‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit’ — Bumping the lamp
When I was a kid, I used to sleepover at my aunt’s house on the nights of Saturday to Sunday. I always woke up early, usually I was the only person awaken in the apartment at 7 a.m.. I would go to the living room and EVERY TIME I’d watch the same films: The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993, Touchstone Pictures), by Henry Selick, or Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988, Touchstone Pictures), by Robert Zemeckis.
I must have watched Roger Rabbit more than a hundred times. I was completely hallucinated by this film in my childhood. And this passion grew even bigger when I discovered that Richard Williams had been the director of animation, and that he was a main reference as well in the industry as in my History of Animation classes.
I frequently watched the making of the film that came with the DVD, but I didn’t understand none of the technical parts and the material barely hit the surface of the production. When I was reintroduced to the film in my animation classes in college, a heat rose in my spine when I finally understood the mechanism of production and to realize that it was, in fact, possible to make such a bald film such as this.
It is because of Who Framed Roger Rabbit that I am so fascinated for techniques in visual effects. Its intention had instant effect on me: I did not believe that the animated characters weren’t real. The film explored the topic with such high level of perfection that I still await for another film that combines the elements of live-action and animation in such effective and legit way as this.
Other attempts to mix reality with animation had already been made before, but none hit Roger Rabbit’s degree of excellence and efficiency. Take Mary Poppins (1964, Walt Disney Productions) as an example. The film was groundbreaking in the use of techniques such as rotoscopy — defined by the Animated Dictionary of LabJor FAAP as an “animation made on top of a reference recorded in live action”. However the film did not succeed with the direct interaction among the actors with the animated characters. And for a very simple reason: the eye line of the actors crossed the animated characters. There wasn’t really a connection between the two parts, and the illusion does not sustain.
The visual contact between the real actors and the animated characters was essential for the integration of the illusion. However, other elements helped “Roger Rabbit” to differ from previous films. Despite the animation in perspective depicted in this article’s biography, the two-dimensional characters needed to convince the audience that they lived in a three-dimensional environment. To to this, director Robert Zemeckis wanted the animated characters to interact with the greatest amount of real objects as possible.
And as if the physical interaction with real actors wasn’t enough, Roger Rabbit was even bolder in the use of a relatively simple technique: camera movement. “Zemeckis was instructed not to use camera movement in the shots which animated characters were present”, states Eliseu Lopes Filho, coordinator of the major in Animation of FAAP. But it was Williams who convinced him otherwise, elevating the realism.
To Williams, animations had never been putted into this shots for pure laziness of the animators. “We’re supposed to turn things in every direction”, said Williams in an interview quoted in the video Who Framed Roger Rabbit — The 3 Rules of Living Animation (in the channel “kaptainkristian”, at 4'4'’). “But isn’t that a lot of work? Yeah! Twice as much work.” In order for the presence of the animated character in moving environments to be possible, all the frames needed to be drawn in perspective.
Animator Nik Ranieri — who animated some scenes for Roger Rabbit — revealed to LabJor FAAP that all the frames of the live action footage that contained animation were scanned and delivered to the animators. “With 3 to 5 of those stats on your desk, the light table barely worked”, he said. “It was a real struggle to match your drawings to the live action frames. Also, the camera moved so much that you would have to find points on the stats with which to register the character’s position. And on top of all that, you had to create beautiful animation. It was a tough film but one I wouldn’t have missed for the world.”
Take as an example this scene which detective Eddie Valliant watches Jessica Rabbit performing in a club. The animated character gets off the stage, touches Eddie’s coat and takes the hat off his head. Following that, Jessica pulls Eddie’s tie and stares at him for a few seconds.
In the moments that the character physically interacts with the actor, a person of short stature made Jessica’s hands movements with the actor Bob Hoskins. In the process of animation, the hands were rotoscoped and the character was drawn on top of the person.
Another key element for the illusion of animated characters living in the real world was what definitely differed Roger Rabbit from its predecessors: shadow. In a scene, detective Eddie needs to get rid of a handcuff that sticks him to Roger Rabbit in a room which the lamp constantly bumps. The lighting of the environment constantly changes, as well as Roger’s shadow. The circular shape of the shadows in his body gives the impression of three dimensions.
This scene was so complicated to be made that it coined a term in the animation industry called “bumping the lamp”. It represents the extra struggle that must be done in an animation to perfect it’s result, even if it’s for something that the audience will never notice, like the case of Roger’s shadow.
I think this is the legacy of this film. I cannot forget to mention the fun story, it’s impressive visual effects and quite a singular production history. It’s an encouragement to always seek the best possible results, as Williams constantly stimulated his animators. There is no way not to make this conclusion from the film that coined the term that stimulates the animators to sacrifice more of their resting time to archive a much more satisfactory result. It is something I believe we can approach with anything in life: not to satisfy with the ordinary and to think of new ways to fascinate people. To Richard Williams and his team, I am forever grateful for this lesson.
André Barroso, 21, is a former Animation Student from FAAP.
To access the original article in Portuguese, click here.
