Guillermo Del Torro’s Pinocchiohas been heralded as a recent triumph, and has quickly become a much-loved rendition of the classic story, because itshows why stop-motion is a treasured art form. The animation of the movie is beautifully detailed, with much care and attention having been paid to the smallest of details, from color to texture to the very movements of the puppets themselves.
It is a film that took over 15 years to complete, in part because of delays ad budget restrictions, but in greater part because of the dedication that was taken by the animation studios in Portland, London and Guadalajara, to ensure the authenticity and heart that went into every aspect of its creation. This is something that Del Toro and his teams discuss a lot in his making-of documentary,Hand-carved Cinema.
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Mark Gustavson, a director working on the movie alongside the talented team of creators said “Animation is such an elaborate process, and we wanted the animators to own the performances. One of the founding principles that Guillermo and I came up with when we started this was, give the performance back to the animators as much as possible. Part of that is them shooting what we call LAVS, Live Action Videos.”
This is an incredibly interesting concept, to film oneself creating the facial expressions and movements needed, and then replicating thwm onscreen in a way that makes the animation more true to life. But this is not the first time audiences will have seen this magic happening, even if they weren’t aware of it. This is a technique that was hugely influenced by Peter Jackson and the filming crew on theLord of the Ringsmovies, which came out in 2001-2003.
When Peter Jackson first started adapting J.R.R Tolkien’s massive books onto the big screens, he knew that one of the greatest challenges he would face was bringing the character of Gollum to life. Gollum is an absolutely essential creature in the original stories, because he is the only reason that Sam and Frodo are able to find their way through the impenetrable forces of Mordor to destroy the ring. It’s never clear if heescaped Mordor, or if he was released as part of a cunning plan by the enemy, but either way, he is the only one who knows the secret entrance in Shelob’s lair. He also has major thematic purposes, and gives the audience some ofthe most important foreshadowing moments in the trilogyby showing what Frodo will become if he fails to let go of the ring.
So when Jackson first met Andy Serkis, who was originally just supposed to provide the voice to a fully animated Gollum, he had the relation from Serkis’s amazing acting skills to pioneer a new form of motion capture that revolutionized modern movie magic. Not only were they able to capture new body movements, they were also able to film incredibly complex human facial expressions, which the animators then replicated on the screen to give Gollum a depth of reality that made him so much more empathic to viewers.
It’s technology and techniques like this that made Del Toro’s Pinocchio a possibility. Hand-carved Cinema reveals that “Before you do a shot as an animator, you would go and investigate what kind of shape this shot is going to have, what kind of motion, what sort of speed. A good, quick way to do that is to film yourself. The animator would turn up with a little video of themself doing the action.”
Imitating Jackson’s technique, the Pinocchio animators would film segments of themselves in the real world, acting out scenes like Gepetto telling Carlo his nose will grow if he lies, or Vulpe brandishing his sword at the circus. These complex movements and tender facial expressions are extremely difficult to mirror in puppets, unless the animator has a filmed version to study as they go, and this is something that proved incredibly effective in creating the heartwarming sentimentality ofPinocchio, just as it aided in the empathy and tragedy that viewers felt whilst spending time with Gollum in theLord of the Ringsmovies.
There are lots ofways the trilogy has aged badly, but th character of Gollum still holds up over 20 years later. This technology was one of the things that made Jackson’s trilogies so successful at the Oscars, and increasingly improving unique ways of filming and working gives movie fans hope that these sorts of usually snubbed genres willgain more prestige at the Oscars, and continue developing ways to inject more magic into everyday life. AlthoughLOTRandPinocchioare very different movies, they share more than just clever animation in common. They are both movies about extraordinary journeys that characters must go on in order to protect the thing they love, and they teach important lessons about love, loyalty, and the strength to stay true to oneself.
