Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hello, and welcome
Speaker 1: to the podcast. I'm Holly Fry and I'm Tracy V.
Speaker 1: Wilson and Tracy as you know, back in late February,
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to get invited to visit the
Speaker 1: set of the like a film Missing Link, which is
Speaker 1: coming out this week. We don't usually cover current film
Speaker 1: releases on the show, which any of our regular listeners
Speaker 1: would know, but I have been wanting to talk a
Speaker 1: bit about the history of stop motion animation for a while. Um.
Speaker 1: As you may recall, I had a show last year
Speaker 1: that was ran for a season called Drawn, which is
Speaker 1: about animation, and we were thinking, if we do more seasons,
Speaker 1: we would get to stop motion, and we didn't end
Speaker 1: up doing more seasons, so it's just been lurking there
Speaker 1: in my head. Uh. And Missing Link is kind of
Speaker 1: a perfect fit because it is a historical film essentially,
Speaker 1: it's it's a period piece, still very fun. Um. In
Speaker 1: case you don't know, they are the people that did
Speaker 1: Coraline and Box Trolls and Para Norman and Cuba and
Speaker 1: The Two Strings, and now this is their fifth film,
Speaker 1: So I reached out to them since this had some
Speaker 1: some potential in the history realm, and I asked if
Speaker 1: they would be willing to be part of an episode
Speaker 1: about stop motion and talk about their film in a
Speaker 1: historical context. They were all super game, So I headed
Speaker 1: out to their studios just outside of Portland had the
Speaker 1: time of my life getting to ugle all of the
Speaker 1: incredible artistry that goes into making one of their films.
Speaker 1: It was absolute heaven for me. That's like, uh, some
Speaker 1: sort of paradise. It was just beautiful and everyone there
Speaker 1: is super fun, so it was super beautiful. So, uh,
Speaker 1: that's what led to this episode. And here's how it's
Speaker 1: going to play out. So first you'll have a fairly
Speaker 1: normal episode of history class, Tracy and I are gonna
Speaker 1: give a brief history of stop motion, and then at
Speaker 1: the end there are for short interviews with people from
Speaker 1: the team at like talking as I said, about their film,
Speaker 1: both in the context of history, uh, in terms of
Speaker 1: stop motions history and in context of the history that
Speaker 1: they are recreating on the screen, but in a stylized way.
Speaker 1: So that means you are getting a supersized episode today. Yep,
Speaker 1: if you're one of those people that use their show
Speaker 1: to run because you're like, they're always about thirty to
Speaker 1: thirty five minutes, it will run long, and that in mind,
Speaker 1: you're running and going where am I? I don't recognize
Speaker 1: these houses at all? Where do I live? So just
Speaker 1: in case you're like, stop motion refresh my memory. That
Speaker 1: is made by taking still photographs of objects and then
Speaker 1: shifting the poses of those objects just ever so slightly
Speaker 1: for each frame, and then when you run those frames
Speaker 1: together and play them sequentially, it creates the illusion of movement.
Speaker 1: So you can string a whole whole bunch of these
Speaker 1: together and you get a film. This is a painstaking process,
Speaker 1: and even today, with lots of technology available to make
Speaker 1: this more efficient, you still only get about three seconds
Speaker 1: of film for a day's work on it. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think that's why I like. It's a very unique type
Speaker 1: of artists that is drawn to this as their their work.
Speaker 1: And it is often kind of difficult to pinpoint the
Speaker 1: exact moment when any new art form or concept is
Speaker 1: truly born, and that holds true for stop motion. But
Speaker 1: there is one particularly charming legend about it. The story
Speaker 1: goes that while looking at a piece of film, that
Speaker 1: he had shot. George Melliers noted that there was a
Speaker 1: point where the film had gotten stuck moving through the camera,
Speaker 1: and as a result, there was an illusion that the
Speaker 1: people and the vehicles on screen had just teleported across
Speaker 1: the frame. You may remember Malias from our two parter
Speaker 1: on the Lumiar Brothers, and from this point he was
Speaker 1: just so fascinated with the idea of stopping the camera,
Speaker 1: manipulating the scene, and then picking up filming to achieve
Speaker 1: some similar effects on purpose. And we will be talking
Speaker 1: more about his most famous entry into this whole genre
Speaker 1: in a little bit. But Malias was not the only
Speaker 1: person testing the limits of what a film camera could do.
Speaker 1: This was, after all, a fairly new technology, so plenty
Speaker 1: of ingenious and creative people were toying with it. Thomas
Speaker 1: Edison developed the kinetoscope in eighteen ninety and the Lumierres
Speaker 1: created their cinematograph in so this was really the dawn
Speaker 1: of a new era in storytelling. And while the story
Speaker 1: of the French filmmaker stumbling onto the idea of stop
Speaker 1: motion is fun, other people were kind of having their
Speaker 1: own Eureka moments as they played with what a film
Speaker 1: camera could do. The Humpty Dumpty Circus as credited as
Speaker 1: being the first true stop motion animation film. This was
Speaker 1: created by Albert E. Smith and J. Stuart Blackton. Regular
Speaker 1: listeners may recall Blackton's name for our windsor mackay episodes.
Speaker 1: This is one of those episodes that just ties together
Speaker 1: so much in our archive into one episode. He was
Speaker 1: the photography supervisor on McKay's first cartoon, which took the
Speaker 1: character of Little Nemo from comics into film, and The
Speaker 1: Humpty Dumpty Circus used children's toys to tell a short
Speaker 1: full story about the circus. But the film itself is
Speaker 1: lost to time, there are still images from it. Maybe
Speaker 1: the animated short was named for the play set that
Speaker 1: the animators used for the action that was a product
Speaker 1: of the Show and Hut company. So there has been
Speaker 1: some debate about whether, particularly the image that's often used
Speaker 1: as an example of a frame from the film is
Speaker 1: actually just a promotional photo from the company that they
Speaker 1: were using to market their toys. And blacked In collaborated
Speaker 1: with Edison to make the enchanted drawing. That's the first
Speaker 1: time animation was captured on standard film. This was the
Speaker 1: predecessor to his nine six film Humorous Phases of Funny
Speaker 1: Faces and The Enchanted Drawing. The shot includes the animator.
Speaker 1: He's featured in almost full figure as the main character,
Speaker 1: and then stop motion is used as he creates a
Speaker 1: drawing on a large sketch pad. This is essentially a
Speaker 1: capture of the Vaudeville lightning sketch act that we talked
Speaker 1: about in our Windsor Mackay episode, but there are elements
Speaker 1: that are played up for humor using stop motion as well.
Speaker 1: And then in Humorous Phases of Funny Faces, the screen
Speaker 1: is filled entirely by the chalkboard and only the artist
Speaker 1: hands are seen as he draws the characters, which then
Speaker 1: come to life on their own and engage in all
Speaker 1: manner of antics. Humorous Phases uses a lot more stop
Speaker 1: motion than The Enchanted Drawing. Blackton continued to explore the
Speaker 1: medium and in nineteen o nine made a five minute
Speaker 1: film called Princess Nicotine or the Smoke Ferry, which featured
Speaker 1: an early example of product placement was sweet corporal cigarettes
Speaker 1: that were used in the picture and the boxes on
Speaker 1: the screen with fairies kind of flitting about it. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: we'll talk about it again, uh in a moment, but
Speaker 1: early animation was not for children. Um In two director
Speaker 1: Edwin Porter, working for Thomas Edison and Edison, I should
Speaker 1: point out, was kind of involved in a lot of
Speaker 1: these different projects, made a short film titled Fun in
Speaker 1: a Bakery Shop and this is also a mix of
Speaker 1: live action and stop motion, and in it, a baker
Speaker 1: throws a large wad of dough at a rat as
Speaker 1: it climbs up a wall and it traps the roadent.
Speaker 1: But then the baker uses the dough to sculpture what
Speaker 1: he has then created this mass on the wall into
Speaker 1: various faces, adding more and more as he goes, until
Speaker 1: two other bakers arrive and they dump him into a
Speaker 1: barrel of flour. It's short, it only runs about ninety seconds,
Speaker 1: but it was touted by the Edison company in their
Speaker 1: catalog as a quote side splitter. It's cute. I don't
Speaker 1: know that, I split my sides laughing. That same year
Speaker 1: that Fun in a Bakery Shop was made, a much
Speaker 1: more well known entry was made into stop motion, and
Speaker 1: that was La Voyage Dlalun, which is a trip to
Speaker 1: the Moon. This was George Malia's film that most people
Speaker 1: think of when they think of early stop motion animation,
Speaker 1: and really, when they think of him, you can probably
Speaker 1: conjure up the image of the face of the moon
Speaker 1: with a rocket slammed into one of the eyes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Millia has played with this forever oath in using things
Speaker 1: that were not humans and using humans in stop motion
Speaker 1: pretty much from that point on. The Cameraman's Revenge was
Speaker 1: made in nineteen twelve by Polish animator Ladies Lastovich, and
Speaker 1: the opening intertitle of it reads quote Mr and Mrs
Speaker 1: Beatle have to calm a home life. Mr Beatle is
Speaker 1: restless and makes frequent trips to the city. Again clearly
Speaker 1: not for children. Yeah. Mr Beatle's favorite hang out in
Speaker 1: the city is a nightclub and it's called the Gay Dragonfly.
Speaker 1: He has a favorite dancer there, and things unspool very dramatically.
Speaker 1: Mr Beatle and the Dragonfly dancer are romantically involved, but
Speaker 1: Miss Dragonfly also has another would be suitor in the
Speaker 1: form of a grasshopper. The grasshopper is also a cameraman
Speaker 1: who films this pair when they're together to later show
Speaker 1: at the cinema. And then it turns out that Mrs
Speaker 1: Beatle also has her own paramore, The beatles marriage seems
Speaker 1: pretty complicated. It really does. Uh. The entire plot is
Speaker 1: played out using not puppets, but insects, and that is
Speaker 1: because Uh. Starovich was the director of a Museum of
Speaker 1: Natural History, and he had initially developed a technique to
Speaker 1: animate insects in order to recreate things like the drama
Speaker 1: of two stag beetles fighting, and then he realized he
Speaker 1: could film fictional narratives with his insect puppets, and the
Speaker 1: work that he did was really intricate and groundbreaking. He
Speaker 1: would recreate their legs with wire and then carefully connect
Speaker 1: them to the insect bodies in ways that looked true
Speaker 1: to life if you knew how insects bodies worked. But
Speaker 1: it also allowed for manipulation from shot to shots, so
Speaker 1: they could kind of be transmogrified into more human activities.
Speaker 1: Starovitch went on to direct dozens of stop motion shorts,
Speaker 1: including a nineteen thirty film called The Tail of the Fox,
Speaker 1: which became the first feature length film starring puppets, and
Speaker 1: Starovitch's nineteen thirty three film titled The Mascot Toys Come
Speaker 1: to Life and a Little Girl's Plush Dog Goes on
Speaker 1: Adventure and a quest to get her an orange and
Speaker 1: that's something that she dearly wants but that our mother
Speaker 1: can't afford. Sounds a little like toy story, and that's
Speaker 1: a valid comparison. It even includes harrowing traffic scenes where
Speaker 1: the toys in peril. It's also a little creepy and
Speaker 1: disturbing and has some adult situations in it. Uh stare
Speaker 1: if it should be an interesting episode on his own
Speaker 1: and could be one day. Yeah, he's on my list
Speaker 1: for sure. Uh yes, some of the toys behaving very
Speaker 1: grown up waste, it's all to say. The nineteen teens
Speaker 1: featured early use of claymation, as Helena Smith Dayton, a
Speaker 1: New York sculptor, began to explore the medium of stop motion,
Speaker 1: and she actually ran an evening of shorts at the
Speaker 1: Strand Theater on March nine, seventeen titled Animated Sculpture. And
Speaker 1: while Dayton contributed to a completely new avenue of technique
Speaker 1: and animation using these clay figures that could be manipulated
Speaker 1: from shot to shot, her work is rarely discussed in
Speaker 1: depth because there don't here to be any surviving copies
Speaker 1: of her films. In the mid nineteen twenties came the
Speaker 1: first feature length animated film, The Adventures of Prince Ahmed
Speaker 1: by previous podcast subject Lata Rehineger. As we discussed in
Speaker 1: that too, part her work was cut out animation done
Speaker 1: in a silhouette style. And this cut out animation is
Speaker 1: still a form of stop motion, but of course it
Speaker 1: uses flat paper instead of armatured puppetry. And we're about
Speaker 1: to touch on a very influential innovator in stop motion.
Speaker 1: But before we do, we're going to take a quick
Speaker 1: break and hear from one of the sponsors that keep
Speaker 1: stuff you missed in history class going in. One of
Speaker 1: the great names in stop motion pioneering emerged with the
Speaker 1: film The Lost World, which was adapted from the novel
Speaker 1: by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and that was animated by
Speaker 1: Willis O'Brien. The film was directed by Harry o Hoyt,
Speaker 1: but O'Brien created the mind blowing for the time dinosaur sequences.
Speaker 1: O'Brien had been working in short films before The Lost World,
Speaker 1: including a series for Thomas Edison, marked his entry into
Speaker 1: feature films, and that continued into the nineteen sixties. His
Speaker 1: work includes the nineteen thirty three version of King Kong,
Speaker 1: the nineteen forty nine Mighty Joe Young, and even model
Speaker 1: work on the nineteen sixty remake of The Lost World.
Speaker 1: O'Brien's influence reaches far beyond his own films. However, he
Speaker 1: mentored another of the biggest names in stop motion history,
Speaker 1: and that is Ray harry Housen. After seeing O'Brien's work
Speaker 1: in King Kong, harry Housen was inspired and connected with
Speaker 1: the special effects man through a mutual friend. The teenage
Speaker 1: harry Housen was encouraged by O'Brien to take art classes
Speaker 1: and really develop his skills in the fine arts in
Speaker 1: order to translate them into creating models for stop motion.
Speaker 1: Harry Housen got work on a project called Puppetoons in
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties and developed his skills. Eventually, he was
Speaker 1: hired by Willis O'Brien to work with him on feature films,
Speaker 1: including Mighty Joe Young. A few years after Mighty Joe Young,
Speaker 1: Harry Housen made a film called The Beast from twenty
Speaker 1: Thousand Fathoms that was in nineteen fifty three, and it
Speaker 1: was one of the first films that featured giant creatures
Speaker 1: attacking big cities and effect that he pioneered by using
Speaker 1: rear projection to create this illusion of monsters and the
Speaker 1: shots that was eventually named dynamation. The opening advertising line
Speaker 1: for the Beast from twenty thousand Fathoms was are we
Speaker 1: delving into mysteries we weren't meant to know? And it
Speaker 1: promised audiences, you'll see it tear a city apart. It
Speaker 1: was all thanks to the work of Ray Harry Housen,
Speaker 1: and Harry Housen went on to create some of the
Speaker 1: seminal works of stop motion animation, the Mythological Creatures of
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight, the Seventh Voyage of Sinbad, and the
Speaker 1: Skeleton Fight in nineteen sixty three is Jason and the
Speaker 1: Argonauts are often cited by film fans and animators alike
Speaker 1: as favorites. I think that Jason and the Argonauts sequence
Speaker 1: is kind of another one of those that people think
Speaker 1: of when they say stop motion, like you immediately see
Speaker 1: the skeletons coming out to have a fight. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: love it. We mentioned puppetuns a moment ago, and those
Speaker 1: were the creation of a man named George Pale. Pal's
Speaker 1: name doesn't come up as often as O'Brien's or Harry
Speaker 1: Housings when it comes to stop motion, but he was
Speaker 1: responsible for developing some really interesting techniques. Pal was Hungarian
Speaker 1: and he started making puppet based animation in his studio
Speaker 1: in three He had initially intended to work in two
Speaker 1: D animation, but he had a hard time finding the
Speaker 1: right cameras for two D filming, so he started to
Speaker 1: experiment with stop motion. One of the techniques that Pal
Speaker 1: developed was something called replacement animation. Rather than using just
Speaker 1: one puppet that required manipulation from one shot to the next,
Speaker 1: Pal would build a series of slightly different puppets so
Speaker 1: he could just switch out the star of the shot
Speaker 1: for each frame, and that's sped things along a little bit.
Speaker 1: And this idea has continued to be refined over the years.
Speaker 1: Now specific pieces of puppets get switched out, and current
Speaker 1: animators will switch out just face plates for even the
Speaker 1: most subtle of expression changes. That's something that you're going
Speaker 1: to hear talked about in the interviews that are coming
Speaker 1: up at the end. Puppatoons were born in the studio
Speaker 1: that Pal set up in Los Angeles after he fled
Speaker 1: the Nazi occupation of Poland and ninety nine. It was
Speaker 1: the first dedicated puppet studio in the US, and George
Speaker 1: Pile produced films for Paramount. One of the films he
Speaker 1: made after moving to the US was called Tulips Shall Grow,
Speaker 1: and it tells the tale of a couple's lives turned
Speaker 1: upside down when their country is invaded by enemies called Screwballs.
Speaker 1: They're fairly obvious stand in for goose stepping Nazis. Their
Speaker 1: village is bombed and is burned to the ground. Their
Speaker 1: windmill home is destroyed by tanks. But it is ultimately
Speaker 1: a hopeful film. Yeah, and that is all told with puppets.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen forties, Czechoslovakian animator Yuri Trinka made the
Speaker 1: move from two D animation into puppet based stop motion,
Speaker 1: and a lot of his work is rooted in folk tales,
Speaker 1: initially from the Czech tradition, but eventually he branched out
Speaker 1: into other cultures, shared stories in lore, as well as
Speaker 1: adapting Shakespeare's Midsummer Night's Dream into stop motion. Trinko was
Speaker 1: constantly at odds with the world in which he was creating.
Speaker 1: He was funded by a communist government, but that meant
Speaker 1: that some of the films were banned for religious content.
Speaker 1: Was an area that he wanted to explore as a
Speaker 1: source of cultural storytelling, and he also struggled with the
Speaker 1: balance of wanting to make art and needing to attract
Speaker 1: an audience. In nineteen sixty five, he made his last
Speaker 1: film called The Hand, which features an artist trying to
Speaker 1: create his own sculpture, but a large hand keeps showing
Speaker 1: up and intervening to change the work into something else.
Speaker 1: It's a clear commentary on his own frustrations as an artist.
Speaker 1: Trinco what said quote, A puppet is not a miniature human.
Speaker 1: He has his own world. Yeah that that film. Unlike
Speaker 1: the George Powell film that sounds very scary and ends
Speaker 1: pretty on a pretty up note, this film does not
Speaker 1: end on an up note, so just know if you
Speaker 1: go looking for it online. It starts out a little
Speaker 1: bit funnier and then gets quite dark. Moving into the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, we start to see some of the stop
Speaker 1: my characters that have endured to present day, including Gumby,
Speaker 1: created in nineteen fifty five by Art Cloaky and first
Speaker 1: appearing in an experimental film called Gumbaja. Cloaky was signed
Speaker 1: by twentieth Century Fox to create a TV series based
Speaker 1: on Gumbaja, and then Gumby made his transition from experimental
Speaker 1: film to pretty mainstream stardom. In the late nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: Cloaky developed the Davey and Goliath series as a project
Speaker 1: for the Lutheran Church. In the nineteen sixties and seventies,
Speaker 1: Rank and Bass Productions, Inc. Started producing their now classic
Speaker 1: holiday specials, including Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer, Santa Claus
Speaker 1: Is Coming to Town, and The Year Without a Santa Claus,
Speaker 1: all of which I remember watching every year in my
Speaker 1: childhood and sometimes as an adult. These are still run
Speaker 1: every year, and the story of Hermie the Elf and
Speaker 1: Rudolf in the Land of the Misfit Toys continues to
Speaker 1: enchant people. Yeah, it's kind of funny even you know,
Speaker 1: we we are so used to high level special effects
Speaker 1: and c G. Yet kids today will still just sit
Speaker 1: down and be completely entranced by these. I also just
Speaker 1: like that The Heat Miser lives on. In the late
Speaker 1: nineteen seventies, Phil Tippet and the team at Industrial Light
Speaker 1: and Magic, we're working on effects for The Empire Strikes
Speaker 1: Back when they tapped into an old school technique that
Speaker 1: hadn't seen all that much use. That's what's come to
Speaker 1: be known as go motion. So for the ad acts
Speaker 1: or you may say a t eighties depending on your preference,
Speaker 1: and Taunton's in that film, they didn't only use stop motion,
Speaker 1: but instead they moved the armatures of those puppets slightly
Speaker 1: with the frame exposed, and this creates a sense of
Speaker 1: motion between the frames, just as would happen when a
Speaker 1: human actor we're moving during a normally running camera shot,
Speaker 1: thus minimizing the jerkiness that stop motion can sometimes have.
Speaker 1: Sometimes tipp It is credited with creating this technique, and
Speaker 1: he did really improve on how it was done. But
Speaker 1: the blur technique itself was actually used as far back
Speaker 1: as the nineteen twenties and some of Ladislastarrovitch's films. Go
Speaker 1: Motion with used on a number of other films in
Speaker 1: the eighties, but as special effects technology advanced, it really
Speaker 1: fell out of favor. Peewee's Playhouse kept stop motion animation
Speaker 1: in front of us viewing audiences in the form of
Speaker 1: its penny cartoons, which featured simple stories narrated by a
Speaker 1: little girl. I love the Penny cartoons. Pewee's Playhouse ran
Speaker 1: from six to and during that time animators Craig Bartlett
Speaker 1: and Nick Park created the Penny shorts, and eventually Bartlett
Speaker 1: went on to create two D animation series for Nickelodeon,
Speaker 1: but Nick Park went on to create the much beloved
Speaker 1: Wallace and Grammic characters. Inventor Wallace and his very patient
Speaker 1: dog Grommet have started so many shorts and features, including
Speaker 1: A Grand Day Out, The Wrong Trousers, and Curse of
Speaker 1: the were Rabbit. Nick Park has also made films that
Speaker 1: don't star Wallace and Grommet, including Chicken Run and Toy
Speaker 1: eight Teens, Early Man. And Another more modern day contributor
Speaker 1: to stop motions ongoing story is Will Vinton Studios. If
Speaker 1: you recall the commercials which featured the California of Reasons,
Speaker 1: which started running in the mid nineteen eighties, you have
Speaker 1: seen work out of this studio. Vinton also produced the
Speaker 1: series The PJS, which innovated by using foam rubber puppets
Speaker 1: that could easily be replicated to create the stop motion animation.
Speaker 1: This came to be known as foammation, and it was
Speaker 1: that that enabled the studio to produce a thirty minute
Speaker 1: sitcom on a weekly television schedule. One of the major
Speaker 1: moments and stop motions more recent history is Tim Burton's
Speaker 1: The Nightmare Before Christmas, which came out in That film,
Speaker 1: directed by Henry Selleck, tells the tale of Jack Skellington
Speaker 1: longing for a life outside the bounds of Halloween Town.
Speaker 1: It became a huge hit, and more than twenty five
Speaker 1: years later, it continues to be a huge property for Disney.
Speaker 1: So I was a lot of merchandise available and it
Speaker 1: really gave stop motion a big boost in popularity and
Speaker 1: ushered in a whole new phase for the medium. Since
Speaker 1: there have been dozens of stop motion feature films produced
Speaker 1: all over the globe and will Vinton Studios that we
Speaker 1: talked about a moment ago of all it over time
Speaker 1: and it actually became like a in two thousand five.
Speaker 1: Since Likeca's first feature film, Cora Line, adapted from the
Speaker 1: Neil Gaming book of the same name, debuted in two
Speaker 1: thousand nine, the studio has produced Para Norman, The Box Trolls,
Speaker 1: Cubo and The Two Strings, and now their new film
Speaker 1: Missing Link coming up. We're gonna share Holly's talks with
Speaker 1: four people from the production team at LIKECA. But before that,
Speaker 1: we will pause for a quick sponsor break, and now
Speaker 1: we are going to hear as promised from some of
Speaker 1: the folks at like and because their new film, like
Speaker 1: I said at the top of the show, is a
Speaker 1: period piece. It is set in the late Victorian era,
Speaker 1: one of my favorites. Uh. Some of my talks were
Speaker 1: centered around capturing that time period as part of the film,
Speaker 1: and other talks focused more on the history of the medium.
Speaker 1: First step is Deborah Cook, the costume designer for Missing Link.
Speaker 1: She's also designed costumes for Para Norman, The Box Trolls,
Speaker 1: and Cubo and The Two Strings, as well as having
Speaker 1: worked the fabricator and a modeler on many other films,
Speaker 1: so she's got a lot of experience building and dressing puppets.
Speaker 1: One of the really fascinating things that she talked about
Speaker 1: was how she uses the historical trends in the period
Speaker 1: the film is set, for example, the availability of synthetic
Speaker 1: guys to convey the personalities of the puppet character she's dressing.
Speaker 1: And she discusses one of my very favorite things a
Speaker 1: little bit, which is Victorian underpinnings. Your work Obviously, like
Speaker 1: any costume designer, starts with a copious amount of research,
Speaker 1: and I'm wondering how you get that process kickstarted, particularly
Speaker 1: when you're doing something historical and you have to get
Speaker 1: like your historical knowledge base ready to start designing. Sure,
Speaker 1: it's not greatly different from how he would research any
Speaker 1: film in the live action world or any other type
Speaker 1: of movie. Really um to to start off, I'll have
Speaker 1: several conversations with the director and we'll stop feeding out
Speaker 1: in the vine of the movie and read the script
Speaker 1: to find the character's costumes and their their personality as well.
Speaker 1: Costume really does feed the personality of the character and
Speaker 1: informs their emotional arc across the movie as well, and
Speaker 1: supports that. They will also find what motivates the costume
Speaker 1: change and what it should be from and into to
Speaker 1: help pinpoint what we're looking for, how many costume changes
Speaker 1: there might be, what emotion they might be feeling in
Speaker 1: each costume, and how the costume helps propel the story
Speaker 1: forward and support that emotional journey as well. So I'll
Speaker 1: start by deconstructing the script and identifying information for their costumes,
Speaker 1: such as any described item of clothing or accessory, their
Speaker 1: actions or activity and their personality and character notes from Crisp,
Speaker 1: but there are director as well, and this gives me
Speaker 1: a baseline to grasp who they are, the director's expectations
Speaker 1: for them, and for me to explore costume ideas to
Speaker 1: flesh out their personality. And it also pinpoints the era historically,
Speaker 1: the region and if there's any economic strains on the
Speaker 1: style of their costumes, if they're meant to exemplify something
Speaker 1: in particular, for instance, in Line or Adelina, they're very vain.
Speaker 1: They're quite vain and they love their clothes. And Adelina's
Speaker 1: influences are Spanish and Lionels are very much set in
Speaker 1: the city of London, but they're very fashion forward, so
Speaker 1: it's looking its techniques. It might be around it at
Speaker 1: that time that were new to textile explorations such as
Speaker 1: the weaving for lion Or suits and for Adelina's clothing,
Speaker 1: that vibrant future color and line or turquoise cravat would
Speaker 1: have been quite um ala mode. At that time, synthetic
Speaker 1: dies were first coming into play, so moving away from
Speaker 1: those Victorian smoky colors and into something more vivacious and
Speaker 1: playful was was possible at that time. And they definitely
Speaker 1: indulged in that. And in contrast to that, Susan link
Speaker 1: suit is acquired in the Pacific north West and there
Speaker 1: is a history of weaving in that area and those
Speaker 1: kind of colors and that that weaving came into play
Speaker 1: there as well. So you start to build a contrast
Speaker 1: between the characters and their origins and how they play
Speaker 1: against each other and how that plays out of course
Speaker 1: the movie. Now, when you are adapting period clothing, which
Speaker 1: Avon has very unique silhouettes into teeny tiny, diminutive sizes
Speaker 1: for puppets, what is the biggest challenge that comes up
Speaker 1: in that process? Well, I guess we're not going to
Speaker 1: build them as they were built, So in a way
Speaker 1: that's a win for us. So we're not going to
Speaker 1: build Adelina corset, for example, under her explorer that she's
Speaker 1: wearing an f bend swan bill corset, and we don't
Speaker 1: actually build any of that underneath, So we build a
Speaker 1: puppet shape in that form and build a costume over that.
Speaker 1: So in that way it's a win. If it was
Speaker 1: a live action movie, they would actually be building all
Speaker 1: of that very humans, but they have to build in
Speaker 1: all those restraining shapes underneath. So in a way that's
Speaker 1: a game, but in other ways, building fabrics in the
Speaker 1: scale that we work, which is between one fifth and
Speaker 1: one six human scale, we need to find the right
Speaker 1: size threads, the right fabric selection with the particular properties
Speaker 1: we're looking for. Our puppets shapes also differ from humans
Speaker 1: quite greatly. So even though they appear as humans, where
Speaker 1: their arms are set in their bodies, and where their
Speaker 1: legs are set in their bodies and where their waists
Speaker 1: are and their shoulders are are not where they are
Speaker 1: for humans. They're built for animation, so there's particular arm
Speaker 1: lengths where the elbow position is that we need for
Speaker 1: our puppets to be able to touch their faces for example,
Speaker 1: or walk or bent over. It's very very different from
Speaker 1: human proportions, so you're working with those restrictions as well
Speaker 1: as finding a small scale fabric, which we now are
Speaker 1: way more explorative at the studio and we've become quite
Speaker 1: self sufficient in the fabrics that we make are very
Speaker 1: very specific for us and specific for the animation requirements.
Speaker 1: So we need to building understructures for example, so we're
Speaker 1: not just looking at building our own fabrics. We're also
Speaker 1: looking at small gauge wires, weighted linings and how they
Speaker 1: all interact together as well. So it's greatly removed from
Speaker 1: the idea of a live action costume or how traditional
Speaker 1: historical costume would be made. We can make our own
Speaker 1: departures to our own medium. I also wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you about kind of walking the line with a historical
Speaker 1: film between the historically based research and the obviously very
Speaker 1: like stylized look of any of the films that have
Speaker 1: come out of Like and Like. Where are you comfortable
Speaker 1: kind of with the give and take of that and
Speaker 1: maybe veering a little off his ouricle accuracy to stay
Speaker 1: in the style of the character. And when do you
Speaker 1: say no, no, we really need to make sure that
Speaker 1: this particular element of period fashion is included here. It
Speaker 1: does it varies um sometimes I mean I mean this.
Speaker 1: In the particular instance of Missing Link, we very much
Speaker 1: wanted to Victorian feel two aspects of Adeline's clothing and
Speaker 1: aspects of the line or clothing, and just making sure
Speaker 1: we capture those elements that read does that, but then
Speaker 1: having the liberty to make a big departure for ourselves
Speaker 1: to add in that the color palette of the movie,
Speaker 1: for example, is very very bright, it's very vigorous, it's
Speaker 1: very up tempo, and that is not very Victorian. So
Speaker 1: combining those elements, for example, and some of the surface techniques,
Speaker 1: they need to capture the essence of Victorian era and
Speaker 1: Victorian bricks and clothing, and then they're very luxurious and
Speaker 1: they're quite rich. Um, they're very textural. But then we
Speaker 1: need to make a departure into a field or area
Speaker 1: that suits animation. So there's there's quite a few aspects
Speaker 1: to consider in forming the costumes and regional representation as well.
Speaker 1: So we worked with a cultural specialist when I was
Speaker 1: constructing the Himalayan costume to make sure that we had
Speaker 1: authentic reference for the type of jewelry and the type
Speaker 1: of cloth that would have been worn in that region
Speaker 1: in that era, what the colors might be, what the
Speaker 1: origin of the threads might be, and then adding in
Speaker 1: a flare of personality to suit the characters as well.
Speaker 1: So there's there's quite a few few elements coming together there.
Speaker 1: The next interview is with Arian Sutner, the producer on
Speaker 1: Missing Link, and Arian has a seriously impressive history in film,
Speaker 1: and then start motion animation in particular going back to
Speaker 1: working on the name Are Before Christmas. If you check
Speaker 1: out her Internet movie database page, your job may drop.
Speaker 1: She has really touched a lot of the films that
Speaker 1: are our cultural touchstones for us today. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk to her first and foremost about how the
Speaker 1: industry has evolved over the course of her career. To
Speaker 1: start with, you have a pretty impressive stop motion career,
Speaker 1: both as an artist and a producer, so I feel
Speaker 1: like you also have a unique perspective on this industry
Speaker 1: that very few people would really have access to. In
Speaker 1: your opinion, what has changed the most about stop motion
Speaker 1: animation during your career. I think what's changed the most
Speaker 1: since I started, um, which was probably around nine, is,
Speaker 1: you know, the technology, and there is such a long
Speaker 1: list of things that worry around back then, just in
Speaker 1: terms of computer software, cell phones, um, you know, and
Speaker 1: that's industry wide, but it's awful the whole world. So
Speaker 1: I think specifically related to stop motion. If I keep
Speaker 1: going back to, you know, the first movie that I
Speaker 1: worked on, which was Tim Burton's Nightmare Before Christmas. We
Speaker 1: that's kind of as a good touchstone for like how
Speaker 1: we were making those stop motion movies versus what we're
Speaker 1: doing today. You know, at the core, we shot on
Speaker 1: thirty five million meire film with these really old Mitchell cameras.
Speaker 1: They were actually used in World War Two that the
Speaker 1: camera housing and the internal gearing were really solid and reliable,
Speaker 1: so they were perfect for filming frame by frame. Um.
Speaker 1: And they're huge, they're they're ginormous, they're really heavy, they're cumbersome.
Speaker 1: So clearly I don't know how they did it in
Speaker 1: World War Two. But also it wasn't really easy moving
Speaker 1: them on on the set, you know, to um. We'd
Speaker 1: also do and we do lab runs at the end
Speaker 1: of every day to get the film process so we
Speaker 1: can watch daily's just the next morning, so you have
Speaker 1: a cut off when you can deliver your film to
Speaker 1: the lab and how you have to and when you
Speaker 1: can pick it up. But else there was no digital
Speaker 1: x on on that movie. It was all like shot
Speaker 1: and camera, like some crafty optical effects. We edited entirely
Speaker 1: on a steam deck, you know, with film, so we
Speaker 1: didn't use the avid at all. It's we had, you know,
Speaker 1: we had bins of film and we were spicing together
Speaker 1: the film in terms of storyboards, you know, we were
Speaker 1: drawing artists were drawing pencil on paper and then we
Speaker 1: were shooting them on a down shooter manually, so like now,
Speaker 1: we shoot everything. You you were at the sets, you
Speaker 1: probably saw those digital fl are, the single lens reflexes,
Speaker 1: the cameras, you know, their consumer cameras. You can purchase
Speaker 1: them like anywhere. That means that we have dailies all
Speaker 1: day long. That's a huge difference in terms of how
Speaker 1: it makes stuff. We have programmable lighting and and programmable
Speaker 1: camera moves, certainly digital compositing and and and we were
Speaker 1: you know, we use a lot of CG. I mean,
Speaker 1: we use CG for everything really, we think for puppets
Speaker 1: and sets. Yeah, we've we've taken advantage of those three
Speaker 1: Oh my god, it's like three decades of technological advances.
Speaker 1: So the most noticeable difference I think on screen is
Speaker 1: probably is probably the facial animation, which might have been
Speaker 1: something we talked about when you were here. So like
Speaker 1: a nightmare, we had replacement facial animation, and it was
Speaker 1: it was totally analog. We had you know, basically done
Speaker 1: by really really skilled um sculptors, sculpting and molding, tasting, painting.
Speaker 1: I mean, we still have those processes for some things,
Speaker 1: but this was done for every single face. So, um,
Speaker 1: if you've got you know, twenty four facial iterations for
Speaker 1: every second of film, which we still have, that's like
Speaker 1: a lot of faces to be made by hand, and
Speaker 1: need to imagine that, you know, time and budget would
Speaker 1: play a factor in the range of I guess the
Speaker 1: emotional life of these characters, you know, the puppets, because
Speaker 1: you can only do so much and you you know,
Speaker 1: you can't really beat insistent that you want to only
Speaker 1: do as many as you can be consistent by making
Speaker 1: it by hand. So I think that was a huge
Speaker 1: challenge and it's still a huge challenge getting the shapes
Speaker 1: and the paint colors too, like match perfectly one frame,
Speaker 1: uh to the next. Everything then had to be and uh,
Speaker 1: very very simple so that it was repeatable by hand,
Speaker 1: so we'd like anyway, we introduced the three D printer.
Speaker 1: Really that process on coraline that was the first I
Speaker 1: don't know, I think we were the first people to do.
Speaker 1: It was like a pretty big game changer for the
Speaker 1: stop motion world. You know, we could add a lot
Speaker 1: more color because we weren't doing all the color by hand.
Speaker 1: Although it's still a little bit simple. We were able
Speaker 1: to you know, print more faces, have them be more repeatable,
Speaker 1: so we could really introduce more of a range of
Speaker 1: human emotions. That kind of broadened the story telling that
Speaker 1: we wanted to do in terms of, you know, the
Speaker 1: characters in our lives like us shown on their faces.
Speaker 1: So I mean we we just basically with all this technology,
Speaker 1: like we were getting rid of the impediment to storytelling
Speaker 1: that we used to have in stopped motion film, right,
Speaker 1: so we are able to not just shoot what's within
Speaker 1: three walls or basically what's in a in a box,
Speaker 1: you know, on set. But I would say, what's interesting
Speaker 1: for me is that, like all this technology has made
Speaker 1: it got rid of all the challenges, so we can
Speaker 1: expand our worlds, tell these really ambitious stories and really
Speaker 1: tell any kind of stories we want to without limits.
Speaker 1: But it doesn't make anything simpler or easier. You know
Speaker 1: my dream I thought when I, like even when I
Speaker 1: was working on TV shows, I thought, oh, I can
Speaker 1: just get rid of these cumbers and cameras. We can
Speaker 1: have turnover on the sets. It will be so much
Speaker 1: faster and we'll be able to make quota. But of
Speaker 1: course that just you start filling in all that time
Speaker 1: with you know, more ambitious projects and things that you
Speaker 1: don't know how to do, so kind of, you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't make it easier, It just makes it the
Speaker 1: films that you get to see more rewarding to watch,
Speaker 1: I hope or not. I don't want to speak badly
Speaker 1: about those other ones, but it just offers more. You know,
Speaker 1: it's a bigger world. We we don't have as many
Speaker 1: limitations now. Yeah, well, I feel like everything gets richer
Speaker 1: as the medium develops over time. And I have seen
Speaker 1: you speak kind of to that before, and that kind
Speaker 1: of leads into this next question, which you may have
Speaker 1: already given me the answer. But uh, like I've seen
Speaker 1: you speak before about how every project is a learning process,
Speaker 1: and I remember particularly seeing you on press junket for
Speaker 1: Cuba and saying, we were not ready to make this film,
Speaker 1: but we had to catch up to what we needed
Speaker 1: to do. So what are maybe some of your favorite
Speaker 1: moments in the industry during your career that you feel like, uh,
Speaker 1: will be historically significant, that were like those moments that
Speaker 1: really kind of bumped the industry forward a little bit.
Speaker 1: I feel like every movie has some, but do you
Speaker 1: have like the one favorite one where you're like, we
Speaker 1: did this. You know, whatever kind of animation you're working on,
Speaker 1: it's all kind of incremental, so you're counting your success
Speaker 1: and seconds and frames and so sometimes the good question,
Speaker 1: because sometimes it's hard to step back and really try
Speaker 1: to parse the big triumphs or the big successes from
Speaker 1: just the little ones that happened, you know, on the
Speaker 1: day to day, and then they start to kind of
Speaker 1: take on equal significance. But I don't know, I don't
Speaker 1: want to shoot our own horn, but it is doing
Speaker 1: your own horn. I think that it's not the movie,
Speaker 1: but like the biggest historical lead for stop motion for us.
Speaker 1: I think it's really um from what I have seen
Speaker 1: is being able to be at the studio that's been
Speaker 1: here like really tenaciously and thoroughly devoted to the stewardship
Speaker 1: of this kind of filmmaking stop motion, which is like
Speaker 1: a you know, all the stuff I've worked on before
Speaker 1: it was they were tended to be like isolated events.
Speaker 1: You know, you set up shop for like two years
Speaker 1: on your hire crew, you start shooting, and just you're
Speaker 1: pretty much learning what you're doing while you're doing it.
Speaker 1: So by the time you're finished the movie. Sometimes it's
Speaker 1: you know, new people. Every often there are new groups
Speaker 1: of people. You're like, Okay, I have a pretty good
Speaker 1: understanding of what we just did. And then you're scrambling
Speaker 1: to find another job or is there going to be
Speaker 1: another job, and everybody dissolves, they go their separate ways,
Speaker 1: and then like a couple of years later, maybe three
Speaker 1: years later, you're like, okay, let's do this again from scratch.
Speaker 1: So there's no real built in time or money for
Speaker 1: research and development. Like if I'm I'm producing something that's
Speaker 1: scrapping or a part of it, there's no line item
Speaker 1: that says we will research and develop right now. There's
Speaker 1: there's literally no time for it. So and I mean,
Speaker 1: I think that's the case for so many movies and
Speaker 1: certainly I'm sure a lot of industries. But because we
Speaker 1: have this like dedicated space now and we have you know, more,
Speaker 1: way more than just a handful of our artists and
Speaker 1: technicians are like you know, all of our our long
Speaker 1: time key people, they're able to really experiment with untested ideas,
Speaker 1: and they're able to also work together because we have
Speaker 1: a history together. We kind of refer back to what
Speaker 1: we are successes and what we didn't do so well,
Speaker 1: we have a shorthand for communicating and solving those problems.
Speaker 1: So I think it's not necessarily like the you know,
Speaker 1: it was a game changer, for example on Coraline to
Speaker 1: get that printer, it's unbelievable. But I think it's really
Speaker 1: the studio being here that is the game changer for
Speaker 1: me that I'm able. We get to continue to work
Speaker 1: with these people who are still creatively, really curious about
Speaker 1: this art form, the kinds of movies we're making, and
Speaker 1: we keep building on it. I said that to you
Speaker 1: about I guess I said that about Kuba, But um,
Speaker 1: you know, we weren't ready to do miss Missing Link
Speaker 1: the way we did it. We without having done the
Speaker 1: four previous movies there, we wouldn't have been able to
Speaker 1: do it. Next up is Brad Shifts, who, like Arian,
Speaker 1: has worked on a lot of films. He's the animation
Speaker 1: supervisor on Missing Link, and during his chat with Holly,
Speaker 1: they talk about animators of the past that inspire him,
Speaker 1: as well as passing the torch and the historical knowledge
Speaker 1: onto the next generation of artists. So, first of all,
Speaker 1: you like many of the people that like, have worked
Speaker 1: on some very big stop motion projects that I think
Speaker 1: most people would recognize. But I wonder how much you
Speaker 1: are aware of and think about the people that have
Speaker 1: come before you, like Harry Housing and O'Brien, and how
Speaker 1: much that inspires your work. You know. It's an interesting
Speaker 1: question because I think about that a lot, but maybe
Speaker 1: not in the way that you would think we would.
Speaker 1: I think I would. It's I talked about a lot
Speaker 1: in the sense that I was inspired by Harry Housen
Speaker 1: and you know, Willis O'Brien and George Pale and Ranking
Speaker 1: and Bath all that stuff. And when I go back
Speaker 1: and I look at that stuff, while it was groundbreaking
Speaker 1: for the time, it's pretty ropey looking at that motion,
Speaker 1: you know. And and and I see what we're what
Speaker 1: we're doing today, particularly here at LICA, and it's so
Speaker 1: smooth and naturalistic. And that gets me thinking about what
Speaker 1: the next generation of animators who are inspired by the
Speaker 1: work that we're doing right now, how good their stuff
Speaker 1: is going to be. And I'm just it's interesting because
Speaker 1: I'm just starting to see it. And um, I have
Speaker 1: one of my animated this is such a weird thing. Um,
Speaker 1: you know, we just celebrated the ten year anniversary of Coraline,
Speaker 1: and somebody asked me, you know, was that strange, you
Speaker 1: know that it's been ten years, And I think, you know, well,
Speaker 1: not really. I do it all the time and it
Speaker 1: doesn't so I don't really think about it as being
Speaker 1: strange to feel like it was just yesterday. But then
Speaker 1: I was reminded when one of my assistants just just
Speaker 1: came on board and she went out to dinner with
Speaker 1: one of my animators who was celebrating his twenty four birthday,
Speaker 1: which meant he was thirteen when coral came out, and
Speaker 1: fifteen when ParaNorman came out, in seventeen when box Trolls
Speaker 1: came out. And here the kid who grew up so weird.
Speaker 1: This is this kind of stuff that makes me start
Speaker 1: to feel old. I grew up watching the work of it,
Speaker 1: my peers and I did, and now here he is.
Speaker 1: Now we're peers, and this guy just has you know,
Speaker 1: he's just one of these people that just has this
Speaker 1: unbridled natural talent and we just have to figure out
Speaker 1: how to teach him how to work in the production environment.
Speaker 1: But you know, just the thought of where they're going
Speaker 1: to go is so exciting to me. Yeah, I am.
Speaker 1: I have talked to a lot of animators at various
Speaker 1: points in time, and what I always love is how
Speaker 1: many of them talk about a similar thing where it's
Speaker 1: like these kids grew up thinking this technology is just
Speaker 1: to rigor and so for them, like the next thing
Speaker 1: is going to be amazing. Yeah, you know, we we
Speaker 1: you know, like I didn't even know when I started,
Speaker 1: I didn't even know. We didn't have frame grabbers, you know,
Speaker 1: I didn't know any of that stuff. If I had
Speaker 1: a character that sell down in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night when I was shooting one of my short films,
Speaker 1: I just sort of picked it up and I balled
Speaker 1: where I thought maybe he was, you know. And and
Speaker 1: now these kids, you know, now these kids grow up
Speaker 1: with this technology that you know, they can see where
Speaker 1: they've been and they can see their live frame, and
Speaker 1: it's it's incredible. It's really exciting. Um. Obviously, the design
Speaker 1: departments on a film like Missing Link will take into
Speaker 1: account like the historical setting of what's going on in
Speaker 1: it as they've developed their designs. But I wonder if
Speaker 1: historical norms are something that you consider when you are
Speaker 1: doing the animation, like how a character will move or
Speaker 1: how they'll behave are those things that you think about
Speaker 1: in a history context, they are, you know, but it's
Speaker 1: it's interesting all the departments do such extensive research that
Speaker 1: costume wise, we really benefit from the research that the
Speaker 1: costume department does because they will go back and look
Speaker 1: at historic you know, pull historical reference and costumes from
Speaker 1: films that depict historical references. So we get the benefit
Speaker 1: of piggybacking on their reference. So you know, the way
Speaker 1: Adeline's dress moved, we had a load of material that
Speaker 1: we were able to look at. So in that context, yes,
Speaker 1: Kubo was very was very much that way. Like I
Speaker 1: looked at a lot of kiro Sour films because we
Speaker 1: had to figure out how we were going to control kimonos.
Speaker 1: And you know, there's a reason that there hasn't been
Speaker 1: a whole lot of you know, loose or loose fabrics
Speaker 1: characters and in stop motion because it's a nightmare. But um,
Speaker 1: you know, I looked at a lot of Kirosawa stuff,
Speaker 1: Red Beard, Seventh Samurai, You, Jimbo, and so yes, sometimes
Speaker 1: we look a lot of historical reference. Other times we
Speaker 1: piggyback on what what costume will do. We shoot all
Speaker 1: sorts of reference, So the costume department also will buy
Speaker 1: fabrics and dresses and costumes for us that we'll shoot
Speaker 1: reference on stage and we'll put it, you know, and
Speaker 1: what'll dress up an animator and walk around so we
Speaker 1: can see that, you know, how the weight of the
Speaker 1: fabric moves, and that kind of reference we do, and
Speaker 1: if appropriate, will do historical reference. But a lot of that,
Speaker 1: you know, I'm able to piggyback from other departments reference,
Speaker 1: which is quite nice. Where just just a big, big
Speaker 1: family in that sense it um, because you do have
Speaker 1: a little bit of a a unique view having worked
Speaker 1: on so many of these important films. I'm wondering what
Speaker 1: you think are some of the most significant moments in
Speaker 1: stop motion and you can make that the history of
Speaker 1: stop motion or just within your career or both if
Speaker 1: you want to do each. All right, um wow, let's see.
Speaker 1: You know, I think willis O'Brien for King Kong Ya
Speaker 1: huge huge. You know. George Pale, people um, you know,
Speaker 1: kind of skims by. Sometimes feels like people forget about
Speaker 1: George Pale and the puppettoons, and he was really the
Speaker 1: originator replacement animation, and I think given what we're doing now,
Speaker 1: um with the faces, it's pretty significant. Leads to me,
Speaker 1: great Harry House and of course Ranking and Bass. You know,
Speaker 1: we all my generation all grew up with the Christmas
Speaker 1: specials on TV, which was really sort of my first
Speaker 1: introduction to to stop motion without really knowing what it was,
Speaker 1: you know, and and going back to Harry House and
Speaker 1: you know, with Mighty Joe Young and seven Voyage is
Speaker 1: a Sin Bad. You know, I always thought those films
Speaker 1: were cool, but I don't think it really stood out
Speaker 1: to me until the Clash of the Titans was I
Speaker 1: remember my aunt taking me and looking back, that was
Speaker 1: again I didn't know what stop motion was, but there
Speaker 1: was something that I loved about that film, and looking back,
Speaker 1: it was the stop motion effects still tip it of
Speaker 1: course for all the stuff and the Tontons and Empire
Speaker 1: and oh I'll talk about Forever, so great, so great,
Speaker 1: And when I discovered stop motion and in school, it
Speaker 1: was really Will Benton, you know, with the with the
Speaker 1: California Raisins, and you know, that was the place I
Speaker 1: always wanted to work with Will Bent in studios, So
Speaker 1: that was pointed for me for me, and of course,
Speaker 1: you know Henry and Henry Sella and Tim Burton for
Speaker 1: a Nightmare before Christmas. I really kind of look at
Speaker 1: as as sort of putting stop motion back on the map,
Speaker 1: because that sort of was the beginning of this next
Speaker 1: wave of stop motions. It was Nightmare, and then it
Speaker 1: was James, and then there was a lull, and then
Speaker 1: it really picked up with the work that Ardman was
Speaker 1: doing and then Corpse Bride, which began my ride, which
Speaker 1: has been you know, I feel so fortunate and lucky
Speaker 1: to have been on this ride, you know, I mean
Speaker 1: in includes let's see Corpse Corpse, Coraline, Fantastic, Mr Fox, Para,
Speaker 1: Norman Box, Trolls, Cubo, Isle of Dogs, Missing Link. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could just lie down at this point, people like, Wow,
Speaker 1: it's an impressive career. It's it's yeah, I'm done now.
Speaker 1: And I mean the exciting thing is, you know we're
Speaker 1: stepping We've just finished Missing Lincoln hasn't even come out,
Speaker 1: you know, we're starting to do development on Film six,
Speaker 1: which I'm so jazzed about. I can't say anything about it,
Speaker 1: but it's it's so exciting to get to work on
Speaker 1: projects here at lico, where we're continuously trying to push
Speaker 1: what's possible in the medium, and it keeps it, It
Speaker 1: keeps it fresh, it keeps it fun, it keeps it inspiring.
Speaker 1: And Yeah, just feel incredibly, incredibly lucky. Yeah, you're doing
Speaker 1: all the stuff that historians in another fifty a hundred
Speaker 1: years will be like, I can't believe they pulled this off. Um,
Speaker 1: it's just pretty cool to think about. Uh that is.
Speaker 1: Are you like that's a little too much? I can't
Speaker 1: think that. I do think. I do think sometimes, you know,
Speaker 1: I do. I do think about um, just like and
Speaker 1: the stuff that we're doing, and how our films don't
Speaker 1: necessarily fit in the in the same box that all
Speaker 1: other animated films do. And I hope that history smiles,
Speaker 1: you know, brightly on what we're doing. I can't imagine
Speaker 1: it won't. I do have another question. This sort of
Speaker 1: builds on something you talked about when we first started
Speaker 1: speaking about having people working under you that are you know,
Speaker 1: we're inspired by the films you were making earlier in
Speaker 1: your career, and a lot of creative industries and particularly animation,
Speaker 1: both like two D and three D, as well as
Speaker 1: what you guys are doing. I think there is this
Speaker 1: sort of baked in, like almost old school guild style
Speaker 1: mentorship where one generation shares their knowledge and what they've
Speaker 1: developed with the next generation. But I find also there's
Speaker 1: often just historical knowledge that's passed along. Do you find
Speaker 1: that's that's true and is that something you think about
Speaker 1: and that you want to make sure future animators in
Speaker 1: your field know what's come before them, or do you
Speaker 1: just want to enable them to do amazing work and
Speaker 1: they'll figure out the history on their own. Um, I
Speaker 1: don't think that they need to figure it out all
Speaker 1: on their own. I think which how to share those things.
Speaker 1: It's interesting a lot of the people that come here,
Speaker 1: you know, well, everybody who comes here is so in
Speaker 1: tune with the history of stop motion that the coolest
Speaker 1: thing to share is I mean, we're in the midst
Speaker 1: of an evolution of an art form right now, and
Speaker 1: and myself and a bunch of my peers here have
Speaker 1: also been in this, you know, in this journey together.
Speaker 1: So one of the things I've been talking to my
Speaker 1: animators about I think I touched on earlier. A lot
Speaker 1: of our journey was sort of based on working our way,
Speaker 1: climbing our way to the top of this stop motion mountain,
Speaker 1: if you will with um, if you look at like
Speaker 1: as at the top of what we're doing right now.
Speaker 1: I used to think that the you know, working on
Speaker 1: television shows was the path. You know, you you're animating
Speaker 1: every day as fast as you can, and you're you know,
Speaker 1: you're building a library of techniques, the library of instincts
Speaker 1: on what what to do. But now you have these
Speaker 1: you know, kids coming straight out of school that have
Speaker 1: this incredible talent and they're stepping off the ski lift
Speaker 1: at the top of the mountain, but they don't have
Speaker 1: any of those other experiences. So you know, everybody works
Speaker 1: in a way that they you don't think about it
Speaker 1: like it's it's just sort of an innate way of working.
Speaker 1: You know, you don't think of how you're moving the
Speaker 1: puppet or how you're setting up your unit as being special.
Speaker 1: But what I'm realizing is that's the important information we
Speaker 1: need to start sharing to these younger kids. So I've
Speaker 1: I've really sort of put out a challenge to my
Speaker 1: animators to start breaking down your technique, Start breaking down
Speaker 1: how you approach a shot, Start breaking down you know,
Speaker 1: how you move a puppet and let's start sharing that
Speaker 1: with the kids that don't know that, that haven't had
Speaker 1: to work their way up from television, who were starting
Speaker 1: their journey right here at the top and are going
Speaker 1: to just keep pushing it towards the sky. It's fascinating.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting too, to have that perspective shift about
Speaker 1: what I thought you had to do versus where we
Speaker 1: are now and now what we have to do to
Speaker 1: help that group whose jury me is starting at the top.
Speaker 1: I find it really exciting and really cool, and it's
Speaker 1: interesting because I'm still trying to get my head around
Speaker 1: the best way to do that. Last, but not least,
Speaker 1: I was lucky enough to chat with Chris Butler, who
Speaker 1: wrote and directed Missing Link as well as one of
Speaker 1: my all time favorite films, Para Norman. I kind of
Speaker 1: had a dorky ParaNorman Fangerl moment before any of the
Speaker 1: stuff that you're about to hear. Uh. He also wrote
Speaker 1: the screenplay for Cuba and the Two Strings. It also
Speaker 1: turns out he loves history, so this talk covered important
Speaker 1: moments in stop motion history, as well as contextualizing a
Speaker 1: story in a historical setting and grappling with when words
Speaker 1: came into being versus when the story is set, so
Speaker 1: right out of the gate, I didn't actually really think
Speaker 1: about this. When I mentioned to my husband that I
Speaker 1: was going to be talking to you, he was like,
Speaker 1: ask him why he does so many history movies? And
Speaker 1: I was like what? And then I realized that the
Speaker 1: movies that you have written in your time at like
Speaker 1: all do have a pretty significant history element. Are you
Speaker 1: secretly a history nerd? It is no secret. I am
Speaker 1: history nerd. I am unapologetic about it. I wish more
Speaker 1: people were obsessed with history, because then we might actually
Speaker 1: learn something. Yeah, I mean I feel the same obviously,
Speaker 1: but it's always a delight when you meet someone in
Speaker 1: the wild who you might not anticipate is a history nerd.
Speaker 1: So are you consciously including historical elements in your films
Speaker 1: or does it Is it just so natural for you
Speaker 1: to be thinking that way that that just comes out.
Speaker 1: It's definitely part of me. It's it's it's in my DNA,
Speaker 1: so I don't think i'd be able to avoid it.
Speaker 1: But I also think when you're when you're writing a movie,
Speaker 1: particularly for animation, you know you're you're creating a world
Speaker 1: that you want to be compelling, that you want to
Speaker 1: draw in an audience so that they believe in it.
Speaker 1: They have to believe what they're seeing on the screen
Speaker 1: in order to be invested in it. You know, you're
Speaker 1: already a step removed with animation, but as you're you're
Speaker 1: showing the audience something that is different from reality. And
Speaker 1: I think what helps an audience is something to hook onto,
Speaker 1: and quite often that is historical detail. Certainly with this
Speaker 1: movie Missing Link, it takes place in the Victorian Age,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you have to get across a lot of
Speaker 1: information in a relatively short time. For example, because of
Speaker 1: constraints of time and cost, I had to establish the
Speaker 1: city of London very very quickly, and I also also
Speaker 1: had to establish what time period it was, so immediately,
Speaker 1: if you think of Victorian London, you think of handsome caps,
Speaker 1: horse drawn carts, top hats. There's a whole bunch of
Speaker 1: historical signifiers that everyone knows. After everyone is aware of
Speaker 1: and throwing them all into one shot, you immediately get
Speaker 1: the audience on your side. You They immediately know where
Speaker 1: they are. It might be superstylized, but they get it.
Speaker 1: You don't have to say London eight. You just have
Speaker 1: to have a shot of horse drawn cards. But that
Speaker 1: that's it to me, that's what that's what the history
Speaker 1: thing is. You use it to give the audience that
Speaker 1: recognition so that they know where they are and they
Speaker 1: feel comfortable with what they're watching. And I think that
Speaker 1: goes the same even if it's like a fantasy movie.
Speaker 1: There are certain things that you you lean on um
Speaker 1: to create that tapestry. You know, certainly it's something that
Speaker 1: you know. Deborah Cook as as an example in the
Speaker 1: costume stuff, she does exhaustive historical research and the reference
Speaker 1: that she brings into it immediately gives you, well, first
Speaker 1: of all, it's it's classy. Um. It gives it a sophistication,
Speaker 1: and it gives it that you know, if you make
Speaker 1: something up, I think it shows um, if you use
Speaker 1: real life as an inspiration, it automatically gives a credence
Speaker 1: that I think it's hard to ape, you know, it's
Speaker 1: hard to just come up with. Yeah. Turning a little
Speaker 1: bit to just the history of the industry. When I
Speaker 1: have had the good fortune to talk to, for example,
Speaker 1: two D and three D animators, I just find that
Speaker 1: they all seem to have a pretty strong sense of
Speaker 1: the history of their industry, and I'm wondering if you
Speaker 1: feel that the same is true for stop motion. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it is. I think it's probably because when, well,
Speaker 1: certainly my generation and before, when you're a kid and
Speaker 1: you first get exposed to animation in my case, actually
Speaker 1: it's two D animation. First, there's this kind of like
Speaker 1: magic spell that's cast and you're, like, you're young, creative
Speaker 1: mind is thinking, I need to know what this is.
Speaker 1: I need because I want to do this, and so
Speaker 1: you're you're you instantly start trying to find out everything
Speaker 1: you can about it. And because I'm old, for me,
Speaker 1: you know you can. You couldn't just google it, So
Speaker 1: it meant going out and buying books and watching every
Speaker 1: behind the scenes footage of every animated movie you could
Speaker 1: possibly think of. You know, you you there's a hunger
Speaker 1: that comes with that interest because you want to know
Speaker 1: everything about it. So I think you you automatically, anyone
Speaker 1: who's in animation automatically has that in them. I think
Speaker 1: I think that's where it comes from with me. With
Speaker 1: stop motion. I think it's also because the history of
Speaker 1: it is so rich and enjoyable, and it's something that
Speaker 1: you see all the time. Like everyone has seen the
Speaker 1: A T. A T. Walkers in in Empire Strikes Back
Speaker 1: if that stop motion. Everyone has seen you know, Ray
Speaker 1: Harry House and Creatures or the you know, the Skeleton
Speaker 1: Fight and Jason the Argonauts adds out there, and it's
Speaker 1: it's very easy to see. So I think it's easy
Speaker 1: to become invested in the history of this medium. So
Speaker 1: when you're writing a story like Missing Link, which I
Speaker 1: think is pretty clearly a very sprawling period piece. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I know you mentioned some of Deborah's research, but
Speaker 1: what kind of historical research do you do. I actually
Speaker 1: love the research part because I love reading. I love
Speaker 1: finding treasures in old books or old reference books, photographic books.
Speaker 1: I use it as an excuse to just buy stuff
Speaker 1: so for the movie. But and and you know, bear
Speaker 1: in mind, I've been writing this on and off for many,
Speaker 1: many years. So over that time, I've accumulated so many books.
Speaker 1: I could not even tell you how many Sherlock Holmes
Speaker 1: books I have read. And even the ones that are
Speaker 1: not by Conan Doyle, I've read everything. Um. And it's
Speaker 1: it is an era that I love. It's very easy
Speaker 1: for me to do that, and I'll buy you know,
Speaker 1: kids picture books because they get across usually within majery
Speaker 1: um at that period in a very succinct way, by
Speaker 1: DVDs everything that I can get my hands on that's
Speaker 1: out of that period, So it's not just kind of
Speaker 1: dry nonfiction. I will try and dive into any fiction
Speaker 1: that exists at a certain time as well, because that's
Speaker 1: really what we're doing, telling stories, so you kind of um.
Speaker 1: For me, obviously, a starting point for this was Lost Horizon,
Speaker 1: which you know, obviously is the it's the first mention
Speaker 1: of Shango Lare in fact, and I think it was
Speaker 1: written in two I could be wrong, but that was
Speaker 1: obviously an important starting point for me because I'm writing
Speaker 1: a story about the starch for Shango Lare, so obviously
Speaker 1: I read that, and then I followed that up by
Speaker 1: watching the movies of that. And there are certain aspects
Speaker 1: of those movies that have really nothing to do with
Speaker 1: history other than the part of the history of cinema,
Speaker 1: but I'll lean on that a little bit as well. So,
Speaker 1: for example, the first version of Lost Her Eyes in
Speaker 1: the Black and White movie, which is problematic in so
Speaker 1: many ways, not least of which is that Shangola is
Speaker 1: quite clearly an art deco mansion in l a Um,
Speaker 1: But there's aspects of that that I try and get
Speaker 1: some art deco into the design of Shango Lar in
Speaker 1: the movie. There are white doves in the black and
Speaker 1: white version everywhere, and so of course I have white
Speaker 1: doves on the balcony in my Yeti temple. So I
Speaker 1: think it's cherry picking. It's cherry picking what I want,
Speaker 1: what I like, what I find amusing, or what I
Speaker 1: think enriches. And sometimes I'll read a lot and maybe
Speaker 1: only use ten per cent of it because that's the
Speaker 1: other thing is, like you know I said earlier, you
Speaker 1: want something to to make your set incredible, but you
Speaker 1: don't want to alienate a viewer by being too slavish
Speaker 1: to reality. I mean, this is a story about a
Speaker 1: talking bigfoot dressed as a man. Wait are you are
Speaker 1: you telling me that's not a real thing. Well, this
Speaker 1: could be a longer discussion than I anticipated. Um, but
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. It's like, at some point
Speaker 1: you can say it's okay if I'm not realistic with
Speaker 1: this as an example Bigfoot. And this was one that
Speaker 1: I wrestled with a lot because I do take history
Speaker 1: seriously and the use of the word bigfoot did not
Speaker 1: start until, um, the nineteen fifties, I think in American journalism,
Speaker 1: and I think the Patterson footage wasn't until nineteen sixty something.
Speaker 1: So a lot of the ideas we have of bigfoot
Speaker 1: as a creature came from the middle of the last century.
Speaker 1: Obviously I'm starting a lot before that, but I did
Speaker 1: for a while. I wrestled with I'm not going to
Speaker 1: use the word bigfoot because it wasn't used back then.
Speaker 1: Sell Lionel himself is a cryptozoologist. That term didn't exist
Speaker 1: until the you know, the middle of the last century.
Speaker 1: But there's a point where you like, does it matter?
Speaker 1: So in fact, how only making a joke of bigfoot.
Speaker 1: When Lionel holds up the cast of the foot, one
Speaker 1: of the guys in the club says, oh, that's a
Speaker 1: big foot, um, And that was That was my way
Speaker 1: of nodding to the fact that historical accuracy, but also
Speaker 1: trying to have a bit of fun with it as well.
Speaker 1: I probably think way too much about this stuff, but
Speaker 1: if people ask me, I certainly have reasons for all
Speaker 1: these decisions. I mean, at the end of the day,
Speaker 1: you're a storyteller, right now. Do you, as a director,
Speaker 1: are you ever at odds with your right self when
Speaker 1: it comes to grounding something like the Yetti Temple in
Speaker 1: a historically set piece of fiction, or or do those
Speaker 1: two sides of yourself play pretty nicely together. They play
Speaker 1: pretty nicely with with me depending on where I am.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously what my tastes change, my my ideas
Speaker 1: change over time, and if I'm writing something for a
Speaker 1: long time, they can change quite a lot. But for
Speaker 1: the Yeti Temple as an example, you know this, I've
Speaker 1: also got to be delicate in a lot of my
Speaker 1: decisions because we're not just talking about history as it
Speaker 1: pertains to me culturally, but we're talking about the history
Speaker 1: of other cultures. So for the Yeti Temple, you know
Speaker 1: shangra La, it was an invention of an author, but
Speaker 1: it's based on Shambler and there you know that that
Speaker 1: has an importance in Buddhism. So I wanted to make
Speaker 1: it clear that I'm not trying to make this the
Speaker 1: shambler of a specific religion or faith. You know. What
Speaker 1: I'm trying to do is create something that's separate from that.
Speaker 1: But you could see why people can associate the two.
Speaker 1: When it came to the design of the temple, I
Speaker 1: wanted to almost suggest that like yetis um, you know,
Speaker 1: being eight men, essentially, we're like the square roots of
Speaker 1: different cultures. So we referenced Jainism, we reference Buddhism in
Speaker 1: terms of architectural styles, and this is really you know,
Speaker 1: at this point, I hand this over to the production
Speaker 1: designer and I talk about what my thoughts are um
Speaker 1: And it's a story point in the movie, which actually
Speaker 1: comes from a lost horizon that people who live in
Speaker 1: Shango Lard don't age, when in fact, in this movie
Speaker 1: they're not immortal, they're yet ease in that they are
Speaker 1: still primitive man, if that makes sense. So I wanted
Speaker 1: to nod to that. And that's why we kind of thought, well,
Speaker 1: if we backtrack from certain architectural styles and combine them
Speaker 1: and almost find like the square root of them, what
Speaker 1: could that look like. It's almost like if you were
Speaker 1: designing Atlantis or you know, some of the fantastical place,
Speaker 1: but you want it to be believable enough, so you
Speaker 1: do borrow from different designs, different styles, And I thought
Speaker 1: Nelson did a really sophisticated job in finding the look
Speaker 1: for that thing. I would concur that set as it
Speaker 1: was mind blowingly beautiful. Shifting back to kind of the industry,
Speaker 1: in your opinion, what's been the most significant development in
Speaker 1: stop motion film during your career, Like, what is the
Speaker 1: thing that future historians will be like, this was the
Speaker 1: moment that the industry shifted. I think it's two things. Generally.
Speaker 1: I think it's digital technology. Digital effects have enabled us
Speaker 1: to tell different kinds of stories in stop motion. You know,
Speaker 1: stop motion traditionally was limited in its scope and scale
Speaker 1: because you have physical assets, you have a puppet on
Speaker 1: a set, so you're limited as to how big that
Speaker 1: public can be, how big that set can be. So
Speaker 1: I think if you look historically, you can see that
Speaker 1: in the kinds of stories that stop motion was telling.
Speaker 1: And I think digital technology has allowed us to kind
Speaker 1: of knock down the walls. With c G extras, digital
Speaker 1: set extensions, we can paint on a much bigger canvas.
Speaker 1: And also just in terms of the complexity of the
Speaker 1: animation because there's so much that clean up that can
Speaker 1: be done digitally, you know, in terms of rigging, puppet
Speaker 1: rigging um. That has changed the face of stop motion animation,
Speaker 1: no doubt, But I think For me specifically, it would
Speaker 1: be facial animation, replacement places and three D printing of
Speaker 1: faces that has enabled us to aspire to a level
Speaker 1: of nuance and uh sophistication in acting facial acting that
Speaker 1: I think wasn't really possible before. I mean, you get
Speaker 1: some great practical or facial animation in stop motion, you
Speaker 1: can achieve that, but I think we took it to
Speaker 1: a whole other level. And actually it's one of the
Speaker 1: things that I'm most proud of with Missing Link is
Speaker 1: that I think we've approached a level of acting in
Speaker 1: the facial animation that is like nothing that's been seen
Speaker 1: or instop motion. You know, even the idea of up
Speaker 1: until this movie, we had like a kit system for
Speaker 1: the faces where we would build dialogue out of different
Speaker 1: faces that were in a kind of library. Well, with
Speaker 1: this movie, everything bespoke. Every shot has been independently animated
Speaker 1: and printed, so every performance is very much specific to
Speaker 1: that line of dialogue, and I don't think that's been
Speaker 1: seen before instop motion. That's amazing. Ir to evidence your answer.
Speaker 1: As I was prepping for this, I was rewatching Cubu
Speaker 1: and I had to posit at one point and Cubo
Speaker 1: was kind of jumping through the air, and I thought, Oh,
Speaker 1: he would hate seeing that picture of himself because he's
Speaker 1: making a really weird face. And then I went, oh,
Speaker 1: my god, they made him make a really weird face. Um,
Speaker 1: so kudos you. It was a very strange kind of
Speaker 1: meta moment. You know, I recently had a similar thing,
Speaker 1: and that's when I feel confident in that we've done
Speaker 1: our job right. You know, I've watched this movie again
Speaker 1: and again and again, hundreds and hundreds of times. I
Speaker 1: attended to watch it every week while we were making it,
Speaker 1: because you need that kind of global perspective. But just
Speaker 1: a couple of months ago, I was watching the scene.
Speaker 1: It was to a scene with Lionel and Link on
Speaker 1: the ship, and just for a second, I caught myself
Speaker 1: because I completely believe that these characters were having a conversation,
Speaker 1: and that's what I want. And if I can be fooled,
Speaker 1: even for just a second, if I can forget that
Speaker 1: I'm supposed to be doing a job, and then then
Speaker 1: we're doing something right, you know. Incidentally, Chris was exactly
Speaker 1: right in his guests as to the year that the
Speaker 1: book Lost Horizon came out. It was three. So finally,
Speaker 1: I want to back to my interview with Arian Settinger
Speaker 1: just for a moment to close this episode out, because
Speaker 1: I wanted to get her take on how today's stop
Speaker 1: motion animation is going to look from the vantage point
Speaker 1: of the future. So, when historians of the future look
Speaker 1: back at this era in the industry and maybe even
Speaker 1: your career, what do you hope stands out? Oh, I
Speaker 1: just I hope what stands out is that we made
Speaker 1: great movies. I mean, that's that's it really are. I believe,
Speaker 1: just like we're talking about Rudolph, our movies really endure
Speaker 1: there their personal and their universal. They look great a
Speaker 1: decade later. You know, it just showed Coraline at this
Speaker 1: big concert hall here, the Schnitzer in Portland, and it
Speaker 1: was a you know, sold out crowd. People are still
Speaker 1: interested in that movie. And I think that's the two
Speaker 1: of a lot of stop motion animations. I hope that,
Speaker 1: you know, I hope future generations find them interesting and
Speaker 1: watch them and share them. And he said, it's a
Speaker 1: heavy question. I think that none of us really at
Speaker 1: the legure sitting back and aspecting what we doural impact
Speaker 1: while you're doing it. But I would say that you do.
Speaker 1: We do try to make as much meaning into these
Speaker 1: movies as we go along and hoping that people find it,
Speaker 1: you know, relatable and meaningful and often food for thought.
Speaker 1: Many many thanks to everyone at like for sharing their
Speaker 1: time and thoughts and the love of their craft with us.
Speaker 1: In case it's not abundantly obvious, the whole experience of
Speaker 1: getting to visit their set and speak with the people
Speaker 1: whose work I have been admiring for years, It's an
Speaker 1: absolute joy for me. It felt like an early birthday present.
Speaker 1: Missing Link is opening this weekend April twelve, so if
Speaker 1: you're in the mood for a stylish round the World romp,
Speaker 1: also funny and rooted in history, go check it out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna do super short listener mail because this is
Speaker 1: a long episode. Okay, if you're still hanging in with me,
Speaker 1: we're gonna have a quick email from Sue, who writes Hi,
Speaker 1: Holly and Tracy. I am a third grade teacher teaching
Speaker 1: social studies, particularly history topics is my favorite part of
Speaker 1: the day. I love it, and my students love it.
Speaker 1: I really enjoyed finding your podcast, and as I've been
Speaker 1: making my way through the archives, I particularly choose episodes
Speaker 1: that enhance the topics I teach, civil rights, Titanic, early settlements, inventions,
Speaker 1: and inventors, just to name a few. Though most of
Speaker 1: the details in your podcasts are a little too much
Speaker 1: for my nine year olds to consume, I often throw
Speaker 1: out random facts that add to the lesson. I might
Speaker 1: say I was recently listening to a story about blank
Speaker 1: and learned blank. Yesterday, we were going through a book
Speaker 1: about popular inventions, and a few times in the book
Speaker 1: I was sharing extra comments. When I turned the page
Speaker 1: to begin talking about the next invention, one student perked
Speaker 1: up and asked, did you just hear a story about
Speaker 1: this one too? I'm so glad I can learn daily
Speaker 1: and add to my teaching through the work you do.
Speaker 1: Keep it up, and I look forward to catching up
Speaker 1: on all the years archives. Thank you so much, Sue,
Speaker 1: and also thank you for being an educator. My hat
Speaker 1: is always off to teachers, and I feel like they
Speaker 1: need a lot more love than they generally get. So
Speaker 1: thank you, thank you, thank you. If you would like
Speaker 1: to write to us, you can do so at History
Speaker 1: Podcast at how stuff works dot com. You can also
Speaker 1: find us everywhere on social media as Missed in History,
Speaker 1: and our website is missed in History dot com, where
Speaker 1: you can find all of the episodes that have ever
Speaker 1: existed to the show and work through the archives like
Speaker 1: Sue is doing. If you would like to subscribe to
Speaker 1: the podcasts, I highly encourage it. You can do that
Speaker 1: on the I Heart Radio app, at Apple Podcasts, or
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to podcasts. Stuff you Missed in History
Speaker 1: Class is a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart
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Speaker 1: favorite shows.