Animation Sans Frontières: - Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg (Part 3)

 

The first week of ASF workshops drew to a close and we took time away from the animation world, to explore Ludwigsburg.  
On our wanderings we visited the grounds of Ludwigsburg Palace, stumbling into flamingos and pumpkin sculptures of all things and took the opportunity to exercise our camera skills.

The weekend also saw our group venture to Stuttgart for “Stuttgart Nacht”, a city wide celebration of the creative arts.  I managed to catch some great live music and try my hand at salsa dancing for the first time, though I wasn’t much good.  Overall It was a nice break from animation but by Sunday we were all definitely getting withdrawal symptoms from our sketchbooks.  

After a relaxing Sunday we started the week with a lecture from Dr. Jörg Bochow accomplished Professor of Dramaturgy and Theatre theory.  The session named “From Real Life to Plot” explored the process of redeveloping and adapting real life scenario into fictional scenes and stories. Dr. Jörg spoke from his experiences when transforming Maxim Gorky’s “The Lower Depths” written in 1902 into a contemporary performance.

An audience desire authenticity in their entertainment, through the interviewing of real people and their personal accounts you can attain an understanding of personality.  Not entirely related but I noted that one of Dr. Jörg’s interviews sourced that bankers only get fired Tuesday to Thursday due to increased suicide risk over the weekend, a very interesting point for anyone with a banker character.

To better explain how traditional story telling and historical texts could be modernised we ventured into the origins of storytelling and the use of Peripeteia (the pivotal point of transformation from good fortune to bad fortune).  A quick history of performance and storytelling marked out periods of particular significance a good example being the Arab scholars that kept Greek tragedy alive and in turn influenced creative minds of the renaissance.

Footage of the play "the Lower Depths".

Cause and effect was an interesting point, in reality things happen by coincidence without sight of a cause, so the goal in fiction is to make cleverer connections than in real life.  After a break down of the translation of realism to fictional scenario and how to case study a character from notes we interviewed one another in groups to try out what we had learnt.  My self and Márton Kovács decided to Interview Gobelins graduate Clement Desnos.  We had a great time asking questions and I definitely got to know Clement alot better during the workshop.

Andrew gasping in sheer amazement of Celement balancing on a seat.

The lecture/workshop provided a great understanding of the evolution of drama, story and character and since has changed my approach to fictionalising reality.  Still not up-together with blogging so a few more Germany blogs to go.