Untitled Document

Waking Life

"Let me tell you about a dream I had," says a character played by Rick Linklater in the new digital film Waking Life. But Linklater, who also wrote and directed the film, does much more than share a single dream. With Waking Life he has created perhaps the most vivid dreamscape ever to reach movie screens.
In fact, Waking Life feels like an entirely new kind of movie, thanks largely to its innovative hybrid of live action and animation. The film opens in New York and Los Angeles this weekend, expands to 12 other cities Oct. 26, and reaches theaters nationwide in November.
Those who remember Linklater for his grungy independent films Slacker and Dazed and Confused might be surprised by his latest project. Shot with off-the-rack digital cameras and then fully animated, Waking Life looks something like a photo-realistic comic book, colorized with a Simpsons-like palette and brought to life.
Waking Life's animation was overseen by Austin artist Bob Sabiston, whose software allows animators to use video images as a kind of sketchpad they can draw on. It's like a 21st-century update to rotoscoping -- the animation technique used in films like Snow White.
Characters created with old-school rotoscoping moved rigidly and mechanically. Sabiston's program allows for more fluid lines, making his characters feel far more vital.
The program already is something of a phenomenon. Sabiston's short videos Roadhead, Snack and Drink and Figures of Speech, created with Tommy Pallotta, have won numerous awards, and Sabiston has already seen his style replicated by advertising agencies (he considered suing Earthlink for a series of copycat ads).
The typical Sabiston-Pallotta film is filled with experimentation -- characters' eyes bulge expressively; strands of hair snake around their heads. Figures might pop up into the frame, offering a playful visual counterpoint to their dialogue.
When Linklater saw the Sabiston-Pallotta films, he realized their style of animation might help rescue a project he had nearly abandoned. Linklater says he couldn't figure out a way to turn his script, a collection of insights and musings inspired by his own dreams, into a live-action film.
"I don't think films and dreams generally go together well -- they are kind of redundant," he says. "Most people participate in their dreams the same way they watch movies: uncritically, almost unconsciously, taking in the information and imagery.
"And this film uses dreams as a kind of operating system for the narrative, the hitch for most of the ideas. The realism of (live-action) film would have canceled out the ideas.... This style of animation allows you to see a different state of reality."
In creating Waking Life, Linklater shot the digital footage quickly with handheld Sony cameras. That footage -- monologues and conversations featuring artists, conspiracy theorists, academics and other articulate types -- was uploaded onto Mac workstations, each equipped with Sabiston's software and a Wacom tablet.
This animation "factory," as Linklater called it, hosted 30 animators who drew on and colored the digitized images, frame by frame. Each animator followed a character through the movie, giving that character his or her own color scheme and traits.
One convict, filmed behind bars, burns red with anger. A film theorist talks about "holy moments," as sparks shoot from his hands. Animated characters played by Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke glow with the pastel softness of a leisurely, thoughtful morning.
Though each minute of Waking Life's raw footage took up to 250 hours to animate, the project was a bargain by Hollywood standards (a Pixar- or Disney-animated feature might cost 10 or 15 times as much). The low cost meant Linklater could dare to do something the studios wouldn't: use animation to explore adult subject matter.
"I'm not a technological fetishist," Linklater says. "I want to tell a story in the right way. Technologies can help us in our human desire to express ourselves, to communicate and share our experiences.
"I think that's why Waking Life is more than just an interesting moment in the history of film technology. The technology has allowed this particular story -- a story that probably wouldn't have worked in any other form -- to be told."
never settle. In fact, Waking Life feels like an entirely new kind of movie, thanks largely to its innovative hybrid of live action and animation. The film opens in New York and Los Angeles this weekend, expands to 12 other cities Oct. 26, and reaches theaters nationwide in November.
Those who remember Linklater for his grungy independent films Slacker and Dazed and Confused might be surprised by his latest project. Shot with off-the-rack digital cameras and then fully animated, Waking Life looks something like a photo-realistic comic book, colorized with a Simpsons-like palette and brought to life.
Waking Life's animation was overseen by Austin artist Bob Sabiston, whose software allows animators to use video images as a kind of sketchpad they can draw on. It's like a 21st-century update to rotoscoping -- the animation technique used in films like Snow White.
Characters created with old-school rotoscoping moved rigidly and mechanically. Sabiston's program allows for more fluid lines, making his characters feel far more vital.
The program already is something of a phenomenon. Sabiston's short videos Roadhead, Snack and Drink and Figures of Speech, created with Tommy Pallotta, have won numerous awards, and Sabiston has already seen his style replicated by advertising agencies (he considered suing Earthlink for a series of copycat ads).
The typical Sabiston-Pallotta film is filled with experimentation -- characters' eyes bulge expressively; strands of hair snake around their heads. Figures might pop up into the frame, offering a playful visual counterpoint to their dialogue.
When Linklater saw the Sabiston-Pallotta films, he realized their style of animation might help rescue a project he had nearly abandoned. Linklater says he couldn't figure out a way to turn his script, a collection of insights and musings inspired by his own dreams, into a live-action film.
"I don't think films and dreams generally go together well -- they are kind of redundant," he says. "Most people participate in their dreams the same way they watch movies: uncritically, almost unconsciously, taking in the information and imagery.
"And this film uses dreams as a kind of operating system for the narrative, the hitch for most of the ideas. The realism of (live-action) film would have canceled out the ideas.... This style of animation allows you to see a different state of reality."
In creating Waking Life, Linklater shot the digital footage quickly with handheld Sony cameras. That footage -- monologues and conversations featuring artists, conspiracy theorists, academics and other articulate types -- was uploaded onto Mac workstations, each equipped with Sabiston's software and a Wacom tablet.
This animation "factory," as Linklater called it, hosted 30 animators who drew on and colored the digitized images, frame by frame. Each animator followed a character through the movie, giving that character his or her own color scheme and traits.
One convict, filmed behind bars, burns red with anger. A film theorist talks about "holy moments," as sparks shoot from his hands. Animated characters played by Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke glow with the pastel softness of a leisurely, thoughtful morning.
Though each minute of Waking Life's raw footage took up to 250 hours to animate, the project was a bargain by Hollywood standards (a Pixar- or Disney-animated feature might cost 10 or 15 times as much). The low cost meant Linklater could dare to do something the studios wouldn't: use animation to explore adult subject matter.
"I'm not a technological fetishist," Linklater says. "I want to tell a story in the right way. Technologies can help us in our human desire to express ourselves, to communicate and share our experiences.
"I think that's why Waking Life is more than just an interesting moment in the history of film technology. The technology has allowed this particular story -- a story that probably wouldn't have worked in any other form -- to be told."