The Drive to Realism: From Disney to Harryhausen to Landreth — Part 1
Have you ever had one of those moments where you're doing something important, like trying to time the microwave popcorn so precisely that every kernel is popped and none is burnt, when suddenly you find yourself asking, "Why am I actually doing this?"
Did the grunts who spent whole lifetimes building the great cathedrals of Europe have moments like that? Do scientists who devote years to the mating habits of fruit flies?
It's funny how we can be so in the middle of something that it never occurs to us to question it. Like animation's obsession with realism: when was the last time we asked ourselves why are we so keen on achieving this? Is it worth the effort or have we been duped into devoting ourselves to someone else's dream or perhaps, madness?
Now you may be thinking that it's a little late in the game to start questioning this. But I would say that this is the perfect time to take stock, not towards bailing on the enterprise, of course, but to make sure that we've got a handle on our motivations. And it wouldn't hurt to be sure we really understand the implications of where this trend is leading animation, before the whole thing really takes off. Because the one thing we can be quite certain of is that when it does take off, it's going to be big.
And there is no person who makes that clearer than Chris Landreth. His work has always been interesting but his new film, Ryan, does something quite remarkable: it simultaneously reflects on the past and the future of realism in animation.
It manages this feat by sitting on the key cusp that every new medium must come to, that swing moment when it gives up the thankless role of being a new tool doing an old job and starts to work on its own terms. But before we can understand why Ryan is in this key position, we have to understand what came first.
The history of realism in animation is older than you might think. As early as 1832, there were rumblings about the quality of the art in magic lantern shows not being sufficiently believable and there was a wish for more realism. Yet almost 70 years later, in 1899, pioneer animator James Blackton and his partner Albert Smith were able to convince audiences that their film,
The Battle of Santiago, was an authentic record of the recent event even though it was animated with cutouts of ships, with cigar smoke for special effects.
This reminds us, right off the top, that realism has always been a relative thing that changes with audience perception and experience. Like those 360 degree movie theatres which were such technological breakthroughs in the 1960s. Remember how they were built with rows of bars because the audience, who watched the wraparound presentation standing up, was prone to falling over whenever the camera tilted? Try going into one of those theaters today, if you can still find one — and see what a thrill they aren't. Even kids who've never seen one before have grown past the illusion.
And imagine the reaction from today's audience to "newsreel footage" created with cutouts and cigar smoke. So this has never been just about objective realism, but about perceived realism leading to believability. Keep that in mind as we continue this exploration.
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