During this special screening, we had the opportunity to see two animations by the laudable John Canemaker. John Canemaker has a very special style in his animations. It is a style that transcends the loud sounds and shocking realistic images that many productions tend to rely on in capturing the audience. Instead, it is able to delve itself into the hearts and minds of its viewers by using innocent images full of meaning to evoke emotion.
The first of the pair premiered was titled “Marching to a Different Toon, Confessions of a Star Dreamer”. A very simple story of a woman telling us of her dreams and aspirations to become an actress since the age of four.
The second of this set, which had the most profound effect on me was called "The Moon and the Son, An Imagined Conversation". It is a personal essay of John Canemaker in relation to his experiences with his father that portrays a true story without relying solely on the expected norm: home videos, pictures, and artistic shots of the person in question. Instead, it defies all sense of realism through animation. Watching this production had been very enlightening because I always strive for realism. John Canemaker has tossed all of that aside.
He believed that he had to exaggerate to make his personal essay work; that he had free himself from the constraints of realism. He wanted to make it bigger than life. To do this, he utilized a myriad of mediums that ranged from watercolors, crayons, ink and even the type of paper! To further illustrate the tumultuous relationship he had with his father, his style in animating the characters changed too. When he was illustrating his angry father, he would use big, bold and coarse lines. Juxtaposed, to create his timid young self, he delicately held his tool and created thin and quiet lines to display a child quivering in fear. And lastly, to create the dear mother he loved, he drew her as a big, encompassing and malleable blob colored a cheerful green; a blob that shielded him and his brother from their father's anger. Canemaker even went beyond creating human renditions to illustrate the people he speaks of. He gets to the point where he personifies objects where a cleverly placed bolt of lightning would represent the anger of his father striking down upon his family.
Before Canemaker could have done all of that, he had to draw inspiration. During the questionnaire, he cited George Dunning as one his sources for inspiration and the style of Disney as something he works to distance himself from. After the inspiration comes the storyboard. It started from initial transcripts and drawings but then bloomed from there. The storyboard was slowly created based on his instinctual gut feeling. He didn't sit down and say 'Okay, I'll use watercolor here.'; no, he did what he felt fitting and edited and altered it from there. He simply just took a chance to just try it. It ultimately was a process of trial and error and of opinions from his coworkers. Where, at the end, he achieves a stunning and dynamic piece.
I mentioned that the opinions of his coworkers had a part in creating this piece earlier. John Canemaker was fortunate in finding the perfect producer when he was producing this piece. She had encouraged him to go deeper into his memories; to go further in order to learn more and to attain closure with his father. This project was not just another film, it was a step in learning from the past and using it to build the future. I would go as far to say that this production wouldn't have reached such monumental heights had he not have had the perfect teammate.
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