Imaginary Worlds - When Human Met Creature

Episode Date: September 24, 2014

Computer animation vs. puppets. Fans have been debating for years which is more believable -- especially when a creature is sharing a scene with a human actor. I talk with ILM animator Charles Alleneck who worked on the Star Wars prequels, and Stephanie D'Abruzzo who works on Sesame Street and performed Kate Monster in the original cast of Ave Q.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Order now. Alcohol and select markets. See app for details. You're listening to Imaginary Worlds, a show about how we create them and why we suspend our disbelief. I'm Eric Malinsky. One of the hardest tricks to pull off in fantasy or science fiction is having a live actor share a scene with a creature.

Filmmakers have been trying to pull off this trick for years. I mean, one of the first movies ever back in 1914 was a vaudeville act between the illustrator Windsor McKay and his cartoon brontosaurus, Gertie. And then, you know, in the 1940s, way before Roger Rabbit, there was this major breakthrough as the movie anchors away when Gene Kelly danced with Jerry the Mouse.

One, two, three, four. One, two, three. One, two, three. La, la, la, la, la, la. La, la, la, la, la. You see? It's easy. Of course, in my childhood, the gold standard was Yoda, performed by Frank Oz. I am wondering why are you here? I'm looking for someone. was Yoda, performed by Frank Oz. I don't think so. I'm looking for a great warrior. Great warrior?

Wars not make one great. The Jim Henson workshop made the creatures in the Star Wars trilogy. They had to use dim lighting and dry ice to hide the wires and foam rubber. But that really kind of added to the sense of mystery around these characters. And in the 1990s, when filmmakers switched to computer-generated characters, it was kind of a shock to see them just kind of saunter on screen. No dim lighting, no smoke machines. I mean, they did look more realistic, but for some reason they also felt less believable. To figure out why that is, I met up with an old friend, Charles Alenek. We both studied animation at CalArts just outside Los Angeles,

and he now works for ILM. He animated characters in the Star Wars prequels, Pirates of the Caribbean movies, The Avengers, and all the Transformers. I still remember one of the coolest moments for me was in the first Transformers movie when still remember one of the coolest moments for me was in the first Transformers movie when I went to a theater to see the premiere and I was sitting next to this woman when Bumblebee transforms for the first time she said, oh my god! And that was such a great moment for me because it's nice to know that we can still have that effect on people wait wait so

didn't you do the scene in attack of the clones where there's the um that bug looking creature and he walks over to count dooku and he opens out his hand and the little death star appears yes your memory is better than mine is uh yes that was a poggle the lesser he is a geonosian and he did have the holographic plans for the Death Star. I will take the designs with me to Coruscant. They will be much safer there than my master. By the way, you know why? Because I recognize your walk. Oh, really? I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I don't mean the way that Charles walked around the school.

The characters he animated in his student films, even though they were done with just pencil and paper, they had a very distinct, smooth, heavy walk. The kind of animation that I do, visual effects animation, weight is one of the key things that we always strive for and struggle with and work hardest at, because that's really what makes a character be believable or not be believable in a scene. If they have a weight that seems realistic for that world, if they marry in with the live action performance, then people will believe them. And if they don't, if they seem too light for that world, which is almost always the case. Characters rarely feel too heavy. They often feel too light.

Did you do Yoda? Not in... Wait, no, I take that back. I did one Yoda shot in the second movie. It's one of the lightsaber shots where he's hopping around fighting Count Dooku and he's doing these little spin moves and things like that. But then I got to expand that out a lot more

in the third movie, Revenge of the Sith, where I animated a decent-sized chunk of the lightsaber duel between Yoda and the Emperor. Faith in your new apprentice misplaced me, B. As is your faith in the dark side of the Force. Wow. So, that was fun. It was good. Yoda's a lot of fun to animate, especially when he's doing acrobatic moves.

You sound like, you know, when someone works with a big actor, and they're like, yeah, yeah, it was fun to animate, especially when he's doing acrobatic moves. You sound like when someone works with a big actor and they're like, yeah, yeah, it was fun to work with George Clooney. He's real professional. Yeah, Yoda was a pro all the way. There's no question. He always showed up on time. No tantrums in his trailer. It was really great.

When you were doing this particular kind of thing of creatures with live actors, what were some of the rookie mistakes you made early on? Oh, that's a really excellent question. I think that early on I was maybe falling back a little too much on my sort of cartoon animation training. And wasn't recognizing the fact that I was working in a live action environment now. I wasn't recognizing the fact that I was working in a live action environment now and some things had to be more realistic and didn't necessarily follow the rules of cartoon physics. And I think that took me a couple of shots to sort of wrap my head around. But then, you know, when you're working on Yoda and he's flipping around, that's completely cartoon.

Well, yes and no. It's cartoony in the sense that a human couldn't do it, that a human couldn't jump and spin like Yoda could, but it's realistic in the sense that he has to have realistic weight for a character his size. He can't squash and stretch like a Looney Tunes character could, or he can't have the sort of overdone anticipations that you'd see on a more overtly animated character. So we still had to treat him as a small, very athletic, but realistic person. Really? Like bouncing off the walls like that? Yeah, it's a fine balance between making him feel like a little real creature who's doing this with their own muscle power versus um daffy duck or something you know it's a fine line i i acknowledge that but it's uh but it is a slightly different mindset i think when approaching it okay by the way do you remember

when frank oz came to cal arts absolutely it was terrific. Tell me, what do you remember about that? I remember him absolutely transforming when he went into the Muppet character. And you could see that this was something that he just fell into so naturally that it was like second nature. But I remember there was one time when a little girl was in the audience. Was that it? Yeah. Yeah. And that was fascinating because it was a little probably eight- eight year old girl who went up on stage and started talking with him. And the minute the Muppet came to life, she stopped paying any attention to him and immediately transferred all of her attention to the Muppet as if it were a real person who she was talking to and interacting with. And that was so neat to see because even though the puppeteer was sitting right there next to this Muppet, it came alive. I remember she whispered into his ear, into Grover's ear, and Grover doesn't have an ear. And she said, she said, can I, can I give you a hug? And he's

like, of course. And then as he hugged her, his head kind of tilted a little bit. Yeah, I think that's exactly what we were talking about. That in that moment, because Frank Oz is an actor, he reacted to her as well and reacted in a very natural way. And so in turn, she treated that as a live, thinking, feeling creature. You know how in life there are these moments that just seem so magical? They become a story you tell to people over and over again. The time that Frank Oz came to CalArts,

that was one of those moments for me. And it just made me wonder more, why are the Muppets so believable? I mean, they really shouldn't be, especially when they're interacting with human beings. Even Stephanie DiBruzzo wonders that sometimes. And she's a Muppeteer. One of the things that made me realize that puppetry was something special is when I was in college and I was building these awful characters and trying them out around the

dorm once in a while, and these jaded 20-year-old college students would be looking at the puppet and not at me. I thought, well, there's something here. I'm fooling them. Stephanie's worked on Sesame Street for over 20 years. She also performed the character Kate Monster for the Broadway show Avenue Q, which had puppets, but was not for kids.

You're a little bit racist. Well, you're a little bit too. I guess we're both a little bit racist. Admitting it is not an easy thing to do. But I guess it's true. Between me and you, I think everyone's a little bit racist sometimes. And when we did the first readings of it, we didn't try to hide the puppeteers.

We were at music stands. We just held the puppets. And everybody said, what a bold, creative choice that was to show the puppeteers. And we all went, thank you. Because there had been no intention to show the puppeteers until we realized, oh my gosh, our faces are going to be the subtitles for the characters' emotions. Performing on stage was really hard for Stephanie because Muppeteers are used to taking advantage of the TV screen or the movie screen. The eyes relationship to a camera lens tells you everything. If a puppet's eyes are just above a lens, it can give a thoughtful look.

If it is right in the camera lens, it can be deadpan or, you know, direct address. If it's just below the camera lens, it can be sad or pensive. These are things that you wouldn't think about unless you really watched it. And if you watch it, you'll see it. You'll see it constantly. So we use those angles to do things with puppet eyes that human actors don't even think twice about what they're doing with their eyes. There are people who for years insisted that Miss Piggy would bat her eyelashes at Kermit. Now, Miss Piggy never had an eye mechanism that would make her eyelids open and close, Now, Miss Piggy never had an eye mechanism that would make her eyelids open and close. But it was all in the way Frank Oz would lean the pig and tilt the head and make it seem as though the audience would fill in those blanks. The way they fill in the blanks with animation.

You know, in animation, we always talked about thinking poses. Poses where it looked like the characters were thinking. But I'm always fascinated when an actor is talking and the Muppet's supposed to be listening. Yes. That's what's so interesting to me is how actively the Muppet listens. Yeah, because the worst thing you can do is have a puppet go dead, which is to be stock still. Now, being stock still can actually be used comedically, but that has to be an active

choice. Stephanie says that's why the Muppets are so believable, because they're actually there in the scene. The human actor may be talking to a character that has nothing more than plastic eyes, but those are the eyes of the character. The actor is not talking to a tennis ball on a stick or a voice actor in a bodysuit. All the technology in the world can't really portray. really portray you know you can put up all the the green blocks with dots on them but if you're padding if you're if you're padding grover on the head there's just no way to replicate that in a really truly believable way and i'll tell you the other thing that's harder for an animation

animated character to do with a human being is ad lib right you'd have to have the voice performer there on set, but they can only ad-lib lines. They can't ad-lib a reaction. You know, Grover can give a hubba wah, or they can duck down, or they can, you know, tickle them or kiss them or give them a hug out of the blue, something that's unscripted. Those are the best moments. You can see they're physical objects, right down to the mistakes. There are certain things that you just can't emulate. And one of them is rubber cracking.

Rubber cracking? Well, Yoda's face is made of rubber and you move it enough and it starts to get these little cracks in them. And that's a really hard thing to replicate in CG. It's not something you would think to. It's an imperfection in the latex foam that Yoda was made from, molded from. And it's going to start to break down

in various places in non-symmetrical ways. And an animator's not going to have that in mind, but those are things that exist in something tangible. But Charles says even Frank Oz would sometimes get frustrated with that puppet. One of the interesting things was when Frank Oz saw the CG Yoda, one thing he mentioned was that we had put jiggle on the ears, which was interesting because when he was puppeteering it, he tried very hard to keep jiggle out of the ears. because when he was puppeteering it, he tried very hard to keep Jiggle out of the ears. And then we went and we looked at the puppet when we were referencing for the animation, and we put Jiggle onto the ears because that's what Yoda's ears do.

They jiggle. And to get realism, you want the ears to jiggle. So it's this sort of funny, like, push and pull. I mean, let's be honest. We all love Muppets. But we're not exactly heading into a golden age of puppeteering on film. Nor should we. While puppets are still really great for what they're good at,

you do reach a certain kind of point of limited returns with puppets, where there's some things they just can't do. And as movies get more and more fantastical, directors are going to want bigger and more dynamic scenes than a puppet can really deliver, I think. When I was at CalArts, our instructors used to tell us to stick by the acronym KISS, keep it simple, stupid.

I didn't really want to call myself stupid all the time, so I changed the acronym to keep it simple and sincere. And I think that's why the Muppets are so believable. Their simple designs read really nicely from far away. And we feel the sincerity behind their performance. Being simple and sincere is a pretty good rule to follow, even if you're using the most sophisticated tools to animate. I mean, all we care about is if we're watching a great character. We can forgive any technical

shortcomings. Well, that's it for today's show. Thanks for listening. You can like the show on Facebook or leave a comment on iTunes. I tweet at emalinski. Special thanks to AIR, the Association of Independence and Radio, Jonathan Mitchell, Charles

Alanak, and Stephanie DiBruzzo. I remember someone asking me, can you sing without the puppet? Hmm? Can you sing without the puppet? Like, I don't even understand what that means. Are you capable of singing without a puppet on your hand? I'm not kidding you.

Can you sing without the puppet? I couldn't kidding you. Can you sing without the puppet? I couldn't believe it. Stephanie had so many really great things to say about being a Muppeteer that I just couldn't fit into this piece. So I created a longer version of our conversation, and it's on the website, imaginaryworldspodcast.org.