Simon Sellars: Sleepy Brain Archives

Interview by Meredith Badger

photo by Simone Lee Egger

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Melbourne animator Kate Cawley teaches scriptwriting at RMIT in the Centre for Animation and Interactive Media (AIM). Her graduate film, Les Grenouilles, has won a slew of prizes and has been shown in numerous festivals. Kate has also worked for a number of Melbourne-based animation companies, including, most recently, Nectarine. At Nectarine Kate worked on the series Greena as a director, animator and character designer. Greena was recently nominated for best online series as part of the Annecy animation festival. The episodes are currently accessible through the ABC website as are some other projects that Kate worked on, including Tork (part of the ABC’s ‘Game On’ initiative) and Planet Slayer.

As Meredith Badger discovered, Kate has a tendency to anthropomorphise, which would indicate that she has chosen the right career path.
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How did you become interested in animation?

I spoke to somebody at a party who was doing the Graduate Diploma at AIM and I started to ask her about it because I didn’t really understand what it was. Once she started to talk about it I realised that it combined everything that interested me. My drawings were always very cartoony, I’d always written and I wrote music too. It sounded like a medium that would bring everything together.

Did you watch any animations as a kid?

Not really. We had limited access to television. But we did watch Wait till Your Father Gets Home and the Disney animations. We watched Monty Python, with Terry Gilliam’s animation, things like that. But I never really watched the Warner Brother stuff, I just wasn’t interested in them.

Planet Slayer: The Adventures of Greena Animators: Steve Piscopo & Kate Cawley
© 2003 Australian Broadcasting Corporation & Film Victoria

Do you think there is a discernable difference between scripts written for animation and scripts for live action?

Absolutely. On really different levels. On a narrative level there’ s a difference and on a production level there’s a difference too. I think that I’ve always got, at the back of my mind, how much drawing I’m going to have to do. So I don’t have crowd scenes, or if I do they’re very close in, tightly framed with sound implying lots of off-screen action. I’m always aware of which characters and actions are really essential to the plot and which are expendable. I’m always trying to draw only what I really need to.

They’re very practical considerations, aren’t they?

In terms of production, yes they are. On a narrative level though, I think that the willingness of the animation audience to suspend disbelief is an incredible boon to have when you’re writing a script. If a character enters a room and they have a bicycle wheel for a head, then they do a handstand and shoot off on their little bicycle wheel head, nobody is going to say “Oh that’s ridiculous.”

So, once you’ve set up the rules of that world people will let you do what you like?

Yes. You can introduce the most ridiculous, outlandish rules and yet the audience is very happy to accept them and go along with you.

More so than in live action?

I think so. Because live action is, simply by being photographic, a realistic depiction of the world. It reflects what we see in our own world. So if you have a normal human being suddenly sprout wings and fly off, there’s an immediate skepticism that you have to overcome. Unless you’ve convincingly set up a magical world .I think that development of special effects and the popularity of effects based films has begun to create a much greater cross over in terms of narrative content for live action and animated film. Effects allow live action films to tell completely fantastic stories where the rules of physics and the real world can be overturned utterly convincingly. I think this development in live action has contributed to the growth of the animation audience over the past decade particularly.

What are some of the elements that are common to the two genres when it comes to writing a good script?

Great cinematic language should be common to both. Allowing the narrative to dictate the placement of the camera. Using the camera to bring an audience in close when it’s an intimate moment and pushing them out when it’s not, framing shots tightly if a character feels trapped, showing first person points of view at the right moment. I think that some of the rules of cinematic language are absolutely applicable to all audio-visual media.

And maybe even the language of fiction in general I suppose.

Definitely. It is about how and when you want to give information. This is the same for film as it is for animation. So if there’s a scene that contains a lot of information then the camera angles are what decides the order in which you show that information and whether you reveal or hide. I think that’s true right across audio-visual mediums. That’s probably what cinematic language is: obscuring and revealing.

Planet Slayer: The Game Animators: Steve Piscopo & Kate Cawley
© 2003 Australian Broadcasting Corporation & Film Victoria

How do I tell if my idea is not just a live-action idea that I’m trying to force into animation?

Ideas that fully exploit their medium are I guess successful within their medium. One of the things that animation really promotes is the physical manifestation of an interior state. If a human character feels socially awkward, in animation that awkwardness can be externalised through character design. For example, the character might be made freakishly tall. His height would make socialising very difficult, a ceiling might force his head sideways, wedging him into a painful “L” and making it difficult for him to hear or participate in conversation. Animation allows you to abstract ideas and express the interior as exterior. Live action allows this too, but animation pushes the idea further, promoting physical abstraction, exaggeration and absurdity.

So you think they can be interchangeable sometimes?

They can be. I guess I have to acknowledge my own biases. I sometimes look at stuff that could be executed as live action, that has been executed as animation and I wonder why. But I don’t believe that’s a rule for deciding if something is not an animation idea or not. But the ideas that I do get really excited about are ones that could only be told as animation: those ideas that conform to their own strange rules; that have fabulous characters, in wonderful settings that present conflict or challenge to the character. To me, the absolute freedom that you have in the animated world is due to the willingness of the audience to suspend disbelief. And also it seems to encourage a really nice sort of abstraction where you can have strange behaviour that is explained by the strange world that it exists within. I think it’s a particularly wonderful medium for small stories.

I was thinking about Susan Kim’s film, Mother Tongue, and how in one sense it could be done as a live-action piece yet by doing it as an animation it has a whole layer of subtlety that it might not have achieved as a live-action film.

And it’s paint on glass. The medium is perfect for the story. Visually, Mother Tongue is about revealing and obscuring meaning – there are points of clarity but there is a lot that is ambiguous. I think it’s a beautiful example of visual style complementing narrative content.

What are the stages of writing an animation script?

Well, it’s a highly individual process but the way that I tend to do it is to start with a prose idea.

You mean literally writing down a story?

Yes.

Based around a character or around an event?

It can come from anywhere, it’s really hard to say. My bird film came from standing at the tram stop. There was a muffin that had been decimated and had been spread across the road and there were a bunch of little sparrows hopping around. One of them hopped onto one of those “Free Hair Cut” flyers and I swear it did a double take. It stopped and went “hmm…” In reality there was probably just a nice juicy morsel on the flyer but it really looked like it thought, “Ho ho! Free hairdo!” And that became my film.

It’ll often start as something visual, a small thing that appeals to me, and then I will find a way to present that idea in prose, probably. The more time I spend animating the more my prose is written in a way that is visual and told from the outside. So I would never write that a character is sitting on her bed feeling sad. I would describe her posture, her behaviour and externally describe her sadness through appearance and action. EMIS, as my students like to call it: “The External Manifestation of The Interior State”. I’d probably write some sort of character and environment profile as well, to keep the character and world consistent.

Birdie’s New Do © Kate Cawley 2003

The next step would be writing it in script form. Generally the script format does not include camera angles and you don’t pursue filmic direction, but I would actually say that if you are an animator/writer/director that you should be thinking about those things at that point. So that differentiates live action scripts from animation scripts as well.

What are some of the common mistakes that people make when writing for animation?

Not acknowledging the limitless possibilities of the medium. Restricting themselves. Teaching is really great for examining the rationales behind your own ideas. You’ll talk to students and they’ll say, “Yeah, but the opera-singing crocus was on the left in that last shot, so if it’s suddenly on the right, how do I explain that?” And I’ll say, “Well, yes, there is the cinematic language and continuity to consider, and we do have to get the opera-singing crocus over there. But, it’s an opera singing crocus, why does it have to adhere to the rules of the real world? Why can’t it uproot itself so it can get to the other side of the stage? Why does this crocus in a pot have to remain static?”

Do people overreach with animation scripts?

Yes, absolutely. They produce scripts for live action which will open with: “crowd scene, hundreds of people.” And I’ll immediately rewrite in my head : “Crowd scene: two people standing together in a closely framed shot, sound and shadowy outlines in background imply larger crowd.”

So there are tricks to getting around these difficulties?

Absolutely. But if I was at Pixar, then fine, go ahead with the crowd scene.

Sound is obviously something that the animator needs to consider right from the outset.

Yes, because of the amount of narrative it can convey. This applies to non-narrative work too, because I do think that even if you are talking about non-narrative linear work there is still an expectation of what the director wants the audience to feel when they leave. There’s an experiential expectation on behalf of the director and this is, in a sense, a kind of narrative.When you’re writing animation there’s this whole world outside the camera that we can use. It’s a really wonderful thing for an animator to allow things to happen, through sound, in this space – because don’t have to draw it.

What is the value of the pitch process that students go through at AIM?

Well, in terms of being a student and in terms of learning, you make a broad assumption that they are making work to put in front of an audience. So, when they pitch, they are pitching to an audience. So the response they receive to what they are putting forward is important. There will be some people who will say “No, I’m making the work I want to make and people will either enjoy it or not enjoy it, I don’t care.” But to me the strength of the idea can be measured in terms of how interested an audience is in it, how intrigued or drawn in they are. A student might have a fantastic character in a fantastic scenario that is not yet developed, but what they might get from pitching is that people say, “Oh, that’s interesting, what about this possibility?” It’s actually feedback. And when we do the pitches at AIM, nobody gets to be vicious – it’s a safe environment.

It seems to me that a lot of the time animation starts with the bending of the laws of physics: it’s a world where this can happen.

Absolutely. It’s part of why we’re so lucky. How could we ever run out of ideas? My students will say, “I’ve created this character”, and I’ll say, “OK, well, he’s got a really large head. Does that make it difficult for him to buy a hat?” And we’ll have a conversation about that.

It’s kind of like talking to a five-year old, isn’t it?

It kind of is. I’m not saying that everything has to be wildly whimsical, but if you can invent behaviours that are unusual, movement that is weird and interactions that are improbable, why be prosaic?

Do animations have to be funny?

No.

And do animations work if they’re not funny?

Yes. Probably my bias is towards things that are, although I’m not drawn to the slapstick/Tex Avery sort of animation, even though I can respect the craft in it. He’s an absolutely brilliant animator, but I think the things that appeal to me are quieter. I would probably reflexively make something that tells its story through humour rather than through earnestness, but I don’t think that animation that is serious can’t work. Animation that is badly made and has no respect for craft is awful and I find it unwatchable. But then again, I would say the same thing about live action.

Do you think you can tell from the script if an idea is not going to work?

Yes, I do. However, I think that in a badly scripted idea that contains some really great elements, no matter how badly scripted, those good elements will stand out. It might be that it’s an exceptional character put in a really fruitless situation – one that presents no conflict or challenge or interest – but you will probably still be able to develop the character. And a well-written script can still be uninteresting.

Can the script be misleading? I’ve heard people say that when they presented their script, initially the audience wasn’t able to see the appeal. Sometimes the final piece might be carried purely by the visual style of the animator.

Les Grenouilles
© 2003 Kate Cawley

I really think that judging things on the script is a difficult thing if the scriptwriter is not really clever at explaining in terms that are evocative about that character and about that situation. When I’m reading a script, it’s the times that the writing is so descriptive that I can see the action in my head – then the script is really successful. Sometimes it will just be two things in a whole script that are so wonderful to visualise that you would say, “Well, the rest of it is terrible, but let’s keep these elements because they’re fabulous.”

A really well-written script should be able to stand alone so long as it’s as descriptive as possible in explaining who that character is, what it is doing and how it is feeling. I think also that a good character profile is also very useful – it could just be that the character is a jockey, but they’re 7 foot, so already there’s the idea that they will never meet their dream or if they do, they will have to do something wildly interesting to achieve that.

This is a bit of a generalisation, but it seems to me that there are more animations than live action pieces that have no dialogue. Why do you think that is?

I think there are quite a few reasons for that. One reason could be that animation has its foundations more in drawing than in film and we’re used to drawings not using words. Originally, film didn’t have dialogue, but there were always subtitles.

Do you think it might also be to do with the fact that the animator is able to express a lot more through linework than what the human body is physically capable of doing? You can exaggerate emotions and reactions, for instance, to the point where you almost don’t need words.

Yes, absolutely. There’s quite an element of burlesque in animation. I think it’s also because animators tend to be auteurs a lot of the time and because lip-syncing is really difficult to do. Having dialogue also means you need to bring voice talent in and give part of your work away to someone else to take responsibility for, and I think a lot of animators resist that. And, on the festival circuit work without language travels better. Or maybe animators so often deal with inanimate objects that they’re not used to having human voices as well. Why would you make a barstool talk when it could squeak or communicate in another barstool-type way?

You recently worked on a series that had a number of different writers for different episodes. How do you go about getting writers?

In that case, it was a general call. Then you give them a brief and a character bible and ask them to respond to it.

What’s a character bible?

Something that sets out fundamental, important information and rules about the characters. It might include a backstory.

Like a style guide, but for characters?

Yes. Something like, “Walks fast, keeps bumping into things. Is driven by passion rather than by intellect. Not very aware of how her body relates to space.”

Do you find yourself feeling protective over characters, especially when you’ve had a lot to do with the design?

Yes, I do. I’ll say, “No, she wouldn’t do that” or “she’d respond like this”. There are points I can get very dogged about.

You were at Annecy recently and saw a lot of animations from all around the world. Is there a noticeable difference between animations produced in different places?

Definitely. There’s a strange, surrealistic, yet utterly engaging school of Estonian animation. They have a very intellectual approach that is essentially about symbols and abstraction, but the abstraction and symbols are so wonderfully selected that they resonate universally. I like the credit they give their audience – they don’t feel they need to explain everything. The French are always so much less sophisticated than you think they’re going to be – they like slapstick. Australian work can sometimes be (not always) quite character based. Harvie Krumpet, for example, is a fabulous character-driven piece.

It obviously has a very universal appeal.

It does, which isn’t always usual with something that is so heavily dialogue based. But it’s also very visual. Harvie’s animator, Adam Elliot, puts his characters in ordinary environments but his character’s oblique world views allow them to find interest and wonder anywhere. Adam has great timing, too. His are strangely real stories, that touch on things that resonate with everybody.

Do you think, given the appeal of pieces like Harvie Krumpet, that there’s a changing perception that animation is not just for children? That it can have something for adults, too?

I think that’s been the case for a while.

What are some of your favourite animations?

Totoro, by Hayao Miyazaki – hands down.

And a top five?

These spring to mind, but not in any order:

The Iron Giant, Brad Bird
The Three Misses, Paul Dreissen
Murmur, Kate Matthews
Brother, Adam Elliot
Cloud Cover, Lisbeth Svarling

What text books would you recommend for people who are interested in learning more about writing for animation?

Scott McCloud’s book, Shot by Shot, is really useful, as it talks about visualising concepts. There are heaps of scriptwriting books, but I’m loathe to recommend one in particular because each will have their biases. It’s really important to remember that there is no one way to tell audio visual stories. I still think that one of the best ways to learn about telling stories is to read and read and read. See a lot of films, lots of animation particularly, but read. Read fiction, read everything. Read scripts but don’t read scripts exclusively. Read fiction and imagine how you might convey the narrative in an audio-visual form. Whenever I read I always seem to reflexively create an image in my head of how scenes look, how characters move, speak and interact.

Now I’m going to set you a challenge: I want you to come up with an animation script on the spot where the lead characters are a block of cheese and a drawing pin.

They’re in love. And it’s a soft cheese, a camembert, with a hard skin. And there’s imminent danger, obviously, in the relationship, because the pin could pierce the cheese and its insides might ooze out and it would bleed to death. So this is a love that must remain unrequited. But I think they’d find a way. It might be that they’d reach a compromise….

Maybe they can only touch with their flat edges.

Yes, it might mean that they have to redefine intimacy. They might have to do away with penetration.

LINKS ::…
AIM website
Planet Slayer
Nectarine