Words Katrina T. Rivere
Back in the early days of animation, each frame was painstakingly drawn by hand. In 1915, Max Fleischer invented rotoscoping, a technique of traditional animation, which called for animators to trace live action movement-frame by frame-to create cartoon characters with realistic movement. Pre-recorded live-film images were projected onto a matte windowpane, a Rotoscope, and redrawn by an animator.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Disney's first animated feature, employed this technique carefully and very effectively, primarily in the animation of Prince Charming. The music video of A-ha's "Take On Me"-which was nominated for Best Video at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1986-was an amalgamation of rotoscope -style animation and live action.
Like a graphic novel come to life, Warner Independent Pictures' A Scanner Darkly was filmed digitally and then animated using the same animation technique. Unlike the crude process used in Snow White and A-ha's 1985 music video, however, animators of Scanner used live action photography and overlaid it with an advanced animation process to create a haunting, highly stylized vision of the future.
This Richard Linklater film based on Philip K. Dick's novel is set in suburban Orange County, California, in a world where America has lost the war on drugs.
Keanu Reeves stars as undercover cop Bob Arctor, who works with other "scanners" to monitor surveillance footage in an effort to nab dealers of Substance D, a cocaine-like drug threatening to wreak neurochemical havoc on the entire Southern California population. Complications ensue when Arctor, disguised as Fred at work in a shape-shifting scramble suit, is forced to spy on his friends, Jim Barris (Robert Downey Jr.), Ernie Luckman (Woody Harrelson), Donna Hawthorne (Winona Ryder), and Charles Freck (Rory Cochrane). When Bob is directed to step up the surveillance on himself, he is launched on a paranoid journey into the absurd, where identities and loyalties are impossible to decode.
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For full stories, grab a copy of Speed's SEPTEMBER 2006 issue in bookstores and newsstands near you.
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