Slapstick Animation! With Nick Park & Peter Lord
No-one would be laughed at for suggesting that slapstick comedy has had its golden age. Silent movies were limited in ways to entertain, but it was only a matter of time before audio was included and film makers could use complex dialogue, subtle humour and sound effects. But how much do we still enjoy physical comedy? Bristol’s annual Slapstick Festival is in its 9th year and collects some of the best examples of buffoonery and horseplay to celebrate the art-form. This year Peter Lord and Nick Park kick off the programme with a relaxed chat, some clips from cartoons and and the proposal that slapstick hasn’t kicked the bucket, it just stumbled its way into the world of animation.
I always enjoy listening to Aardman’s creative heads talking about their influences and the journey they took to become a multi-Oscar-winning studio. Peter Lord started by showing some classic clips from silent movies then candidly explained their influence on the visual gags in ‘Morph’. The characters in those early shorts didn’t talk in any recognisable language, so the story was communicated with exaggerated actions and expressions. Nick Park took a similar approach with ‘A Grand Day Out’ which doesn’t feature as much dialogue as his later work. He reminisced of the day he phoned Peter Sallis, who had recorded the voice of Wallace, to triumphantly proclaim that after 7 years he had finally finished the film. To which Peter replied “Which film again?”.
The audience of the Watershed cinema were treated to some more hand-picked examples to show slapstick’s influence on animation. ‘The Cat Came Back’ by Cordell Barker has quite a few cinematic tropes which originate from silent movies. The opening scene from Richard Williams’s ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ is a deliberate parody of classic cartoons, building up on the incredible ill fortune and comedy violence to great effect. The highlight for me was a quirky Russian short film by Konstantin Bronzit called ‘At the Ends of the Earth’. A great example of comedy timing and well worth watching.
Pete and Nick went on to tell us why it seemed so natural for them to do visual comedy. The restrictions of budget in their earlier work nudged them towards this style of humour and also taught them “economy of motion for comedy effect”. Now it is part of their style and heritage to let the action lead the story. At the conceptual stage, they think about what the characters will be physically doing, then create a storyboard from these ideas. The example here was the train chase sequence from ‘The Wrong Trousers’ which was drawn out at a very early point of the film’s production.
This was as fun and insightful an event as I’ve come to expect from Aardman. It helped me realise that slapstick comedy is responsible for some of the best moments in animation. Exaggerated physical humour lends itself well to stylised characters and (as Roger Rabbit explained to me as a young age) cartoon characters can’t feel pain.
Bristol’s 9th annual Slapstick Festival is taking place until 27th January 2013 at the Watershed, Arnolfini, Old Vic theatre and Colston Hall.