In the animated documentary, a majority of the content created is or includes interviews. This, in practice, seems an effective method in adding visualisation to a personal experience and can add a level of anonymity more creatively.
Aardman, in 1978 created several interview-style films in their ‘Animated Conversations’ films commissioned by the BBC (Honess Roe, 2013). This includes Down and Out (Lord and Sproxton, 1997) and Confessions of a Foyer Girl ( Sproxton and Lord, 1978), which combine eavesdropped inspired conversational audio mixed with plasticine stop motion animation. This led to the successful Creature Comforts (Park), part of their lip-sync series in 1989 (Honess Roe, 2013). Paul Ward, looking at the animation Going Equipped (Lord, 1990), considers how due to the anonymity of the clay animation, a criminal is able to discuss with a “sense of self” a “Clear reflection of what he has done in the past” (2007, p. 120). This adds a confessional aspect to the piece and arises some contemplation on the effectiveness of animation, adding a therapeutic element to real-life experiences. Due to this animated nature, the scenes being described could be acted out in a way that was representational yet expressive and abstract simultaneously, furthering the anonymity it provided. Ward makes a point about how the link between animation and the naturalistic audio, adds as a metaphorical empathises which provides leeway to creative license to portray the story in a more emotionally stimulating way(2007); an example of this is how the shadows of the rainfall on the characters face appearing like tears.
The Animated Documentary Slaves (Aronowitsch and Heilborn, 2008) provides an interesting example of trauma portrayal through animated documentary, as two children (Abuk and Machiek) discuss their experience of child enslavement in southern Sudan (Ehrlich, 2013). Ehrlich makes a strong point that the unedited audio, with the inclusion of minuscule sounds such as sneezing and coughing, add an authentication that helps ground it into the real world (Ehrlich, 2013). This can also be supported by the photographic images of the African children that add “Sociopolitical context” (Ehrlich, 2013, p.253). Ehrlich claims that these elements help destroy the animated forms’ intentional contraction and add a reality that enhances the story over visual form (Ehrlich, 2013). The animated nature of the documentary indicates a strong visual style that can add anonymity to the people involved while still representing indexical human attributes.
It can be argued, then, that due to animation’s broad and interchangeable nature, the interviewed form can be represented as anything, including the inanimate, which can stress the importance of the spoken content over the visual (Ehrlich, 2013). A vital example of this is It’s like that (Southern Ladies Animation, 2003), interviewing children held in an Australian refugee detention centre. It highlights different caricatures of the voices and uses different styles (between stop motion and 2D) that separate the interview from the visual exploration of the story. The Childlike ‘sock puppet’ texture of the animated bird, with baby-like enlarged eyes, aesthetically matches the voices in a way that creates empathy in a viewer. The bright, colour presentation of the stop motion puppets versus the dark, grey and enclosing background helps further Illustrate the foreign visual of an innocent child being held captive. Honess Roe expands on this by stating how the audio, of poor quality and the broken English of the interviewees exemplifies how vulnerable these children are in the Australian detention centre (Honess Roe, 2013, p.92).
Snack and Drink (Sabiston, 1999) illustrates another interesting way the animated form can be represented in an interview. Paul Ward discusses how due to the variations of linework created via a Wacom tablet in ‘Rotoshop’, the documentary “results is an eerie, fluid, mutable aesthetic, perfect for the representation of dreams, alternate realities and hallucinations” (Ward, 2007, p.116). This embodies and physical representation of Ryan Powers’s assumed ‘distance’ from reality due to having Autism and seems to represent how reality can be portrayed in ways that, while not typical, make sense to the individual interactions with every day (Ward, 2007). Another thing Ward makes a point of is Ryan Power’s obsession with his routine, which in research for A is for Autism ( Webb, 1992) people with Autism have this tendency (2007). The way the style of art changes often brings the mundane to life in provocative and abstract forms. Visually, this can demonstrate to a viewer how something as mundane as getting a drink from a supermarket can be expressively interesting and different every time in the experience of others and highlights a delineation of everyday life for specific individuals rather than a collective objective.
Figures-
Figure 1- Aronowitsch, D and Heilborn, H. 2008 [Film Still]. Slaves. Sweden: The Swedish Film Institute
Figure 2- Raymond, S and Mckinnon, N. 2003. [ Film Still]. It’s Like That. Australia: Southern Ladies Animation Group.
Figure 3- Sabiston, B. 1999. [Film Still]. Snack and Drink. United States: Flat Back Films
Bibliography
.Ehrlich, N. (2013) ‘Animated Documentaries, Aesthetics, Politics and Viewer’, in Buchan, S. (ed.) Pervasive Animation. New York: Routledge, pp.248-267.
.Kitson, C (2008). British Animation: The Channel 4 Factor. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
.WARD, P. (2007). ‘Animated Interactions: Animation Aesthetics and the World of the ‘Interactive’ Documentary’. In: Buchan, S.(ed.) Animated’ Worlds’. New Barnet: John Libbey & Company, Limited.