Fantasy/Animation

The Adventures of Prince Achmed (1926) (with Caroline Ruddell - Live @ Cinema Museum)

Episode 38 comes to you live from the Cinema Museum in Kennington, London, as Chris and Alex take to the stage to discuss the craft and creativity of silhouette animated feature The Adventures of Prince Achmed (Lotte Reiniger, 1926). Recorded in front of a lively audience of animated fantasy fans back in October 2019, the conversation featured very special guest Dr Caroline Ruddell (Programme Lead and Senior Lecturer in Film and Television at Brunel University London), an expert on Reiniger who has published work on the filmmaker in Fantasy/Animation: Connections Between Media, Mediums and Genres (2018), and the recent anthology The Crafty Animator: Handmade, Craft-based Animation and Cultural Value (2019), of which she is also the collection’s co-editor. Listen as they trace The Adventures of Prince Achmed through a multitude of critical and cultural contexts, including Reiniger’s signature style of 2D cutout animation; gendered discourses of craft and the politics of the handmade; Reiniger’s own ‘forgotten’ status and position at the margins of animated film history; the film’s production during a specific historical moment of upheaval in 1920s Weimar Germany; and how The Adventures of Prince Achmed sits within the traditions of abstract cinema, avant-garde animation, German Expressionism and fantasy storytelling.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015) (with Becca Harrison)

Beginning the New Year in a galaxy far, far away, Chris and Alex turn for the first time to the seminal Star Wars franchise for their latest episode, this time revisiting the first in the latest sequel trilogy Star Wars: The Force Awakens (J.J. Abrams, 2015). Joining them for this journey through this epic space fantasy is Dr Becca Harrison, Lecturer in the Theatre, Film & Television Studies department at the University of Glasgow. Becca has written extensively on Star Wars for both the BFI and The Conversation, and is also the author of two upcoming books on the Star Wars franchise. Listen as they make their way through topics including the shape of academic scholarship on the film series and the challenges of critically engaging with the Star Wars universe; the film’s place within the industrial logic of the franchise feature; how recalls, callbacks and looping within Star Wars: The Force Awakens can be understood as examples of narrative ‘recursion’; inclusive representation and the film’s complex racial and gender politics; the authorship of George Lucas; and mythologies of female-oriented power that exist both within and beyond the film.

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992) (with Meredith Braun)

The festive season has well and truly arrived, so join Chris and Alex as they get into the Christmas spirit by discussing Yuletide classic The Muppet Christmas Carol (Brian Henson, 1992). Helping to roast the fantasy chestnuts on the animated open fire is actress, singer and West End performer Meredith Braun, who starred alongside Kermit the Frog, Miss Piggy, The Great Gonzo, Rizzo the Rat and Fozzie Bear in The Muppet Christmas Carol as Ebenezer Scrooge’s (Michael Caine) neglected fiancée Belle. Together they discuss the film’s historical place within 1980’s fantasy and puppet cinema; wider definitions of puppetry as an animated art form; the interplay between musicality and sincerity; and how The Muppet Christmas Carol negotiates multiple levels of Muppet narration and performance. Meredith also reveals the challenges and pleasures of acting ‘live’ with Jim Henson’s iconic puppets, as well as a few behind-the-scenes treats about what it takes to make a Muppet movie. Merry Christmas one and all!

Mary Poppins Returns (2018) (with Christian Kaestner and Frederikke Glick)

Trip a little light fantastic with Episode 35 of the Fantasy/Animation podcast, which marks Chris and Alex’ very own return to Cherry Tree Lane as they visit musical sequel Mary Poppins Returns (Rob Marshall, 2018). Joining them underneath the lovely London sky are Visual Effects Supervisor Christian Kaestner and Compositing Supervisor Frederikke Glick, who both worked as part of VFX studio Framestore’s contribution to the film. Topics for discussion include the construction a fictional London that owes a debt to design of the 1964 original; the ‘keying’ or extracting of bluescreen and greenscreen images as part of the compositing process; the production of the Royal Doulton Music Hall sequence; lighting effects and practical sets in the film’s climactic Big Ben set piece; and the pleasurable fantasy of hybridity when integrating (yet keeping separate) live-action and cel-animated components. Off we go!

Ex Machina (2014) (with Andrew Whitehurst)

Episode 34 sees Chris and Alex focusing on the pleasures, politics and posthumanism of science-fiction parable Ex Machina (Alex Garland, 2014). To help untangle the circuitry of Garland’s film, they are joined by Academy Award-winning visual effects artist Andrew Whitehurst. Andrew is currently the Creative Director and VFX Supervisor at the Double Negative (DNEG) studio in London, with credits that include Troy (Oliver Stone, 2004), Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (David Yates, 2007), Scott Pilgrim vs. the World (Edgar Wright, 2010), Skyfall (Sam Mendes, 2012), Paddington (Paul King, 2014), and Annihilation (Alex Garland, 2018). In this latest episode, Andrew talks about his role as Visual Effects Supervisor on Ex Machina, a film for which he received an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 2015. Listen as they discuss the relationship between visual effects and production design; the film’s digital construction of bodies (via facial shapes, skin simulations, and data sets for physiognomies); questions of hybrid performance in the animation (movement, walking, gesturing) of humanoid robot Ava; the erotics of technology; and what Ex Machina has to say about the broader ethics and morality of creativity.

The Valley of Gwangi (1969) (with Astrid Goldsmith)

Part-Western, part-dinosaur epic, The Valley of Gwangi (Jim O’Connolly, 1969) is a fantasy that combines the icons and images of the frontier myth together with stop-motion animation directed by Ray Harryhausen, a project that he had himself inherited from his mentor Willis O'Brien. Set in Mexico at the turn of the 20th century, and with a plot that involves the capture of a living Allosaurus by a gang of cowboys, The Valley of Gwangi stands as Harryhausen’s final ‘dinosaur film’, one whose effects imagery is the fullest expression of his unique handling of stop-motion creatures. Joining Chris and Alex for episode 33, and to discuss the power of The Valley of Gwangi’s stop-motion puppetry, is award-winning animator Astrid Goldsmith (a.k.a. Mock Duck Studios). Topics include the film’s fantastical treatment (and manipulation) of generic conventions; the organisation of interconnected spatial ‘arenas’ that structure the Western Fantasy narrative; and the interplay of live-action and animated elements during the film’s celebrated ‘rope battle’ between man and dinosaur.

Corpse Bride (2005) (with Emily Mantell)

Halloween is well and truly upon us for Episode 32, with Chris and Alex getting to grips with spooky stop-motion feature Corpse Bride (Tim Burton, 2005). Joining them is animator Emily Mantell, Storyboard Staff Assistant on the film and currently Head of Animation at University of Wolverhampton. Expect proceedings to take a turn for the ghoulish - if not become a little ‘topsy turvy’ - as they discuss the art and labour of storyboarding within animated feature-film production; vocal performances and animating to the voicetrack; the role of ambivalent feminine unruliness embodied in the eponymous corpse bride; themes of outsiderdom and the grotesque; and the broader creative messiness of stop-motion.

The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (2012) (with Richard Haynes)

For Episode 31, Chris and Alex are joined on their swashbuckling adventure by stop-motion animator Richard Haynes (Arts University Bournemouth) to discuss his work on Aardman Animations’ The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! (Peter Lord, 2012), as well as a few other animated feature films and television series along the way. Topics include how The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists! differs from the traditional shape of Aardman’s exaggerated and lavish fantasy worlds; the production pipeline of stop-motion feature films; the Britishness of the clean and crisp homemade style of the Aardman studio; and the philosophies of performance with (and around) the ‘animated’ character of the camera.

This episode was edited by Gabriel Hunt.

Laputa: Castle in the Sky (1986) (with Robert Maslen)

Episode 30 marks a return to the work of both Studio Ghibli and filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki, as Chris and Alex build on their discussion of My Neighbor Totoro with a journey to Laputa: Castle in the Sky (Hayao Miyazaki, 1986), an animated fantasy that follows the magical Sheeta and companion Pazu from a mining community of Japan up into the skies thanks to the floating powers of a mythical crystal. To discuss this early Ghibli feature, they are joined by Dr Robert Maslen, Senior Lecturer in English Literature (University of Glasgow) and founder of the MLitt English Literature: Fantasy, the first graduate programme in the world specifically dedicated to the study of fantasy and the fantastic. Topics include the film’s many imaginative acts of creativity and invention that support its steampunk aesthetic; its articulation of the treasures of learning, knowledge and dreams; Laputa’s links to both the speculative fiction of author Ursula K. Le Guin and the spectre of Japan’s industrialisation; and its multiple levels of space (the dynamism of the air, the land that conveys the work of living, and the underground mines that spark Sheeta and Pazu’s flying adventure).

Mr. Bug Goes to Town (1941)

Chris and Alex return to the work of the Fleischer studios for Episode 29, following up their discussion of Gulliver’s Travels with Mr. Bug Goes to Town (Dave Fleischer, 1941), similar in concept and design to its predecessor and loosely inspired by Belgian poet Maurice Maeterlinck's book The Life of the Bee (1901). The second (and final) cel-animated feature film produced by the Fleischers, Mr. Bug Goes to Town negotiates the conflict between an insect community and the threatening human world, all framed by an environmental narrative of modernisation, redevelopment and urban sprawl. Expect turns to the layered organisation of fantasy spaces and geographies of diverse scales; the film's connection to traditions of ecocritical cinema and contemporary computer-animated filmmaking; the depiction of rapid urbanisation and the metonymic forces of capitalism (and the role of cigars!); and animation’s representational history of blackface and racial coding.