And Now for a Commercial Break

Gitane Catch… 1961. Production La Comète. Dir. André Sarrut et Jacques Asséo

Where would the advertising world be without animation ? That is obviously a question to be turned around too, each having fed and nurtured their forms reciprocally throughout their long collaboration. The communication and advertising agencies of today are more or less tightly linked with design and animation studios. Their history is a fascinating perspective on how animation has developed and may help pinpoint a particular shift from what was initially pure character driven cartoon animation to the more graphic design informed domain of motion graphics which seems to have taken hold as the dominant force in the advertising world of today.
After a return visit to the exhibition in Paris, ‘La Pub s’anime’, (Animated Ads), I wanted to jot down a few key moments along with the people that paved the way towards our present day marketing world. This is obviously a focus on the history in France but the question begs : How did advertising and animation develop in other developing countries ?

Gitanes La logique de Toto 1926. Robert Lortac & André Payen

** 1918 – 35 **

Robert Collard (1884 – 1973),often named Robert Lortac, sets up Europe’s first animation studio in Montrouge in 1919. The studio is reputed to have created quantitatively the greatest number of animated films in France and remained active up until 1945. Amongst the first 15 employees, a certain Raymond Savignac who was already a well known poster artist of the era. To begin with, animated ads were informed by graphic design and the poster format. Illustration and typographic elements were often taken from existing poster ads and animated, finishing off with a fitting slogan and the name of the product.

Gitanes La logique de Toto 1926. Robert Lortac & André Payen

** 1936 **

Animated ads were first screened as intervals for the cinema, however ad agencies wanted to keep people in the cinema during the breaks. Enter the cartoon character and storytelling. From this point on commercials become closely tied to
traditional cartoons and develop into saga long commercials that entice as entertain the public.

Paul Grimault (1905 – 1994) and André Sarrut ( ) set up Les Gemeaux production house. However….

** 1950 – 68 **

….in 1952, after misunderstandings, the two associates split and Paul Grimault opens, Les Films Paul Grimault and André Sarrut starts his own studio, La Comète, with animator Jacques Asséo.

In the fifties, France develops as a consumer society and the budget for ad agencies doubles. Consequently their is a mushrooming of production houses, some of which dedicate their activities purely to creating commercials. This is the case for Sarrut’s La Comète which made more than 2000 commercial films exporting 80% of their output and became the most important film company for animated commercials in Europe at the time.

Air Wick Pour ceux qui ont du nez 1955. André Sarrut & Jacques Asséo

**************************************************
>>>Watch Gitane Bleue

**************************************************

Gitane Bleue 1958. André Sarrut & Jacques Asséo

Total Oil 1958. André Sarrut

/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////

In 1953, Jacques Forgeot (1923-1969) opens Les Cinéastres Associaciés and employs some of France’s and indeed Europe’s leading animators : Raoul Franco, Etienne Rajk (1904-1976), Paul Casalini (1933 – ) and the Bettiol brothers. Not forgetting Alexandre Alexeieff (1901-1982) who had just come back from a passage in Amercia and had already a rich and innovative background in working for commercials.

Le Parisien Concourt 1960. Production Jean Mineur. Dir. Raoul Franco

EDF/GDF. Eau Chaude 1961. Production Jean Mineur. Dir. Raoul Franco

** 1970 **

Remains a minor period with struggling output due to high costs, competition from television ads and a return to live action.

** 1980 **

This is a major period of technological change – the arrival of digital imaging and the development of 3D. Exmachina becomes the third largest production house in special effects in the World. The likes of Pierre Coffin (1967..), Pascal Vuong (1960..) and the H5 Collective push forward the form and major production houses such as TBWA and Buf set up business specializing in CGI visual effects and animation.

Restore L’homme moteur synthétique 1984. Agence Hautefeuille. Dir. Jerzy Kular

>>> Watch a selection of French animated ads
>>> 1950’s Commercials
>>> Animated Logos

 

Sonic Pixels

Video Still. Synchromy. Norman McLaren 1971. © National Film Board of Canada

An Essay on Music and Motion in Three Parts.
PART 3.
>>> PART 1 Read Here
>>> PART 2 Read Here
…………………………………………………..

Norman McLaren’s 1971 ‘Synchromy‘ epitomizes a particular era in which visual artists were in search of the ultimate marriage between sound and image. There seems to be no other better example of how the two domains meet in perfect sync and graphic rhythm. Synchromy, however, also marks the end of an era and the beginning of another in terms of technique and technology. If the camera brought the canvass into motion and in line with sound and music for the first half of the 20th Century, it was the computer that was to steal the limelight as the new tool for bringing the visual and sonic together.

From as early as the sixties, research and development into computer assisted imagery was taking shape, yet the enormous cost for such a technology and the fact that the privileged domain of science was its main proprietor and knowledge base, meant that the computer was not considered for artistic expression. Indeed, it took until the 80’s; the birth of the digital home computer, desk top publishing and the first graphical user friendly Apple, before the computer really became an accessible and important artistic tool.

One man however, made astonishing developments within the field of computer assisted imagery, well before the computer became a fully boxed clock of zero’s and one’s: John Whitney. The life and work of John Whitney, along with his brother who often had the more artistic role, is rarely given the attention it needs to fully bring to life and present his work in a comprehensive manner. Many short essays and interviews can be found along with his personal writings on his art form, yet we still await a lot more to surface. He is often cited in connection with the term motion graphics, due to his company of the same name in which he developed his first mechanical analog computer and created titles and graphic fx for the film and TV industry. One of the rare pieces available today of this early motion graphics work is entitled Catalogue completed in 1961. As the name suggest, the piece is rather a compilation of the various visual effects he had perfected using his early analog computer. Without doubt, the first ever motion graphics demo reel !

His work ‘Permutations’ was his first cohesive film to have been created using a digital computer, the IBM model 360 along with a 2250 Graphic Display Console. Using a computer program, developed by Dr. Jack Citron, called GRAF (graphic Additions to Fortran), John Whitney completed the film in 1968 along with a 15 minute presentation of the work entitled, ‘Experiments in Motion Graphics’, in which is explained his approach to programming for motion design and the relationships between man and machine . Beyond this technological virtuosity there was an extremely important motivating force that drove Whitney’s artistic expression – the metaphor of music.

Still from Arabesque. John Whitney 1975

“The challenge of creating compositions with this computer instrument is very much like the task faced by all composers who must shape the voices of traditional music to perform harmoniously together. In a piano and string duo for example the interrelationship is usually complex and varied: the parts play together in parallel or opposed motions; one questions, the other replies; one is smooth and melodic – the other is percussive. The range of figurations and the musical partner in this new computer medium for a new World of artistic relationships and expression.”
Experimental Animation. origins of a New Art. Robert Russett & Cecile Starr. Second edition 1988, page 26.

John Whitney was a visionary who wanted to create a new visual language based on moving graphics and who had a strong interest in music. His vision of a new “visual music” takes root in the early European pioneers – Fischinger, Pfenniger and Richter. John Whitney had spent a year in Paris where he had been introduced to the musical compositions of Schoenberg and had later, on return to America, taken great interest in the early film avant-garde movement in Europe. Whitney clearly took a musicians perspective to his visual work, himself writing in an early essay, ‘Moving Pictures and Electronic Music’ that he took the point of view of a composer.

Still from Two Space. © Larry Cuba 1979

“Cuba believes that the numerical capability of the computer is adding a new creative dimension to the field of experimental animation just as mathematical perspective, for example provided additional visual possibilities for the Renaissance artist.”
Experimental Animation. origins of a New Art. Robert Russett & Cecile Starr. Second edition 1988, page 28.

Larry Cuba was part of the second generation, after having collaborated with Whitney on his ‘Arabesque’ in 1975. Although, he has only made four films to date, his work remains a reference in terms of how computer graphics was to develop and expand the concept of motion graphics with new visual images. Today, one only need to look at audio visual performances and VJ-ing to see the influence, permanance and development of this new ‘visual music’. However, to cite only Cuba alone would be quite wrong. What this essay in three parts has hopefully pointed out, is that the relationship between the sonic and visual has a long and rich history that has shaped the way we perceive and work with the two mediums today. This particular history is revealing not only major artists and their various techniques but also suggesting how certain disciplines of contemporary motion graphics such as VJ-ing has developed within a similar framework. A framework that many contemporary motion designers have followed in step to bring sound and image ever closer as an integral part of communication and entertainment. A framework that has equally developed in to a professional discipline and manifests as well as demands a unique syntax, extending our understanding of what the ‘audiovisual’ scope implies today.

>>> PART ONE Here.
>>> PART TWO Here.

Resources.

>>> James Whitney Retrospective. Moritz, William 1984
>>> The Animator as Musician. Eric Barbeau. NFB 2005
>>> Visual Music. Larry Cuba’s Experimental Film. Moritz, William 1996
>>>Experimental Animation. Origins of a New Art. Russett, Robert. Starr, Cecile. Da Capo Press, New York 1988
>>> Expanded Cinema. Youngblood, Gene 1970

 

TV Broadcast Design

Although the advent of broadcast television in 1936 promised a new medium for visual creativity in design terms, it wasn’t until the fifties that broadcasting companies began to think seriously about the possibilities. Indeed when the BBC set up their service in 1936, design for the screen was still very much in an embryonic period, its gestation held amid the art World. The Second World War had also put broadcast on hold and it wasn’t until 1946 that the box was turned on again with a swift demand from households for interesting and entertaining content.
In 1954, the BBC recruited its first graphic designer, John Sewell and a department was set up under his management. This was of course a considerable move for a television company at the time. Little can be found on John Sewell’s work for the BBC, at least for the moment nothing leads to more than a paragraph in most instances. He is clearly noted though for the 1950’s BBC screen graphics and was also a budding amateur film maker.

After this first initiative by the BBC, two people were to have a profound and long standing impact on TV broadcast design : Bernard Lodge and Martin Lambie-Nairn. Bernard Lodge was the title sequence creator behind the classic BBC science fiction series ‘Doctor Who’. The famous time travelling Doctor defied time and space in his adventures into other Worlds and it appears that it was these very dimensions that Bernard Lodge wanted to explore and express in the opening titles. In 1963, the series went on air and Lodge’s unmistakable feed back ‘growl’ effect, along with Ron Grainer’s chilling electronic composition, made for a brilliantly effective opener which has engraved every child’s memory ever since. Bernard Lodge went on to create further titles for the series and in 1973 eventually changed the ‘howl’ effect with the slit-scan technique which had first been used in Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Most TV graphics prior to Doctor Who were static channel identities or simple animated pres (presentation screens) for certain programs. It wasn’t until the 1970’s that TV channels began to incorporate moving graphics as part of their brand identity albeit with rather simplified results. This all changed though with the arrival of a new channel in 1982 which brought with it to the forefront the designer Martin Lambie-Nairn. Martin Lambie-Nairn had already his years of experience with the BBC and LWT (London Weekend Television), however it was with his creation of Channel Four’s 3D animated logo that TV identities were to really take off and spark a real cause for experiment with movement and form as a means for branding on the box. Today, the graphic presentation of a channel as well as it’s content has become an increasingly fertile field for motion graphics with a wide range of innovative ideas.

>>> An interesting online collection.

 

Jeff Scher – Steven Heller

Jeff Scher’s animated portrait of Susan Shin.
Copyright Maya Stendhal Gallery.

An excellent article on the illustrator and animator Jeff Scher.
Written by Steven Heller for Eye Magazine. Vol 15. Summer 2006
…………………………………………………………………………….
>>>> Read Online Here
…………………………………………………………………………….
>>>> Check out the videopod in the margin :
Inspiration
Let It
Reasons To Be Glad

 

The Complete Bond Titles

As Etienne Mineur, author for this informative link, points out. Practically all the techniques developed over the past 40 years in motion graphics are visible in the main titles for James Bond. It is in itself not only a body of work that is rich in technique, the visual narratives are legend for their iconic images loaded with sex and guns.
Etienne Mineur has presented the complete titles here in glorious chronological order.

>>>Watch