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Freak Box: Brett Ingram’s Animation
February 15th, 2008 by Jon BeinartI recently got in contact with a film maker whom I have a lot of respect for. I discovered during our correspondence that Brett Ingram is not just a documentary maker, but is a great animator in his own right. Brett Ingram (who directed 'Monster Road', the award winning doco about legendary Bruce Bickford) is the animator behind Freak Box (right). I asked Brett to describe his short animation and give our readers a little background information about himself. Here was Brett's response:
"What do a monkey, a robot, and two numbed out teenagers have in common? The symbiotic processes of the idiot box, as it turns out. Freak Box is a stop-motion satire of the lulling evils of television – an electro-mechanical circus where viewers lose – and find - themselves in the hopelessness of a pixel array constructed by monkeys and robots."
"At the time I made Freak Box, I was freelancing as a sound mixer for documentaries, commercials, and various cable television programs. I also directed a couple of episodes of a “documentary” program about dog breeds on Animal Planet. In my youthful naivety, I was astonished at the level of manipulation of the content by the producers. Each episode was completely formulaic with cinematographers following “style sheets” for uniformity and the whole bit. Network executives constantly challenged my choices in subjects (mainly dog owners) based solely on their appearance or manner of speaking. The whole experience reminded me of a circus, one where monkey minds orchestrate productions carried out by robots to produce homogeneous faces on a screen watched by couch potatoes."
"I became interested in stop-motion animation in film school. Bruce Bickford was invited to our local film festival one year and I was charged with helping him conduct a stop-motion workshop. Watching Bickford gradually animate a morphing head frame by frame over the course of six hours was mesmerizing and left a lasting impression."
"I never received any formal training in animation. Inspired by my brief experience with Bickford, I learned everything by trial and error. Once you understand the basics of stop-motion and how the illusion of cinema works, the rest is an application of imagination and problem-solving skills through endless hours of labor."
"From the beginning it seemed to me that straight character did not fully exploit the creative possibilities of stop-motion as a medium. I was drawn to the surrealism of the Brothers Quay, but found even more inspiration from their acknowledged primary influence, Czech animator Jan Svankmajer. Svankmajer’s work was more original and idiosyncratic, yet his stories and the ideas they communicated were paradoxically more universal. I digested the work of Bickford, Svankmajer, the Quays, and others before experimenting to find my own aesthetic."
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