sion talk shows but very few movies, Brokeback
Mountaindemonstrates that generic transforma-
tion can work in very powerful ways not only to
expand the original concept of the Western genre,
but also, in this case, to encourage the viewer to
think more about the subject.
And new genres continue to emerge. For exam-
ple, blockbuster franchises like Jon Favreau’s Iron
Manmovies and Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight
series, as well as lower-budget entries like Kick-Ass
(2010; director: Matthew Vaughn) and Scott Pilgrim
vs. the World(2010; director: Edgar Wright), are all
comic-book movies, a rapidly emerging genre that
has grown darker and more effects-laden since the
modern genre’s birth in Richard Donner’s Super-
man(1978). Any movie that resonates with audi-
ences and inspires imitators that turn a profit
could be the beginning of another new movie genre.
What about Animation?
Animation is regularly classified as a distinct type
of motion picture. Even the Academy Awards sep-
arates the top honor for narrative feature films into
“Best Picture” and “Best Animated Feature” cate-
gories. It is undeniable that animated films look dif-
ferent than other movies. But it is important to
recognize that, while animation employs different
mechanisms to create the multitude of still images
that motion pictures require, animation is just a dif-
ferent form of moviemaking, not necessarily a sin-
gular type of movie. In a recent interview, director
Brad Bird (Ratatouille, The Incredibles, The Iron
Giant) stresses that process is the only difference
between animation and filmmaking that relies on
conventional photography. Bird explains: “Story-
telling is storytelling no matter what your medium
is. And the language of film is also the same. You’re
still using close ups and medium shots and long
shots. You’re still trying to introduce the audience
to a character and get them to care.”^7 In fact, ani-
mation techniques have been employed to make
every type of movie described in this chapter. We
are all familiar with animated narrative feature
films; the animation process has been applied to
hundreds of stories for adults and children, includ-
ing examples from every major genre described
earlier. In addition, a long tradition of experimental
filmmaking consists entirely of abstract and repre-
sentational animated images. Even documentaries
occasionally utilize animation to represent events,
ideas, and information that cannot be fully realized
with conventional photography. Brett Morgen re-
created undocumented courtroom scenes for por-
tions of his documentary Chicago 10(2007); Ari
Folman’s war memoir Waltz with Bashir (2008)
claims to be the first fully animated feature-length
documentary.
While there are countless possible types and
combinations of animation, three basic types are
used widely today: hand-drawn, stop-motion, and
digital. To create hand-drawn animation, animators
draw or paint images that are then photographed
one frame at a time in a film camera. Since 24 frames
equal 1 second of film time, animators must draw 24
separate pictures to achieve 1 second of animation.
In 1914, Winsor McCay’s classic animation Gertie
the Dinosaurrequired over 5,000 drawings on sepa-
rate sheets of paper.^8 The difficulty of achieving
fluid movement by perfectly matching and aligning
so many characters and backgrounds led, the next
year, to the development of cel animation. Anima-
tor Earl Hurd used clear celluloid sheets to create
single backgrounds that could serve for multiple
exposures of his main character. Thus, he needed
to draw only the part of the image that was in
motion, typically the character or a small part of
the character. Although the highly flammable cellu-
loid first used for this process has now been
replaced by acetate, this type of animation is still
called “cel” animation. Until the advent of digital
animation, this method was used to create nearly
all feature-length animated films.
Stop-motion records the movement of objects
(toys, puppets, clay figures, or cutouts) with a(^8) Charles Solomon and Ron Stark, The Complete Kodak Ani-
mation Book(Rochester, N.Y.: Eastman Kodak Co., 1983), p. 14.
(^7) Brad Bird, interview with Elvis Mitchell, The Business,
KCRW Public Radio (May 5, 2008).
WHAT ABOUT ANIMATION? 111