Animation Term Paper

Animation Term Paper

Academic cinematographic theory refers to animation mostly as “a footnote”[1].  The term hints on the prejudices existing against animation as a serious genre and techniwue. However, wider audiences would hardly agree with the high-brow critics in evaluating animation which is otherwise called cartoons. People of different generations use to grow up with the cartoon personages as the best friends and cultural icons. That is why the oversimplification of animation as a cultural and semiotoc “junk” is hardly fair.

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms defines “animation” as a specific method or “technique used in motion pictures or video production, produced frame by frame, in which inanimate objects, such as cartoon drawings or puppets, appear to move of their own accord”[2]. Additionally, the word means “the state of being full of life or vigour”, or, in the most archaic sense, “the state of being alive”[3]. These additional connotations to the term “animation” speak on the fact that the concept of cinematographic animations is far from being shallow and merely technological. Tis creative method is not the subject for oversimplification or neglect, so far as human mind, emotions and traditions are affected.

Animation fits into the paradigm of experimental cinematography. As early as in 1909 a French director Emile Cohl (1857–1963) demonstrated the power of the method in his film “The Joyous Microbes”[4]. The Italian futurist artist Bruno Corra (1892–1976) wrote an essay on the use of animation in films in 1912. Altogether with the colleague, Arnaldo Ginna (1890–1982), Corra painted films directly on celluloid to utilise the new animation possibilities in live-action cinematography.

However, the method was introduced to mass audiences in the United States in the period from the early 1920s to the 1950s[5]. The famous Russian live-action film director and theorists of art Sergei M. Eisenstein was so enthusiastic about the artistic potential of animation that he incorporated many of its principles into the theory and practice of film-making.

By nowadays animation stopped being a narrowly defined media system of drawings on celluloid and moving puppets. Due to the development of photorealistic computer generated imagery (CGI) film directors started to create digital simulations of fantastic creatures and enviroments which they would not be able otherwise to bring into their cinematographic product. Therefore, animation is widely ntegrated into the imagery cloth of live-action films and advertisement videos.

The present term paper seeks to explain the transgression of film theory from the stage, when animation was considered to be a linear naïve technique designed for children exclusively, to the new era of animation being an important part of contemporary cinematography. Thus, the essay consists of four parts. First, some basic principles of animation are discussed.

Second, Eisenstein’s theory of film-creating is discussed in relating to animation. Third, contemporary examples of media where live action is synthesised with animation are analysed on the examples of “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988) by Robert Zemeckis and the wide-screen trilogy “The Lord of the Rings” (“The Fellowship of the Ring”, 2001; “The Two Towers”, 2002; “The Return of the King”, 2003) by Peter Jackson. Finally, the shifts in technology and ideology of animation are revealed during the period from Eisenstein’s essays on the topic (1930-1940) to the present day.

Hoffer[6] summarised that any film technology was based on five capabilities. First, image may be manipulated in sizes (close-ups, medium views, or long shots) counting from the first shot of a taken sequence.  Second, the subject-action may be shown at different angles of the camera (straightaway, low, high, moving into or away from the action, or moving at some angle in a tracking shot). Third, images are operated in regard to the composition of mass, line, tone (lighting), and colour. Fourth, film technology grounds on editing or the manipulation of space and time. Finally, sound recording (dialogue, sound effects, and music) constitutes a fifth expressive element in the filming process.

Though both animation and live-action films are built upon the five abovementioned categorical expressive principles, they are distinguished in regard to the details of manipulation within each of the category. Basically, whereas the live-action filmmaker takes a shot as the basic structural unit of film[7], the animation artist possesses a far too richer palette of expressive means due to the fact that (s)he works with a sequences or systems of drawings integrated into shots.

Another distinctive feature of animation is the principle of movement taken specifically. The microlevel specifics of animation influences the specifics of editing the film sequence. Norman McLaren emphasised the creativity of animation on the microlevel in the following definition:

Animation is not the art of drawings that move, but the art of movements that are drawn. What happens between each frame is more important than what exists on each frame. Animation is therefore the art of manipulating the invisible interstices that lie between frames. The interstices are the bones, flesh and blood of the movies, what is on each frame, merely the clothing.[8]

The live-action film director and the cameraman are able to give precise instructions to the actor and to catch the best view of the movement or the facial expression. The animation artist has to create the actor of the animation story with its animation physics and psychology. That is why critics often refer to animation as the art similar to shamanism, so far as both animation and magic affect human cognition and psychology on the sub-conscious level.

There were many examples of expressive and creative 2D animation images such as the stop-action tricks of Emil Cohl (1857–1963), silhouette cutouts of Lotte Reiniger (1899 – 1981), the images by Max (1883 –1972) and Dave (1894 – 1979) Fleischer, Ub Iwerks (1901 – 1971), Art Babbit (1907 – 1992), puppet films of George Pal (1908-1980), the animation masterpieces by Frederick Bean “Fred/Tex” Avery (1908 – 1980), Shamus Culhane (1908 – 1996), Chuck Jones (1912 – 2002), Bob Clampett (1913 – 1984), drawings of images by Norman McLaren (1914- 1987), and animated photographs by Bob Godfrey (b. 1921)[9].

This golden cohort of genius animation artists is incomplete without Walt Disney (1901 –1966), who “animated” (in sense of “making enthusiastic about the vigour of something”) not only his own animated characters such as Mickey Mouse but a live man of flesh and bones. This was another marvellous artist Sergei M. Eisenstein, who tried to approach the enigma of animation and its ceative potential in action-live movies in his notes and essays.

The following section is dedicated to the view of Eisenstein’s theoretical framework for cinematographic art. He was the initiator of the theoretical breakthrough, so far as he denied the most basic structural concept of the film  – the shot  – as “a bit of reality which the filmmaker gathers”[10]. In his actualisation the shot was rather “a locus of formal elements such as lighting, line, movement, and volume”[11] remodelled in a cognitive and constructive effort by both the director and the spectator. Starting from his speech prepared for the 1929 Stuttgart ‘Film und Photo’ exhibition and 1929 article “Beyond the Shot”, the theorist was interested in deconstructing the traditional knowledge of the shot as the structural film unit based on movement.

Eisenstein reminded the broader community of the most common definition of movement in cinematography as the technical process when “two motionless images of a moving body following one another in juxtaposition blend into each other after sequential showing in movement”[12]. Rejecting this shallow supposition the Russian theorist suggested paying attention to a static image called a ‘photogram’ or an ‘immobility’.

The most constructive technique of the artist in cinematography is montage. During editing the effect of movement is achieved by composing the aforesaid ‘immobilities’ not within a traditional linear frame sequence but within a model which resembles a pyramid. Eisenstein did not describe the process as merely mechanical. The theorist argued that montage of ‘immobolities’ was the cognitive and perceptual processes occurring in the spectator’s mind in parallel with montage performed by the director/editor.

For in fact each sequential element is shot, not next to the other, but on top of the other.

For: the movement-percept (feeling) arises in the process of the superimposition on the received impression of the first position of an object of the becoming-visible new position of the object.[13]

Eisenstein suggested that a genuinely progressive film should be built on the principles of transference, when “a single effect can be produced by a number of different elements” and synaesthesia, or “multisensory experience”[14]. He was so enchanted by the Japanese or Chinese hieroglyph as “the collision of two ideas”[15] in one ideogram containing the signals for transference and synaesthesia that he traced how different concepts were ideographically and ideologically collided in structural units of a cinematographic product.

In the article “Beyond the Shot” Eisenstein turned again to the method of hieroglyph as the most useful for the theory of filming. However, he began to be more absorbed into the question of how several “representable” objects could be combined to get “the representation of something that cannot be graphically represented”[16]. He was aware of the distinction between representation and the “global image” (“izobrazhenie” and “obraz”) when he stated that “two independent ideographical signs (‘Shots’), placed in juxtaposition, explode to a new concept”[17] The visual presentation of the object taken graphically is just  a mirror non-creative reflection. Ideogram constitutes a new conpcept, so far as it not merely reflects but reconstructs the object. .

Consequently, the Russian director and theorist took the frame instead of the shot as the most basic structural and expressive unit. The frame sequence in his theory is not merely “a sequence of successive phases of real movement, broken down into stills and reconstituted by projection”[18] but a symbolic act to make the spectator think, break temporal and spatial conventions of reality in the creative effort and construct the reality of his/her own.

When describing Eisenstein’s theory of raw material, Andrew referred to some independent ‘cells’ (Eisenstein’s original definition) through which genuine cinema is constructed according to an animating principle[19]. The word “animation” creates a fruitful allusion to the creative process of “adding life and inspiration” to the lifeless object and, simultaneousle, to the film technique of animation as drawing images on a celluloid film and shooting them in a sequence of frames. Editing a film or montage out of the ideographic ‘cells’ creates “the unified psychological effect”[20] essential for any significant piece of art.

Circa 1932 Eisenstein introduced the metaphor ‘protoplasm’ in his notebooks where he compared his own and Disney’s drawings against “the theme of ’mutually penetrating objects’”[21]. The idea of protoplasm as the substance containing all the diversity of biological form as the best metaphor for animation was expressed in the 1941 notes for an unfinished essay on Disney.

Eisenstein was fascinated with Disney’s early “infinite flexibility of figures, their interchangeability with natural objects, and ability to collapse and reanimate at will”[22]. The Russian theorist concentrated not simply on cinematographic principles of shooting and technical editing of a cartoon or animation piece but called for philosophical and psychological significance of animation. As Grossi once remarked, his reflections on Disney’s animation “show clearly […] how, even when tackling a subject which appears straightforwardly ‘cinematic’, he always sets himself more universal and elaborate questions about human artistic expression”[23].

Eisenstein wrote in his unfinished essay:

The very idea […] of the animated cartoon is like a direct embodiment of the method of animism […]. And thus, what Disney does is connected with one of the deepest traits of man’s early psyche. […] This man seems to know not only the magic of all technical means, but also the most secret strands of human thought, images, feelings, ideas.[24]

Besides the envious livehood of animated creatures in Disney’s cartoons which placed the spectator back into the world of childish freshness, optimism and freedom, Eisenstein was enthusiastic about implicit “prescriptions for folkloric, mythological, prelogical thought” as well as rich comic and metaphoric potential of animation[25]. Besides, psycho-cultural phenomena of animism and totemism seemed to be obvious for Eisenstein in Disney’s tendency to make inanimate forms anthropomorphic (soulless objects and animals looking and behaving like human beings) and make human characters similar to non-humans.

Throughout his theoretical works Eisenstein argued that the meaning as the cognitive, ethical and aesthetical goal associated with watching a film should arise in the spectator’s mind due to “the ‘collision’ of independent shots”[26]. The collision is achieved throughout the variance of different means including light, volume, sound, etc. He argued for ‘tonal montage’ as the most suitable way to conduct all the complexity of visual, auditory and emotional powers of a film. The term is better understood in comparison to the more traditional ‘rhythmic montage’:

In rhythmic montage it is movement within the frame that impels the montage movement from frame to frame. Such movements within the frame may be of objects in motion, or of the spectator’s eye directed along the lines of some immobile object.

In tonal montage, movement is perceived in a wider sense. The concept of movement embraces all effects of the montage piece. Here montage is based on the characteristic emotional sound of the piece of its dominant. The general tone of the piece.[27]

Of course, the clearest way to penetrate into the intricacies of Eisenstein’s thought of montage, framing and film theory is to watch his own movies. However, the goal of this paper is to apply his reflections on the creative effects of animation onto contemporary situation where animation has already blended with live-action films and has gained the technical and emotional strengths of the 3D technology. To trace the development of animation incorporated into the cloth of live-action movies, two films are discussed.

The most famous example of using animation and live action in one and the same piece of cinematographic art is the film “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” (1988) by Robert Zemeckis (the animated sequences were directed by Richard Williams)[28]. To begin with, the whole plot and stylistic framework of the film was reconstructed, so far as the 1947 Los Angeles was animated and fictionalised.

Alongside with the ‘real’ interiors and decorations (live shootings) there were animated settings (Toontown and its inhabitants were first hand-drawn without computer animation and only then participated in live shootings). To make the Toons or animated creatures look more natural (with shadows and lighting), the authors used analogue optical effects. In result, about 100 separate pieces of film were optically combined to synthesise the animated and live-action elements.

Besides, the crew consisted of both live and animated actors. There were live actors such as the detective Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins), Judge Doom of the Toontown District Superior Court (Christopher Lloyd) and the Valiant’s girlfriend (Joanna Cassidy). Simultaneously, the main characters of the story appeared to be an animated creature, Roger Rabbit (speaking voice by Charles Fleischer), his wife Jessica Rabbit (speaking voice by Kathleen Turner [uncredited], singing voice by Amy Irving), the “Toon Patrol” gang of Smartass, Greasy, Psycho, Stupid and Wheezy, the weasels, and the marvellous Benny “The Cab”.

There are also many famous cartoon characters from different studios: Mickey Mouse, Donald Duck, Goofy, Pluto and many others including Fantasia characters [Disney’s Touchstone Pictures]; Daffy Duck, Bugs Bunny, the Road Runner, Wile E. Coyote, Porky Pig, etc. [Warner Bros.]; Droopy Dog [MGM]; Betty Boop and Koko the Clown [Paramount/Max Fleischer]; and Woody Woodpecker [Walter Lantz].

To speak about the evolvement of animation principles which Eisenstein referred to in the 1940s in relating to the present film, it makes sense to summarise the plot. Marvin Acme, the owner of the Acme Company and of Toontown, has been murdered. Everything speaks on the fact that the murderer is Roger Rabbit, a Toon star at Maroon Cartoons. His wife Jessica Rabbit, a Toon femme fatale, was seen playing around with Marvin Acme. Eddie Valiant, the detective, is forced to help the suspected Roger, though he hates Toons. Valiant’s brother was murdered by a Toon in a routine criminal investigation in Toontown years before.

Besides the task of saving Roger Rabbit, Valiant is to find the will of Marvin Acme. After his death, Judge Doom, the owner of the giant Cloverleaf Corporation, became resolute on destroying Toontown because of his global urban transportation project. Acme’s will is the only thing that can stop Judge Doom because it gives ownership of Toontown to the Toons.

At first glance, the film seems to be nothing more than a comic one-layer detective/love story with the trivial plot and multiple inconsistencies. However, “Who Framed Roger Rabbit” serves a perfect illustration for Eisenstein’s ideas on the animism of animation. The introduction of animation alongside with live action made the film a breakthrough and a constructive environment for the deep ideological investigation.

First, physical laws guiding the human characters of the traditional cinema in their live action are violated due to the use of animation. Valiant’s brother died because a Toon dropped a piano on his head. The creative method of exaggeration is employed here to explain Valiant’s Toon-phobia in a cinematographically vivid, visual and laconic way. The theme of death is usually mournful and pathetic but here is it foiled comically to build a sharp contrast or collision of concepts Eisenstein was so enthusiastic about.

Strikingly, Eddie Valiant happened to survive after no lesser dramatic adventures. When he chases the assassin into Toontown he enters an elevator which ascends so rapidly that a human detective is squashed in a pancake. Nevertheless, he stays alive to find himself being suspended in midair without falling in the next scene. Then Eddie rushes down past the incredible number of storeys to be caught by Roger Rabbit.

 Once Hoffer spoke about “reel time and real time”[29] in regard to animation and live-action movies. Grounding on the physical laws of real time we would have seen a human body disappearing out of our sight-frame to collapse far down on the ground in a few seconds later. In the film the whole scene takes more time than in reality. There are several shots: Eddie starts his incredible flight; Eddie meets Mickey Mouse and Bugs Bunny; the three of them are talking;

Eddie catches the animated rod spreading outside from the wall somehow between heaven and earth; the animated bird Tweety [Warner Bros.] makes Eddie drop the rod having taken human fingers for the worms; and, finally, Eddie parachutes into Roger’s arms. Through montage, for example through altering the length of the cutaway shots and the intercutting back and forth, real time turns into reel or fictional time. In the same way real physics turns into the reel one.

It should be noted here that Eddie starts falling only when he realises that there is no floor beneath him. If to recall Eisenstein’s theory on animation, where the secret depths of human psychology are revealed in its strive to find remedies against some one-directional processes (ageing, illness, death), the abovementioned sequence of scenes seems to be the perfect visual demonstration of this human dream. There is a discrepancy between Eddie’s impressive extended fall and his brother’s death of piano banging him on the head. Eddie like any human who appeared in Toontown began to act like a Toon and acquired toon-like properties of invulnerability.

He was lucky to do so because he interacted with toon characters and toon objects. More than this, Eddie was subconsciously aware of his own power to deconstruct and manipulate the animated reality around him, that is why he survived, though he owed salvation to the Toon whom he used to hate so much. Eddie’s brother was killed by the Toon who dropped the real piano on his head. The Toon was able to operate real objects but the man hardly believed it and took the Toon reality as pure imagination. Evidently, the man who saw only one simple representation of reality was doomed to die.

Unlike the human Valiant, his animated friend Roger is safe when interacting with real objects in dramatic situations. For example, he receives no trauma when a real refrigerator is dropped on him. To demonstrate his invulnerability Roger bangs a frying pan over his own head repeating: “no pain; no pain; no pain . . .”. Yet in a while he is knocked unconscious with a frying-pan by Jessica, his wife. This is obviously done to achieve a strong comic effect, as the film utilises the main principle of animation. Roger deined it as the following; something should happen, “If it’s funny”.

Another theme to dwell upon is real and reel sexuality. Jessica Rabbit is the perfect icon for femininity and sexual desire. She unifies the most popular features of femme fatale: large and high breasts, thin waist and extremely long legs. All the features are exaggerated and mildly mocked at. Jessica is dressed in an evening gown which no normal woman could wear in reality. However, she is lucky not simply to stay still within this dress in various situations but to move in it and to charm both cartoon and live characters.

If this were a real woman like Valiant’s girlfriend, there would be another expressive means of sexuality (personal, such as the gaze, the gesture, and technical, such as e.g. the angle of the shot). In relating to the animation creature the artist is free to alter the speed of her movements to make them even more elegant, to make her wear the incredible dress to underline all the sexual curves of her fantastic figure, to run on fantastically unstable high-heels by a stir of a pencil. Jessica as the most vivid icon of sexuality represents another gain of animation being immersed into the live action. Her comic function reveals in her being a wife to the rabbit. What ever fruitful allusions it could bring, this is the sibject for a separate discussion.

The climax of the film comes when Judge Doom starts a huge machine filled with the magic “dip” consisting of acetone, benzene, and turpentine to kill the Rabbits and to eradicate the whole Toontown. The comical effect is achieved due to the receipt of the “dip”, so far as such chemically veritable and valid substances should have been ineffective in relating to imaginative animation creatures. The machine itself is presented as materialistic and real. However, Eddie opens its drain valve by a purely surreal animation scissor-spring-loaded punch-glove mallet.

Then, Judge Doom, who used to be perceived as a human being, appears to be flattened by a steam-roller. But, strikingly, he is not a mixture of crashed bones and minced flesh spilled with blood but a 2D animation figure reinflating himself by using one of the air tanks. He dissolves in “the dip”, while his assistants, the crazy weasel gang, dies of laughter.

Marvin Acme’s will appears to be written in “disappearing re-appearing ink” on the “blank” paper which Roger has used to write Jessica a love letter. Toontown is saved and everybody sings a chorus of “Smile, Darn Ya, Smile”. The visual effects are so crude in their obviousness, the five categorical principles of filming are used so creatively and regardless of any traditional and physical laws that the live-action film receives another dimension consisting of collision on the levels of plot, action and montage. It pursues two aims: to entertain and to teach philosophical lesson that Good always wins.

In a few tens of years, the next generation of animation techniques, the 3D CGI animation, was used in another great film, the trilogy “The Lord of the Rings” (2001-2003) by Peter Jackson[30] to achieve the contrasting dramatic effect. To visualise the magnificent universe of Tolkien’s books, the film creators used computer generated imagery.

Live actors Elijah Wood, Sean Astin, Billy Boyd, Dominic Monaghan and Ian Holm were turned into Hobbits Frodo, Sam, Pippin, Merry and Bilbo Baggins. John Rhys-Davies was made Gimli the Dwarf losing the most part of human features. There were fully non-human characters such as The Ring (voiced by Alan Howard), Gollum (Andy Serkis) and The Ent, Treebeard, a living, walking tree-shepherd who is the oldest being in Middle-earth (“The Two Towers” 2002).

Due to space limitations, there is no discussion of visual effects in regard to simulating all the fantastic creatures here. It would seem consistent with the final goal of the paper to dwell on the non-human characters of The Ring and Gollum as well as on the famous battle scenes.

First, the Ring, strictly speaking, is not an animation creature but a material ring of physically assessed metal. However, within the imagery framework of the film it becomes an icon, a symbol for the great Power and the balance of Good and Evil. It possesses its own voice and will being revealed through different cinematographic means (the size and angle of the shot, montage, etc.).

Second, Gollum is perceived as an animation creature in the newest sense. He is not drawn by pencil and projected onto a celluloid film. As the official site for “The Lord of the Rings” claims, “Gollum is […] a cutting-edge mix of acting craft and computer-enhanced effects”[31]. Once it was a human who has found the Sauron ring and turned into the abhorrent anti-hero creature devoid of human appearance and soul. The trick is that Peter Jackson wanted Gollum to be the interactive digital character combining live action and digital animation.

Andy Serkis, a talented British actor, acted both in live-made scenes and a motion capture studio. For some of the scenes the actor wore a skin-tight lycra body suit and the animators draw over him in the rotoscoping technique. Additionally Serkis was to wear a specially designed skin-tight suit with electronic sensors coordinated to his body joints.

The signals from the sensors were picked up by 25 cameras and transmitted to a computer. The PC generated a stick-and-dot figure of the actor’s body on the screen. Serkis admitted that, “CGI extends the actor’s craft”[32]. Besides the questions of artistry, the CGI animation figure of Gollum resolves the issues of symbolisation and animation of the non-human objects. Such a veritable icon for malice and addiction could not be created by the means of tradition 2D animation to interact with live actors for such a grasping effect.

Finally, the large-scale battle scenes of the movie are worth mentioning because of the pioneer WETA Digital’s 3D computer animation technique. For example, the Prologue battle was performed by 10 foreground actors featuring “hero” Orcs, about 50 mid-ground Orcs and from 100 to 200 background characters. The scanner generated digital doubles for non-human characters and digital battlefield environments. The special “Massive” technology (e.g. Orc Builder) generated digital Orc “skeletons” varying in armour styles, helmets, arm length, leg length, height and girth who were able to move in different ways independently of each other.

The 3D animation technology helped to achieve the effect of mass, multiplicity, live-like representation of non-human creatures. It helped the artists to leave behind the basic structural units of photorealistic analogue images that were put in the foundation of film and media theory.

To summarise and close the discussion, animation preserved its symbolic and ideological significance since the times of Eisensteing into the present day. Though the animation technology has altered at fantastic pace (cf. Disney’s hand-drawn characters and contemporary digital simulations), the main function of animation in live-action films stays the same – to explore and creatively vary the depths of human cognition and psychology.

  Eisenstein proclaimed the most significant features of animation as the inter-frame principle of movement, animism, antropomorphism, totemism and conceptual collision. These principles are explicitly and implicitly demonstrated in the two films discussed above. The utilisation of both animation and live action in contemporary cinematography helps to explore constructive possibilities of both the director and the spectator in an ecstatic effort.

Works cited

Albera, François. “Eisenstein and the Theory of the Photogram.” Eisenstein Rediscovered. Ed. by Ian Christie and Richard Taylor. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Andrew, Dudley J. The Major Film Theories: An Introduction. London: Oxford University Press, 1976.

“Andy Serkis Interview.” The Lord of the Rings. New Line Productions, Inc., 2002. 26 April 2006. <http://www.lordoftherings.net/index_editorials_becomegollum.html>.

“animation n.”  The Concise Oxford English Dictionary. Ed. by Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson. Oxford University Press, 2004. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.  26 April 2006. <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t23.e2003>.

Christie, Ian. “Rediscovering Eisenstein.” Eisenstein Rediscovered. Ed. by Ian Christie and Richard Taylor. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Clarke, Michael. “animation.”  The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms. Oxford University Press, 2001. Oxford Reference Online. Oxford University Press.  26 April 2006. <http://www.oxfordreference.com/views/ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t4.e74>.

Grossi, Edoardo G. “Eisenstein as Theoretician: Preliminary Considerations.” Eisenstein Rediscovered. Ed. by Ian Christie and Richard Taylor. New York: Routledge, 1993.

Hoffer, Thomas W. “Animation.” Handbook of American Popular Culture. Ed. by M. Thomas Inge. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989.

Horrocks, Roger. “Experimental film.” Grove Art Online. Oxford University Press. 26 April 2006. <http://www.groveart.com/>.

“Inside the Effects: The Battles of Middle-Earth.” The Lord of the Rings. New Line Productions, Inc., 2002. . 26 April 2006. <http://www.lordoftherings.net/effects/>.

Pisters, Patricia. “From Mouse to Mouse.” Enculturation 2.1 (Fall 1998).  Enculturation. 26 April 2006. < http://enculturation.gmu.edu/2_1/pisters.html>.

Tudor, Andrew. Theories of Film. New York: Viking Press, 1974.

“Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., 25 April 2006. 26 April 2006. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Framed_Roger_Rabbit>.

[1] Patricia Pisters, “From Mouse to Mouse,” Enculturation (2.1, Fall 1998),  ‘From Animation to Digital Images’: para. 2.

[2] Michael Clarke, “animation,”  The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art Terms (Oxford University Press, 2001), Oxford Reference Online.

[3] “animation n,”  The Concise Oxford English Dictionary, ed. by Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson (Oxford University Press, 2004), Oxford Reference Online.

[4] Roger Horrocks, “Experimental film” (Oxford: Oxford University Press, Grove Art Online),  para. 1.

[5] Thomas W. Hoffer, “Animation,” Handbook of American Popular Culture, ed. by M. Thomas Inge (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1989), 59.

[6] 59-61.

[7] Hoffer 59.

[8] Quoted. in Hoffer 61.

[9] In Hoffer 62.

[10] Dudley J.Andrew, The Major Film Theories: An Introduction (London: Oxford University Press, 1976), 50.

[11]

[12] François Albera, “Eisenstein and the Theory of the Photogram,” Eisenstein Rediscovered, ed. by Ian Christie and Richard Taylor (New York: Routledge, 1993), 200.

[13] Qtd. in Albera 201.

[14] Andrew 48-49.

[15] Andrew 51.

[16] Qtd. in Albera 202.

[17] Qtd. in Albera 202.

[18] Albera 202.

[19] Andrew 51.

[20] Andrew 52.

[21] Ian Christie, “Rediscovering Eisenstein,” Eisenstein Rediscovered, ed. by Ian Christie and Richard Taylor (New York: Routledge, 1993), 24.

[22] Christie 24.

[23] Edoardo G.Grossi, “Eisenstein as Theoretician: Preliminary Considerations,” Eisenstein Rediscovered, ed. by Ian Christie and Richard Taylor (New York: Routledge, 1993), 173.

[24] Qtd. in Christie 24-25.

[25] Grossi 174.

[26] Andrew Tudor, Theories of Film (New York: Viking Press, 1974), 30..

[27] Tudor 35.

[28] The section is written basing on the materials in the Web article “Who Framed Roger Rabbit.” from the Wikipedia site.

[29] Hoffer 60.

[30] The current section is written basing on the materials from The lord of the Rings Web site.

[31] “Andy Serkis Interview,” The Lord of the Rings (New Line Productions, Inc., 2002).

[32] “Andy Serkis Interview,” “The Finished Product,” para. 2.