Here is fantastic bit of acting reference from the production of Disney’s Alice in Wonderland, featuring the greats Ed Wynn, and Jerry Colonna. More evidence of what great comedic actors can bring to animated charaters. Look at this reference, and compare it to the recording booth videos of big name stars we see today. These men get in costume and use their full talents. The Youtube title says they used the actual audio from the reference.
The poster image for the clip shows a split screen comparison of Jerry Colonna and the March Hare. I notice they followed the basic hand gesture he used, but changed their relative position in order to get a better silhouette.
I have found some YouTube videos with some great insights to creating action comedy.
This first video isn’t specifically directed toward action comedy, but it uses a comedic scene as an example. In How to Make a Perfect Action Scene, Patrick H Willems explains why action scenes can’t simply be a series of exciting events. There should be either clear causation or surprising turns. He uses the term “therefore” when one event causes another event, and “but” for when there is an unexpected change. A video of animators Matt and Trey Parker speaking at NYU is his source for these terms.
After watching the video, I realized this is why the action scenes in the Indiana Jones movies work so well. They have both a logical progression and unexpected changes of direction. Rewatch the Club Obiwan scene that opens Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom for a great example.
The next video is from YouTuber BigStinkyMoose. His bio says he is a Canadian fight choreographer. His video Jackie Chan Famous Ladder Fight Scene Analysis does an excellent job of illustrating how Jackie Chan foreshadows the use of props in his fight scenes. Basically, Chan makes sure the props he uses are clearly visible in the shots before he puts them to use. I believe that helps the audience follow the fast action. It only serves to reinforce Chan’s reputation as a great filmmaker. Again, this involves comedy.
While that video is enough to explain the method, I recommend watching his follow-up video, below, that shows what happens when an action scene is shot without the same attention to detail. I especially like his use of clips from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. In the famous fight scene, the TV anchormen meet in an alley for a rumble, and they all produce frightening weapons from inside their suit jackets. That reminds me of how cartoon characters can suddenly pull out a giant hammer or bundle of dynamite.
It is curious that a “serious” fight scene can rely on almost cartoonish techniques, but Jackie Chan carefully prepares the props beforehand to make it believable. For more on Jackie, read my other post.
Recently, the home of Charles Schulz burned down in the fires in Santa Rosa, California. Fortunately, the Schulz museum was spared. The museum is near the Redwood Arena.
When my family wants to go ice skating, we always go to the Redwood Arena. It was built by Schulz as a gift to the city he lived in. His studio is across the street, and every day for lunch, he would go to the arena and eat in the cafe. There is a table by the window with a reserved sign on it, in memory of him.
I love seeing that table, as a relic of a blessed man. He was an artist, he brought joy to millions of people for many years, and he grew extremely wealthy. That’s what we should all want to be. Here is a small clue to how he did it. He draws, and discusses his inspiration.
Why the French Love Jerry Lewis is the title of a book by Rae Gordon. I have read the book, and found it worthwhile. Here is the product description from Amazon:
Vividly bringing to light the tradition of physical comedy in the French cabaret, café-concert, and early French film comedy, this book answers the perplexing question, “Why do the French love Jerry Lewis?” The extraordinary emphasis on nervous pathology in the Parisian café-concert, where the genres of the Epileptic Singer and the Idiot Comic took center stage, and where popular comic monologues and songs included “Man with a Tic” and “I’m Neurasthenic,” points to a fascinating intersection between medicine and popular culture. The French tradition of comic performance style between 1870 and 1910 nearly exactly duplicates the movements, gestures, tics, grimaces, and speech anomalies found in nineteenth-century hysteria; the characteristics of hysteria became a new aesthetics.
Early French film comedy carried on this tradition of frenetic gesture and gait, as most film performers came from these entertainments and from the circus. Even before Chaplin’s films triumphed in France, film comics were instantly recognizable from their pathological gait, just as Jacques Tati would be a half-century later. Comedy, a genre that dominated French cinema until World War I, has often been linked to a mass public for film; the author elucidates this link by proposing a broadly generalized cultural-medical phenomenon as the explanation for the dominance of the comic genre. Comic performance style drew from a group of nervous disorders characterized by the psychological automatism emanating from the “lower faculties”: nervous reflex, motor impulses, sensation, and instinct.
Building on her previous work on hysteria, the cabaret, and pathologies of movement in the films of Georges Méliès, and drawing on over 400 French films made between 1896 and 1915, the author contributes to a new theory of spectatorship at work in the cabaret, in shows of magnetizers, and in early French film comedy. Jerry Lewis touches a nerve in French cultural memory because, more than any other film comic, he incarnates this tradition of performance style.
Some time ago, I brought this up on a physical comedy discussion forum, and one of the responses was that the French Jerry Lewis movies were dubbed by some one with a very funny voice, and that is what people laughed at. Thanks to youtube, we can now here the voice.
The first filmed comedy was made in Lyon France in 1895 by the Lumiere brothers. The French title, L’Arroseur Arrosé, is translated into English as The Sprinkler Sprinkled. It is a great example of prank comedy, which I cover more fully in my book.
I recently learned from twitter user @41strange about this comic strip by illustrator Hermann Vogel, from 1887. Apparently, it was a popular joke around this time in Europe. The first film comedy shows us how comic strips have always been an inspiration.
Additionally, it is believed that this film was the first to be promoted by a poster. I had wanted to include this poster in my book, but it was still under copyright in France at that time.
