Encountering Something New, and Re-viewing

3.4 ANIMATOU

Animatou (dir Luyet, Switzerland 2007)¹⁰ is one of the films included in an animated short film compilation resource for primary schools for which I co-wrote the teachers’ guide (Bazalgette and Oatley 2012). It is a 5.5 minute non-mainstream film, originally made for the Animatou film festival in Geneva, and not intended for children. It uses the cat-chases-mouse trope of Tom and Jerry and other classic animation series in order to show the development of animation through five key techniques: drawn, painted cel, sand, clay and 3D computer animation.

I describe my choices about what movies to show the children in Section 2.4.6: I had not originally intended to use non-mainstream material, but on an impulse one evening at the children’s house in November 2011 (aged 1;11) I showed them Laughing Moon . I was so taken aback by their very intense reaction (see Section 4.1) that I was tempted to show them other independent short films, rationalizing this by arguing that as their grandmother, I would in any case be showing them films that I knew and thought they would like. I videoed their first viewing of Animatou on 9^th April 2012 and videoed 12 repeat viewings from then until 13^th December 2012; but my field notes record eleven other viewings during 2013, and in

subsequent years they occasionally watched it again, still evidently finding it pleasurable and interesting. So in a sense this is one film that they never “used up.”

3.4.1 Encountering Something New, and Re-viewing

I showed Animatou to the twins for the first time on the morning of 9^th April 2012, when they were two years and four months old. Phoebe was with us as well: she had never seen it either.

The opening sequence of the film introduces the mouse and then the cat as hand-drawn figures, and mixes the live action of the animator’s hand and work table with the animated action of the figures.

The beginning of the video is awkward. I’m filming with a handheld camera: Alfie is already in front of the screen but I remember that I have a cup of coffee on the mantelpiece and rush to grab it before panning round to find the best position from which to see the children. Both have

10 A detailed description of Animatou is online at http://www.filmworkshop.com/animatou and the complete film is available in my Research Group on Vimeo.

now walked up close to the screen; each grips the trolley with one hand, gazing intently at the screen with their mouths open (Figure 3.24).

Figure 3.24: Both children watch Animatou for the first time (aged 2;4)

They retain these positions for almost the whole film. Because they are so close to the screen they have to choose what to look at during the rapid chase sequences, scanning the screen intently and not always looking at the same things: for example, when the cat runs off a cliff and starts to fall, Alfie follows it down and off the bottom of the screen, while Connie keeps flicking up her eyes, following the series of brief shots during which the cat changes into a lump of clay.

After each chase sequence, the elaborated rhythmic sound track and sound effects that

accompany the chases change to a tapping rhythm and an urgent rising tone that accompanies a speeded-up live-action sequence where an animator creates a cat image in a new medium, the first being painted cel¹¹. At this point of unexpectedly altered diegesis in the movie, both children lick their lips and Alfie wipes his nose with his hand.

The cel sequence ends with both cat and mouse running into darkness. Two eyes appear in the dark and the sound track changes again to a rhythmic buzzing; both children frown slightly and their breathing becomes noticeable as the eyes swivel to and fro. This sequence is potentially more mysterious as the animator’s hand uses a fine-nozzle air blower to puff away the sand and create a white cat’s face in the middle of the black screen. The hand disappears and the cat’s

11 In cel animation, images are painted on to transparent sheets or “cels” so that figures can be easily superimposed

on to backgrounds .

body starts to appear in stages as it swipes the darkness away to search for the mouse which keeps running across the screen and disappearing again. The children continue to frown and lick their lips, relaxing slightly as the chase resumes with the animals running in profile along a black line representing the ground. When the line ends, the cat performs the classic cartoon “oops!”

shock-suspension in mid-air before falling: on the way, it is replaced by a black blob which lands on another animation table as a lump of clay. Hands appear and start speeding up to form the clay around a wire armature. Perhaps Alfie is prompted, by Terry blowing his nose in the background, to remember that there are other people in the room: he turns to look very briefly at Phoebe sitting on the floor behind him and then up at me, commenting “[inaudible] now!”

then wiping his nose with his hand again, turning back to the screen. The clay cat is complete: a finger enters the screen to poke at its head, which becomes animated. Alfie says “Dere’s another cat” and both children wipe their noses again.

The cat now walks across the animation table to a computer screen and spots a digital mouse running across it. Enraged, the cat flexes its paws and long metal claws, then dives through the computer screen. A reverse angle shot shows it emerging as a digital armature – a 3D figure made of white netting – inside the computer, which looks like a rather dilapidated workshop, illuminated by a single, swinging, buzzing light bulb. Alfie points and looks up at me, saying “it’s another cat” turning further and wiping his nose while he looks at Phoebe, then turning back to the screen.

The cat seems to peer through the TV screen at the audience; then a change of angle shows the computer animator’s hands dimly outside the computer, flickering over the keyboard, trying out different body-colours for the cat, who somersaults in surprise each time. The light bulb inside the computer flickers and goes out; seen from outside the computer, the cat jumps up to the inside of the darkened screen and peers through. Alfie turns to me and asks “has it gone wrong?” before turning back to the screen to see the mouse on the animator’s desk, now in the form of a computer mouse which sprouts ears, eyes and whiskers. Both children appear to be a bit more tense as they watch the final sequence, scanning the screen urgently, with anxious expressions. The cat hammers angrily on the inside of the inside of the computer screen, and the mouse struggles to get away: in doing so, it pulls its tail – or USB cable – out of the keyboard and the picture vanishes to a white dot. The children look perplexed, and turn to glance at me and at Phoebe, who gives a sharp intake of breath and says “wow!” in a low voice. She and I

exchange comments during the credits sequence (which is illustrated by clips from the movie), which the children watch intently and Alfie says “wanna watch it again.”

The second viewing of Animatou took place a few minutes after the first. Connie went to sit on Phoebe’s lap on the floor, but Alfie stayed next to me (seated on the stool from where I hoped to be able to frame all three of them). But Alfie lingered beside me, hoping to have a go at holding the camera, until he was distracted by the film which was now reaching the end of the painted cel sequence. He remained standing, close to me, and all three watched intently (Figure 3.25).

Figure 3.25: Phoebe and children re-view Animatou.

From the sand animation sequence onwards, the viewing included comments from all four of us, intent and focused together on the screen:

A A wub a mouse

P It’s sand animation CB Sorry? Sand?

P Sand animation

CB Or iron fi- I dunno, yes, I think it’s maybe I don’t know quite how – anyway – he blows it – he’s blowing it, with a little puffer [all 3 watch]

C [points] Oh, it’ cat”

P It is a cat...It’s a bit like Max,¹² isn’t it? With a...

A [v serious and swaying slightly as he stands]

P Ooop whee... [as cat starts to fall]

P Ooop plop

12 A reference to the protagonist in Maurice Sendak’s 1963 book Where the Wild Things Are.

A Whatanow[?]

P Yes? Ok let me see...he jumps where?...Into the- [A breathes in and tosses head] The computer?

C MOUSE!

CB Ooh look at his claws!

P Ooh he’s jumped in!

C Wo now? [wiping nose]

P Now, he’s a computer...animated...cat C [points] ooaauw [as light buzzes]

P Bellybutton

CB He’s an armature

P Why’s he got a bellybutton?

CB Well, cats have bellybuttons [P looks skeptical] they must do

C [points again as cat starts to somersault]

P Oop! Oop! ... he says stop, stop!

CB Oooh

P Finish! [C and A both lick lips]

CB I don’t think he likes being a computer cat, does he?”

C [wipes nose and looks down briefly]

P That’s what happens when you unplug a computer! It stops.

CB Look, a different person does all the drawings; it’s a woman who does the – er –sand, actually

A [inaudible] [credits end] Want it again

This conversation forms the basis of the children’s gestures and comments in many later re-viewings as they point and refer to what they felt to be key moments. A process starts to emerge here: watch the movie carefully and silently the first time; watch it again with adults, sharing responses, naming key moments, characters and character features, actions; watch it subsequently, following the “signposts” of salient past comments. To the film’s intended audience of professional animators, it is witty and ingenious; to the twins it seemed to remain interestingly puzzling. They may have been pondering questions such as: what is “real” and what is not? Or, as Hodge and Tripp suggest, they may be considering what is meant to be real (Hodge and Tripp 1986, Chapter 4); or why the cat and the setting keep changing. It is hard, if not impossible, to understand what engages their attention. If, as many scholars suggest, the primary purpose of movies is to engage our emotions (Carroll 2010, Grodal 2009, Keating 2006, Platinga and Smith 1999, Smith 2003, Tan 1996), what kinds of emotion does Animatou appeal

to? Perhaps its main affective impact lies in its playful structure. The constant reworking of a simple trope, as in the Roadrunner series, which is based on one rule: “The Coyote never catches the Roadrunner,” has lasting appeal in other popular cultural forms such as sitcom and can be a reliable way of inducing laughter (see Alfie’s comment on this in Section 5.6.2).

However, Animatou is not very funny: the emotion it elicits for Phoebe in the second viewing seems to be mainly surprise. For adults, surprise tends not to generate a desire to see

something over and over again, or at least not more than two or three times. But the children continued to ask to see Animatou at least 20 times over the next eight months and, even when they were as old as six and were reminded of it, were interested in seeing it yet again. Each time, they would watch some or all of it equally attentively. So a key feature of my analysis of the Animatou viewing sequence is, what drew the children to re-viewing Animatou at least 20 times?