Personal Project: First Pass

Disstertation Rough Draft

  Character Development  

How integral is the development and usage of

Background characters to an animation motion picture

Introduction

Aimee Mitchell describes background character Movies and television shows very often use people like props to create a background which seems like a real environment. The people who are needed to participate in such roles are known as background actors, background performers or most commonly movie extras. Movie extras are used in an attempt to make scenes in films and TV show appears fuller, richer and natural.”

Animated movie: a motion picture that is made from a series of drawings, computer graphics, or photographs of inanimate objects (such as puppets) and that simulates movement by slight progressive changes in each frame (Mariam-Webber Dictionary)

 It is a no brainer that animated movies severely defer to that of live action films and the written word in the case of how the audience sees the world presented to them and how they relate to the characters and share their journey. In this dissertation, will be fully exploring just how important those background characters are to the Hollywood major production style animated story and how the extra population help draw in the audience into the world and relate to the protagonist.

So, what makes a great movie? Is it the story or the dialogue? Is it the artistic camera shot, the explosions and nudity, or is it the A list actors hired for the roles? Jean Ann Wright, Margaret Mehring, Andrew Horton, J.Michael Straczynski, King Vidor, the first thing these authors talk about is the fact that the majority of movies these days only concentrate on one or two of the above, when every single aspect of the movie is just as important as the rest, from the location, the protagonist, the camera shot, even to the people who populate the protagonist’s world, who support him, or her, in their role and help complete the world to the audience.

I shall be researching character and character word development books as well as finding out what experienced directors and writers have discovered about the subject matter. I will be researching popular and successful books and movies that have lots of background characters and the development of the characters and the writers and/or directors methods and reasons as to why they did what they did and the importance they believe this seemingly insignificant role plays in their story.

By The end of this case study, I hope to have a clear understanding about how and why background characters are used, and I hope to discover just how developed then need to be in order to fulfil their roles within the animated film.

Literary Review

One thing is agreed upon no matter the author’s delegation of profession, whether it is character development or script writing or even camera angle. Not enough development in all of the various mise en scene elements within the movie are utilized in this day and age to create a truly remarkable and memorable movie that leaves a permanent mark on the audience for the rest of their lives. “A unity of sight and sound is not achieved and, all too often, the medium becomes a recording device rather than an art form.” (Douglas Day Stewart, 1990, Page ix)

Andrew Horton writes; “Producers who murder screenwriters. Screen writers who spend their lives “pitching” rather than writing. Studios that endlessly recycle films that unimaginatively copy previous movies.” (Horton, 1999, page 1) Before continuing with the observation, that most studio corporations are too afraid to spend time developing a character and story that is new and enticing, but instead spend all of their money on cheesy clichés and big named actors. Andrew Horton tells us that what the audience needs to experience and connect with is the world within the hero’s head, as well as the environment which the hero interacts with before any action is taken or any words spoken. Without this connection, the audience won’t care about the hero’s journey, and not care about the message you are trying to present to them. Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay (Andrew Horton, 1999) centers around the development of the main protagonist and how that builds a good foundation for any movie, as the main focus for the audience and the one who they are experiencing the journey with is the protagonist.

Even though The Screenplay (Margaret Mehring, 1990) wasn’t about character development or story and world creation, Mehring was quite clear on the matter that the protagonist and their lines although are important, should be nowhere near the end of the creation process, but only the foundation on which to create the rest of the movie. Mehring focuses more on the filmic elements’ point of view when creating a script; “Filmic Writing […] is a process that uses all filmic elements and deliberately blends film form and film content. It’s what can make film content a universal masterpiece instead of just any story. It’s combining the art of motion pictures with the art of storytelling.” (Margaret Mehring, 1990, page 4)

Mehring tell us that what script writers and directors and everyone else in the movie business is trying to produce when creating a movie, animation or otherwise, is not just another story, but something profound, something greater, something that will go down the generations as a classic, something that will make allot of money for a very long time. Mehring nicely puts that in order to achieve that, we need to look at every aspect of each shot, and with each shot, tell a story, or show an emotion. Filmic elements help the way we view the writer’s world, but the background props and more importantly, the characters, are what we view. Each piece is just as important as the other.

One of the issues presented when writing an animated movie or show is that it is far more dependent on visual aspects for the entertainment than any live-action movie, therefore needs to be quicker with more gags to retain the audience’s interest. J.Michael Straczynski notes that this is because as they are animated and cartoony, most of the time not even being human, it is harder for the audience to relate to the intended subject and situation, a necessary ingredient every script writing author has agreed is a vital connection for the audience to make in order for them to stay entertained as well as an integral ingredient for the movie to impact the audience on a deeper and profound level. Both are needed for the writers and directors to reach the ultimate goal in the movie industry; to become iconic and to make the big bucks.

“To properly show and thoroughly experience an emotional situation, time has to slow down to enable the mind to thoroughly grasp and empathise with the subject. script writers have utilised this fact for many years in their movies by making the emotional scenes with fewer cuts and close ups on the subject, as well as more camera cuts  and jerky camera movements to show action and movement.” (Rianne Hill Soriano, 1992)

If the audience can’t empathize with the protagonist and their journey, then they won’t feel connected to that person, nor be interested in their journey. Relating to the character, and going thru the hardship and self-discovery, with everything turning out in the end, gives the audience a sense of worth and a sort of emotional “It will all be ok”, therefore, achieving audience-to-character empathy is one of the greatest goals of script writing and storytelling any author must achieve first.

"Empathy depends not only on one's ability to identify someone else's emotions but also on one's capacity to put oneself in the other person's place and to experience an appropriate emotional response" (Charles G. Morris, 1997)

Methodology

To analyse the development and usage of background characters in an animation movie, I have read books and blogs about character and story development in live-action, novels and in animated films, such as Acting For Animators (2003) and Animation Writing and Development: From Script Development to Pitch (2005), in order to find out what learned and more experienced individuals have had to say on the subject and their recommendations on how to properly develop the protagonist's world and draw in the audience in the year of 2012. I have also watched various movies and TV shows that have incorporated the extremes, from having no background character, to using a huge cast to support their world, and have looked at why they chose to do one or the other, these movies and TV shows range from Star Wars (1979) to Game of thrones (1996) the written novels. I have analysed the relation to the how popular a movie, TV series, or book series is, to how many supporting characters the writers have used to create the fictional universe. I have studied the differences in the methods used to create a diverse range of genres in animation and what is appropriate use of background performers within each category.

I believe these methods will give me a full understanding on how background characters have been previously implemented in stories, written and filmed alike, and the impact they have had on the protagonist's world and the relation the audience feels towards that world. These are crucial to the end goal of the dissertation; having a clear understanding on the how to and why, writers from all professions should have background characters and how many would be appropriate for whatever script is being made.

Another method I could have used, but chose to resign due to time reasons, is the creation of various experiments using small stories of both single cast to the inclusion of various characters in the same story, then surveying and graphing the reactions, thoughts, and feelings about the protagonist from varying participants of age and culture.

For the purpose of finding out how much of an impact background and minor character's roles play on the audience, I could also have taken a survey utilizing the more popular movies with a massive background cast; asking people how many of the background characters they can remember and can describe, but decided against it also due to time and budgeting reasons. 

Discussion

Looking back at some of the most popular movies and books of all time usually had such a massive background cast the possibilities of the world created where beyond endless. I’m talking about such movies and books as Lord of the Ring, Star Wars, The Simpsons, Game of Thrones, Even the Bible. These three examples are a bit on the extreme side of background character development and usage. Game of Thrones dedicates pages upon pages telling the life story and personality of a guard on duty that night who is about to be killed in a raid, or a knight participating in the jousting contest who had lost his father’s favour with his drinking and gambling habits and is now trying to win back his honour before he is killed by another knight who’s role in the plot is just as insignificant. Even though they have nothing to do with the characters the main story is centred on, would they be as popular without them? Although it is impossible to prove, I don’t think any of these movies or books or television series, or a video game based on the television series based on the book would be nearly as popular. The undeniable benefit of each one of the extra cast is that each one develops the stories universe just that much more, nudges the protagonists in the right direction little by little.

Jean Ann Wright warns in Animation Writing and Development that although the extras are highly important, it is quite common for writers to hinder their story and audience participation by making the background characters and their story more interesting, or diverging from the main plot so much that the audience becomes detached to the hero’s journey.

So, how do you include highly developed background characters into the protagonist’s world without the audience feeling too strayed from the hero’s path?

For this question I have looked at the methods George R. R. Martin used in the Game of Thrones, as well as methods by George Lucas. George Lucas states that when he’s writing, he takes bits and pieces of everyone from his own life and past to create the world around the protagonist as much as it is like in the world around himself. During the making of THX 1138, a movie about cruising in Modesto, California he stated “Cruising was gone, and I felt compelled to document the whole experience and what my generation used as a way of meeting girls," unfortunately THX 1138 was a complete flop, to this Lucas responded "[THX] was about real things that were going on and the problems we're faced with. I realized after making THX that those problems are so real that most of us have to face those things every day, so we're in a constant state of frustration. That just makes us more depressed than we were before. So I made a film where, essentially, we can get rid of some of those frustrations, the feeling that everything seems futile." Lucas then went on to create American Graffiti in 1971, which was a huge hit, and gave the studios the confidence to financially support George Lucas through the creation of his self-titled Space Opera. George spent 5 years developing the people within the space age story, developing each character as if they were the main protagonist of their own story, not just extra characters to be blended into the background. Mr Lucas had also written each character to a specific piece of music he had in mind when developing who they were, but the studios thought it too costly to copyright, at that time, 75 scores of music to possible future characters. In the end, the studio agreed to 15 scores and personalities, then changed the title of the main story Mr Lucas was working on to Star Wars, released in 1979. It is rumoured that George still has a couple dozen characters he had created in those 5 years that have yet to come to light, and even now only just come up in the newest Star Wars movie and/or game.

George R. R. Martin had a very similar approach to the hit phenomenon Game of Thrones, every fictional body in the world of Westeros is written like they are the protagonist in their own story and it’s quite evident with the time, personality and detail given to them. So how does he avoid making the extra characters more interesting than the main characters and where does he give them the time of day as to not interfere with the main plot? For starters, he made the future potential of the main protagonists infinite and mysterious, slightly on the fantastic side; you can’t help but to admire them more than the everyday commoner. The other method Martin implemented is introducing the extras when the current arch of the main plot has come to a conclusion, so they act more as would an advert on the Television between programs, it helps to both develop and give depth to the world of Westeros, as well as give a breather between the heightened feelings and emotions that the main characters tend to stay in the constant state of.

In animated features, writers still had issues with the following; if the audience can’t empathize with the protagonist and their journey, then they won’t feel connected to that person, nor be interested in their journey. The dilemma of needing to achieve the audience-to-character empathy in an animated movie had been responded to by a few solutions. The western, i.e. The United States and the United Kingdom’s had two answers in response to this plight back in 1950. One was to make the story into a complete fantasy, compelling the audience into a complete and new journey so fantastic as to inspire awe instead of the customary; audience developing a relationship with the protagonist. Several major studios followed the fantasy story telling method, to which Disney was presently at the forefront, having made more money than any animated movie had accomplished prior with Sleeping Beauty (1959). The second solution was to give the animation so many gags and extremes that the audience didn’t need to empathise with the character, they were too busy laughing at them exploding or having an anvil land on their head for no logical reason, a method that MGM perfected and helped influence a boom of short television cartoons flooding the airways.

This was acceptable until the ‘Cartoon Crash’ of 1989. Keeping the audience interested with what was new and surprising was getting more and more difficult to achieve with gags alone.  Many companies where going bankrupt and even Disney was on the brink of going out of business. The next few years, the animation studios tried may various methods to try to generate the interest and to re-establish the relationship between character and the audience. Developing a feature length film incorporating a hero’s journey was at the forefront of the these solutions, but as this was an even more expensive enterprise to undertake, either a studio had to make cut backs on the film, resulting in not generating enough of a connection between the hero and audience, or they had to give up the game all together and also declare bankruptcy. Toy Story in 1995 was the first huge success, not only was it the first animation to fully use the new 3D medium which helped bridge that gap between fantasy and reality, making it easier to connect emotionally to the story, but also the creation of the protagonist’s own world and all the aspects within was far more developed and complete than any animated film had previously achieved. Toy Story had developed the world around Woody and Buzz Lightyear so much that every Toy was recognized and their personalities known, every book on the shelves even was a childhood memory as part of the western culture’s past. When watching Toy Story, it was like how most every child had imagined the world around them when playing with their toys.

The addition of developing the world and giving the background characters more character and spotlight solved the issue of having to continuously present the audience with slap stick humour to keep them entertained, and at the same time gave the main characters and their journey more depth, allowing the viewer to successfully put themselves in the shoes of the hero.

“I try to build a full personality for each of our cartoon characters - to make them personalities. We have created characters and animated them in the dimension of depth, revealing through them to our perturbed world that the things we have in common far outnumber and outweigh those that divide us.” (Walt Disney, 1957)

The answer was thus; Instead of just trying to give the main animated character a more relatable depth of personality and illusion of a soul, instead of trying to make the audience empathise to what is within the hero, have them relate to how the hero sees the world around them. In order to do that, you have to have a complete world around them for the audience to view.

Even though Toy Story had great success, it was quite a while before the other studios caught on and where able to produce the budget to make an animated movie anywhere near as profitable as Toy Story. The issue was, creating and animating individual people, personalities and dialogue is very time consuming and the costs where very dear.

Besides having their own story and personality which further creates the writer’s world, and besides being a breather from an intense storyline, Background characters have another very integral role in establishing exactly who the protagonist is. Jean Ann Wright writes,

“You may want your less important characters to help in the defining of the role of the hero. Is your hero a leader, a father figure, the class clown? Minor characters can help us to understand the star’s role in his peer group and in the story.” (Jean Ann Wright, 2005, page 71)

A great example of using the characters around the protagonist to show their personality throughout the film is Pixar’s The Incredibles (2004), where the protagonist, Mr Incredible, is presented in the beginning at a meal with his family, reading the newspaper, ignoring his family, answering his wife when she is trying to tell him about the kids with half listened, monotone answers;

Mrs Incredible: Dash got sent to the principal’s office again today

Mr Incredible: Good, that’s good

This dialogue shows the audience that Mr Incredible is not concerned about his family, but only concerned about himself. At the end of the movie however, the writers show he has changed by Mr Incredible noticing his daughter’s hair is tied back for the first time and compliments her on it.

Mr Incredible: Hey, you're wearing your hair back?

Violet: Yeah, I just… yeah

Mr Incredible: It looks good
Violet: Thanks, Dad

In the movie, Mr Incredible realizes he is nothing without his family, without those around him. This is as true to the audience as it is to Mr Incredible.

Now, I’m not saying that a movie or story cannot be successful without the use of developed minor characters. Films such as Telephone, Space Odyssey, and Moon, are all successful one man band shows, but what makes these films successful? Great acting and great dialogue mixed with really good pacing? Sure, but each one of these also had a very specific message to tell, they were less about the journey, trials and tribulations of a relatable protagonist. The goal of such movies is to tell a thought or feeling in a visually artistic way. The issue is that after the MTV generation, the general public’s attention span has greatly decreased.

Marsha Kinder’s study on the impact kids shows and Nintendo games have on the western nation’s youth shows that the desire to connect on a deeper level in the media has lessened significantly. “they do not, however, prepare or invite individuals to delve further into the mysteries and mazes of the human character, for they are, ultimately, dialogues between the machine and player rather than between individuals” (Andrew Horton, 1999, page 14) Of course, these successful ‘single character with a message’ movies are live action, and so still are able to achieve the audience-to-character relation and understanding on a deeper level that is far more difficult to obtain in an animation without the MTV and Nintendo influence.

So background characters are not integral for every script, every animated short, it all depends on what the message of your movie is. Animated features range from 1 minute to full feature length, an hour and thirty minutes. As background characters help define the protagonist as well as helps draw the audience into the story, if your story is short and a comedy, full of gags, then adding additional characters would just get in the way of the humour. Action/adventure shows tend to have a balance between action/gags as well as a story necessary to drive the audience from one explosion to the next, therefore additional background characters can make the world more full, make the situation more serious, even help with the gags between actions as to refrain from going from one explosion, to the protagonist, to another explosion, back to the protagonist, etc. Full length sitcom style animations depend upon clever dialogue and less action to fully interest and stimulate the audience throughout the entire story. These would be where the background characters with fully developed character bibles would be greatly beneficial. Acting for animators gives great advice on how to move a story along to keep the audience intrigued and entertained. One of the suggestions was to interrupt the action of the scene, once you’ve started a story path, the audience is pretty good at guessing where the story is leading, and is in fact disappointed and upset if the story doesn’t go in that direction, but if you still maintain the goal, but interrupt the path the hero takes to that goal, then audience doesn’t know what is coming, and second guesses about where the hero’s path is taking him. A great way to interrupt the action is with background characters, their influence can lead the hero astray, or make things more difficult, but still keep it within the boundaries of acceptance from the audience.

Character bible: a list of details about your character that defines their every being

“A character bible is the heart and soul of a cartoon series. Without a proper character bible you cannot even get started on talking to anyone about your concept. I have seen many character bibles from producers around the world in the past few years asking for co-production collaborations. I've seen really good ones and absolutely dreadful ones.” (Aldric Chang, 2008)

Every major animation studio, including George Lucas and George R. R. Martin create character bibles for their protagonist and even most of their background characters, usually only the ones with more than one line though. Mr Lucas’ usage of the character bibles for 70 plus characters for his ‘Space Opera’ shows us that if you are creating a world, the more the merrier. Even if it is just how they react to situations in the background, knowing how they’re going to behave, look, and react is not only far more appealing of a world to the audience, but also more relatable. Creating these little bibles for every individual character may seem cumbersome for a personality the audience probably won’t even notice helps solve an issue animations struggle with in comparison to live action. Hiring a real person for a live-action film, you are already getting a unique entity with their own looks, personality, style, reactions, etc. a factor that is far more difficult and time costly to produce in an animation.

Conclusion

In this dissertation, I have fully explored just how important background characters are to a Hollywood major production style animated story based upon the ‘hero’s journey’, and how the extra population help draw in the audience into the animated world and help the audience relate to the protagonist. For any motion picture to be successful, the audience needs to experience and connect with the world within the hero’s head, as well as the environment in which the hero interacts as suggested by Andrew Horton, in ‘Writing the Character-Centered Screenplay’. Without this connection, the audience won’t care about the hero’s journey, and not care about the message you are trying to present to them. Filmic elements as described by Margaret Mehring in ‘The Screenplay’ are ways to help the audience visually view the writer’s world, as even though the protagonist is the main focus of the movie, is only the base foundation with which to build the story in a motion picture. As the animated world and character is a fantasy, different steps need to be taken when writing a hero’s journey in order for the audience to empathise with the hero and care about their pilgrimage.

The background characters can have various meaning and symbols to the audience with which the script writer and director can utilize to help the audience fully understand and relate to the protagonist, they help the audience to identify the role the hero plays in their society, the majority of the time the audience knows someone who resembles that role in their lives, the writer can take that stereotypical feeling towards particular relationship and situations to help define the character in order to help the audience reach an emotional understanding and connection with the hero, all through the interactions with the extra characters. Background characters and minor characters can benefit the pacing of the story and move it along, they can be used to interrupt the current action and story to make it more appealing and comedic to the audience to keep them from getting bored and disconnect from the hero’s journey. A method tried, tested, and perfected by Ed Hooks and Brad Bird, Director of Pixar’s ‘The Incredibles’. Background characters can also be used like an advert on the Television between programs, giving the audience a breather between the heightened feelings and emotions that the main characters tend to stay in the constant state of.

In ‘Acting for Animators’ written by Ed Hooks, he warns against that making the mistake of creating and using a background character’s story and personality that are far more interesting than the main hero, it is the most sure fire way to lose the audience’s interest in the hero’s journey. George R. R. Martin was able to use a massive background cast with their own personality and story, but at the same time, keeping the main characters more interesting in ‘Game of Thrones’, explored what circumstance and in what genre the use of background characters are best implemented, he did this by suggesting the future potential of the main protagonists’ as infinite and mysterious and slightly on the fantastic side. Giving them an aspect you can’t help but to admire more than the everyday commoner.

How developed and how many characters used to support an animation varies significantly depending upon the genre. Short and a comedic animations full of gags, additional characters would just get in the way of the humour. Action/adventure shows need a balance between action/gags as well as a story necessary to drive the audience from one explosion to the next, background characters can make the world fuller, make the situation more serious, and even help with the gags between actions. Full length sitcom style animations depend upon clever dialogue and less action to fully interest and stimulate the audience throughout the entire story. These would be where the background characters with fully developed character bibles would be greatly beneficial. Since Hollywood style animated motion pictures usually incorporate two or more of these genres within the storyline, it is important to use this guideline to properly implement how many background characters into the appropriate part of the movie.

Personal Project Blocking

Blocking of my Final Major Personal Project. The Clip is from "The Man Who Knew Too Little"