this goal. In Everything's Cool, Helfand and Gold want viewers to get beyond media spin and take action to protect the environment, and, as Gold explains, animation enabled them to "break through the limitations of words in their literal sense and bring people to another place in their minds."

While Everything's Cool partnered with the Step It Up campaign to provide viewers with ways to get involved in environmental advocacy, Chicago 10producer Participant Media is focusing on voting as a form of activism. To that end, they've partnered with Declare Yourself to host an online mash-up video contest in which people are invited to remix animation and live action clips from the film to express their feelings about political issues. In this way the mash-up spirit that Morgan strove for while making the film is being deeply embraced by the outreach and marketing efforts, where anyone can become an animator and have their voice heard.

The Right Tool for Me?

By this point, you are probably asking yourself, "How do I get in on the action?" But before you jump on the animation bandwagon for your next project, animator Jeremiah Dickey encourages filmmakers to "think long and hard about it." Dickey, who also created animated sequences for Rory Kennedy's documentary Indian Point: Imagining the Unimaginable, explains that "the actual process of making animation is almost antithetical to the process of making a documentary. With animation you sit down and plan out what you want, and then a month later you have it, whereas within the process of making a documentary, the entire film could change in that time."

For Brett Morgan, animation is the perfect storytelling tool.

Dickey's longtime collaborator Emily Hubley follows this rule of thumb: "Never animate something you can capture in live action and never shoot anything that would be better served by animation." That's a rule she had to consider every day while working on her feature-length directorial debut, The Toe Tactic , which premiered at this year's South by Southwest Film Festival. The film uses a combination of live action and animation to tell the story of a young woman who is grieving for her father's death.

"You have to love the art form and totally respect it," insists Helfand. "If you do, animation can liberate you to think about your film in a totally new way."

ANIMATION RESOURCES

• ASIFA-East, animation community for NY and the East Coast

• Cartoon Brew, animation discussion blog

• Animation World Network, features listings of animators

ANIMATED INSPIRATION

• Watch the intro to the TV show Wild Wild West (1965), one of Emily Hubley's favorites

• Watch the Hubleys' Cockaboody (1973) (featuring Emily Hubley's voice when she was a pre-schooler!)

• Abraham Ravett's Everything for You (1989)

• Watch the animation A Brief History of America from Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine

• The films of Oscar award winning animator John Canemaker

• Check out the animated-featurePersepolis

• The animations of Norman McLaren