Altered states of animation
■ Unique technology makes
Richard Linklater’s latest movie
a fine piece of cult artwork
‘Waking Life’
By Alix Kerl
Oregon Daily Emerald
Some people insist that the best
way to watch “Waking Life” is
in a chemically altered state.
That might be a good way to ab
sorb the series of philosophical
monologues given by jostling car
toon characters, but chemically al
tered state or no, it’s best to go in
with no prior knowledge of the
film. The surprise of the first view
ing is one of the more wonderful
things about it.
Let’s just say that reality is un
sure in this new movie from
writer/director Richard Linklater,
who also wrote and directed
“Tape” and “Dazed and Confused.”
“Waking Life” is a painterly, philo
sophical dreamworld. And it is
cool. This film is already becoming
a cult classic — and that means no
one really cares if I like it or not.
And because I don’t know much
about philosophy, I’ll leave inter
pretation to the philosophers.
Let’s talk about the burning ques
tion on everyone’s mind: How did
they make it?
The film was originally shot digi
tally with Sony handheld cameras
using with living, breathing actors.
(Yes, that’s Ethan Hawke you spot
behind the moving painted mask,
and Julie Delpy also plays a part.)
The protagonist is played by Wiley
Wiggins (better known as Mitch
Kramer from “Dazed and Con
fused”). But these characters really
only provide voices and a basis for
the movements.
The innovative look of the
movie comes from technology de
veloped by animation director Bob
Sabiston, which allowed artists to
digitally draw over the live action
Courtesy photo
in the film. Sabiston affectionately
calls his technique “interpolated
rotoscoping.” This means that ani
mators only draw lines every third
frame or so, allowing the software
to fill in the holes by smoothly
stretching individual brushstrokes
across a range of frames. This
saves time and makes the anima
tion smoother.
The technique uses Quicktime,
an Apple program that translates
digitized video and audio into ap
plication programs. Sabiston’s soft
ware allows animators to separate
and overlap segments of a scene
and run them in different Quick
time films. This is what creates the
vomit-inducing rocking of the film.
While this alone makes the
movie unique, Linklater employed
a different artist to animate each
character, about 30 in all, to create
a constant morphing of styles and
splintering of visual effects.
Producers say that the movie
was filmed with the animation
technique in mind.
“We also wanted each scene to
have a distinctly different style, so
we could give the animators a vari
ety of material to work with,” said
producer Tommy Pallotta in an in
terview with www.director
sworld.com.
While each minute of the film
took over 250 hours to animate, it
was a bargain compared to other
animated films — Disney and Pixar
movies cost from 10 to 15 times as
much to make.
This movie is rated “R” for lan
guage and some violent images.
E-mail reporter Alix Kerl
at alixkerl@dailyemerald.com.
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