Don Hertzfeldt

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Jump to: navigation, search
Don Hertzfeldt

Don Hertzfeldt at his animation desk, during production of "The Meaning of Life"
Born August 1, 1976 (1976-08-01) (age 32)
Fremont, California
Nationality Flag of the United States American
Field Independent film, Animation
Training University of California, Santa Barbara
Works Billy's Balloon, Rejected, Everything Will Be OK
Influenced by Stanley Kubrick, Monty Python, David Lynch, Edward Gorey, Buster Keaton
Awards

Don Hertzfeldt (born August 1, 1976) is the creator of many short animated films, including the Academy-Award nominated cult favorite Rejected and Everything Will Be OK. Collectively, his animated films have received over one hundred awards and have been presented in over a thousand film festivals and venues worldwide. Before the age of thirty, his films were already the subject of several career retrospectives.

The popularity of his work is unprecedented in the history of independent animation and his films are frequently quoted and referenced in pop culture. [1] In 2009, the Sundance Film Festival noted, "If cinephiles think shorts don't generate the same sort of hype and fanbase as feature films, they obviously haven't heard of Don Hertzfeldt." [2]

Hertzfeldt is currently on a sold-out 20-city theatrical tour in support of his latest short film, the 22 minute I am so proud of you. The tour is presenting a retrospective of his animated films, followed by the regional premiere(s) of I am so Proud of You and a rare onstage interview and audience chat with him. [3]

Contents

[edit] Early life and student films

Hertzfeldt was born in Fremont, California where he attended local schools and drew comic books. At 15, he began to teach himself animation with a small video camera.[4] From a 2001 interview, Don says: "I watched films relentlessly growing up, and was fascinated by visual effects. My family used to make outings to animation festivals in San Francisco every year, so credit my parents for that. I ended up seeing all of those classic [independent] cartoons throughout my teenage years. But animation production for me sort of just happened as a by-product. I've been drawing things and writing things all my life, and animating my stories was always cheaper to do and looked more interesting than low budget live action." [5]

Hertzfeldt has never held any job other than creating his own animated films, not even in his youth.[6] His earliest video animations found film festival exposure, and in film school at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he was able to find international distribution for all of his 16mm student films: Ah, L'Amour, Genre, Lily and Jim, and Billy's Balloon (all created between the ages of 18-21).

Hertzfeldt lives in Santa Barbara, California and has, to date, produced all his films there.

[edit] Technique

Hertzfeldt's films often feature hand-drawn stick figures acting out combinations of slapstick, absurd, and black humor along with heavier existential themes. Hertzfeldt creates his films with traditional pen and paper animation without the aid of computers. He uses 16mm or 35mm film cameras to photograph his artwork and often employs old-fashioned special effect techniques such as multiple exposures, in-camera mattes, and experimental photography (seen to large effect in The Meaning of Life and Everything Will Be OK). While some of these techniques are as traditional as an occasional stop-motion animation sequence (as in Intermission in the Third Dimension) or a universe of moving stars created by back-lit pin holes (The Meaning of Life), other effects are new innovations on classical methods, as seen with the rippling paper and pencils becoming a part of the visuals (Rejected, Genre, and Ah, L'Amour), or the screen itself dividing and erupting into separately moving windows of action (Everything Will Be OK). [7] [8] [9]

Since 1999, Hertzfeldt has photographed all his films on an antique 35mm Richardson animation camera stand, believed to be the same camera that photographed many of the early Peanuts cartoons in the 1960s and 70's.[10] It is reportedly one of the last remaining functioning cameras of its kind left in America (if not the world), and Hertzfeldt finds it to be a crucial element in the creation of his films and their unique visuals.[11]

Hertzfeldt is one of few filmmakers who could be considered an auteur: it's not unusual for him to single-handedly write, direct, produce, animate, photograph, edit, record and mix sound, and/or compose music for one of his films, at times requiring years to complete a single short. The animation alone for one of his films may often require tens of thousands of drawings.

Discussing film and digital technology with the New York Times, Hertzfeldt noted, “I don’t know why these things are always framed as a big dumb cage match: Hand-drawn versus computers, film versus digital. We have over 100 years now of amazing film technology to play with, I don’t understand why any artists would want to throw any of their tools out of the box. Many people assume that because I shoot on film and animate on paper I must be doing things the hard way, when in fact my last four movies would have been visually impossible to produce digitally. The only thing that matters is what actually winds up on the big screen, not how you got it there. You could make a cartoon in crayons about a red square that falls in unrequited love with a blue circle, and there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the house if you know how to tell a story.” [12]

Hertzfeldt frequently scores his pictures with classical music and opera. The music of Tchaikovsky, Bizet, Smetana, Beethoven, Richard Strauss, Wagner, and Johann Strauss have all appeared in his films. On occasion, Hertzfeldt has also scored portions of his films himself, with a guitar or keyboard.

[edit] Popularity and influence

A line around the block for An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt

Hertzfeldt's early films have been credited as being a prominent influence on surrealism and absurdism in animation in the 2000s, particularly influencing Adult Swim style animated comedy.[13] In 2008, Comedy Central noted his work as having "influenced an entire generation of filmmakers." [14]

His more recent films, such as The Meaning of Life and Everything Will Be OK, expanded upon his signature style of dark humor to explore deeper themes of existentialism, life and death, and philosophy. Critics have favorably compared these shorts to the work of Stanley Kubrick[15] and David Lynch,[16] respectively. Everything Will Be OK was described as "probably the best work he’s done in his very incredible and consistently amazing young career." [17]

Hertzfeldt's films are regularly found in film festivals around the world, touring animation programs like the Animation Show, and on DVD collections. The cartoons are also featured occasionally on television: MTV, Bravo, Via X, Sundance Channel, IFC, and the Cartoon Network being a few channels that have carried his work internationally.

The popularity of Hertzfeldt's shorts has led to many Internet bootlegs, bringing his work to an audience of millions. He's reportedly unhappy with the very poor quality most of these online videos provide (as well as how the bootlegs are frequently re-edited, uncredited, or remixed), but is not interested in "harassing fans." In the FAQ of his website, Hertzfeldt simply notes that movies are not meant to be seen on the Internet: "If you've only seen a film downgraded on the Internet or some strange miniature device, in many ways you haven't really seen it yet. YouTube is great for home videos of your cat falling off the roof but it is not really the proper setting for "cinema"... Movies are meant to be seen in the dark, hopefully with an audience, and with your undivided attention - this last one is non-negotiable." [18]

Hertzfeldt prefers to not sell any of his animation artwork. In the late 90's and early 00's, his website Bitter Films annually auctioned off artwork instead to raise thousands of dollars for local Santa Barbara charities. Other original drawings have been occasionally given away through the Bitter Films online store through special promotions. Because Hertzfeldt also rarely does signings, his artwork is very rare for animation collectors or casual fans to own.

[edit] "Rejected"

Rejected was Hertzfeldt's first film out of college. Released in theaters in 2000, the short won dozens of awards, was nominated for an Oscar, and is an enduring cult classic that is frequently quoted or referenced in pop culture.[19] Fans of the cartoon have been known to wear costumes, re-enact their favorite scenes in fan films, and some have had tattoos made of their favorite characters. [20] Public screenings of the short sometimes become a "Rocky Horror Picture Show-esque feedback loop" of fans reciting favorite lines back at the screen.[21] The short's enduring popularity has led the film to be described as "this generation's A Hard Day's Night".[22]

The film presents itself as a reel of rejected commercial work by a fictional version of Don Hertzfeldt. The commissioned animated vignettes grow more and more abstract and inappropriate as the animator suffers a mental breakdown, until they literally fall apart.

Although the film is of course fictional and Hertzfeldt has never done any commercial work, he did receive many offers to do television commercials after Billy's Balloon garnered international attention and acclaim. Hertzfeldt is an artist with anti-corporate leanings and in appearances has often told the humorous story of how he was tempted to produce the worst possible cartoons he could come up with for the companies, make off with their money, and see if they would actually make it to air. Eventually this became the germ for Rejected's theme of a collection of cartoons so bad they were rejected by advertising agencies, leading to their creator's breakdown.

[edit] "The Animation Show"

In 2003, Hertzfeldt created The Animation Show with Beavis and Butt-head creator Mike Judge, a biennial North American touring festival that brings independent animated short films to more movie theaters than any distributor in history. The programs are personally curated by Hertzfeldt and Judge. A second Animation Show edition toured throughout 2005, featuring Hertzfeldt's short film The Meaning of Life and new films by animators like Peter Cornwell and Georges Schwizgebel. The third season of The Animation Show began its nationwide release in January 2007, featuring new work by animators Joanna Quinn and Bill Plympton, as well as Hertzfeldt's own Everything Will Be OK.

A stated goal of The Animation Show is to regularly "free the work of these independent artists from the dungeons of Internet exhibition," and bring them into proper movie theaters where most of these short films were meant to be seen. The Animation Show has meanwhile launched a supplemental DVD series of animated short films, with content that often varies from the annual theatrical programs. These DVDs are distributed by MTV.

In a March 2008 entry in his blog, Hertzfeldt announced he had decided to leave The Animation Show, after having programmed (and contributing films to) three tours. No other details were provided. A fourth season of the program was released in theaters in summer 2008, with no involvement from him. [23]

[edit] "The Meaning of Life"

Almost four years in the making, Hertzfeldt's twelve minute The Meaning of Life premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and toured film and animation festivals in 2005-06. Though its abstract nature puzzled some critics, it received almost universally positive reviews. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called the film "the closest thing on film yet to Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey." [24]

In the film, the evolution of the human race is traced from prehistory (mankind as blob forms), through today (mankind as teeming crowds of selfish, fighting, or lost individuals), to hundreds of millions of years into the future as our species evolves into countless new forms; all of them still behaving the same way. The film concludes in the extreme future, with two creatures (apparently an adult and child subspecies of future human), having a conversation about the meaning of life on a colorful shore.

[edit] The "Everything will be OK" film cycle

Everything Will Be OK was released in 2006 and was Hertzfeldt's most critically successful piece to date, receiving his strongest reviews. The Boston Globe called the film a "masterpiece" with the Boston Phoenix declaring Hertzfeldt a "genius." [25] The short film was a cover story on the Chicago Reader, receiving four stars from critic J.R. Jones. "Variety" film critic Robert Koehler named Everything Will Be OK one of the "Best Films of 2007." [26]

The film is the first chapter of a three-part story about Bill, a lonely everyman whose daily routines, perceptions, and dreams are all illustrated onscreen via multiple split-screen windows. Bill's mundane life, narrated in several humorous and dramatic anecdotes, very gradually grows dark and terrifying as he appears to be suffering from a possibly fatal disorder.

The film's scenes are often divided into multiple windows of action on the screen at once, all against a background of pure black. Some animated still photographs are also incorporated inside certain windows, as well as a handful of the colorful special effects and experimental film techniques that Hertzfeldt first utilized in The Meaning of Life. As with all his films, no computers were used in creating the picture; all of the multiple window effects were captured in-camera on his 35mm animation camera.

Everything Will Be OK won the Grand Jury Prize for Short Filmmaking at the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, the Lawrence Kasdan Award for Best Narrative Film at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, the Grand Prize at the London Animation Festival, and 34 other awards.

I am so proud of you, the second chapter of Everything Will Be OK, was released in autumn 2008, with a third and presumably final chapter of the trilogy to follow. Since its release Hertzfeldt has traveled with I am so proud of you and a selection of his other films to 20 cities on a sold-out American tour (with one stop in the UK). I am so proud of you is also playing at film festivals throughout 2009, and with the Sundance Film Festival in January.

[edit] Current work

According to his blog, Hertzfeldt is animating a "short, silly thing" before beginning production on the third chapter of Everything Will Be OK.

In 2008 he completed and released I am so proud of you, the second chapter of Everything Will Be OK.

According to his blog, Hertzfeldt has been developing an animated project for television. He has also made references to working on a graphic novel. [27]

[edit] Awards and honors

In 1998, at the age of 21, Hertzfeldt was nominated for the Short Film Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for Billy's Balloon, where he was the youngest director in competition. The following year Billy's Balloon won the Slamdance Film Festival Grand Jury Award.

In 2000, at the age of 23, Hertzfeldt was nominated for the Academy Award for Animated Short Film for his fifth short film, Rejected.

In 2001, Hertzfeldt was named by Filmmaker Magazine as one of the "Top 25 Filmmakers to Watch".

Hertzfeldt has had more films play in competition at the Sundance Film Festival than than any other filmmaker, with four: Rejected, The Meaning of Life, Everything Will Be OK, and I Am So Proud of You. Everything Will Be OK won the Jury Award for Short Filmmaking at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2007, a prize rarely given to an animated film. [28]

In 2007, according to the animation industry website Cartoon Brew, Everything Will Be OK advanced to the final round of voting as a contender for an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Short, but did not make the ultimate list of five nominees.

In 2007, Hertzfeldt accepted an invitation from the George Eastman House's motion picture archives to indefinitely store and preserve the historically important original film elements and camera negatives to his collected work from 1995-2005.

Collectively, Hertzfeldt's work has received over one hundred and thirty film festival awards.

[edit] DVD release

Bitter Films Volume One: 1995-2005

An exhaustive DVD collection of all of Hertzfeldt's films from 1995 to 2005 was released in 2006. The short films were remastered and restored in high definition from the original film negatives. The DVD was self-produced and released by Bitter Films, and made available only to fans via the Bitter Films website.

The DVD marked the first time his student films such as Genre and Lily and Jim were made widely available to the public - many of these works were only previously found on limited-release VHS collections of animated shorts, long out of print.

The special features for Bitter Films Volume One: 1995-2005 include:

  • The documentary, Watching Grass Grow: Animating The Meaning of Life'
  • The Animation Show Trilogy cartoons
  • Lily and Jim deleted dialogues and outtakes
  • Rejected trivia captions
  • The Meaning of Life special effects audio commentary
  • An extensive 140+ page "Archive" section, featuring rare footage from Hertzfeldt's earliest cartoons, original pencil tests, deleted sequences, abandoned footage, and sketch to scene comparisons
  • Lily and Jim reunion commentary with the original voice actors
  • Rejected audio commentary
  • Preview of Everything Will Be OK
  • The Animation Show interviews with Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt
  • Ah, L'Amour bonus 2005 soundtrack
  • 16 page retrospective booklet, featuring liner notes by Hertzfeldt
  • Original animated menus and transitions

The first 750 pre-orderers of the DVD received an "exclusive mystery gift": either a 35mm clipping from Rejected that was autographed by Don, or a unique drawing by Don on a Post-it note.

In 2001, Bitter Films released a limited edition DVD "single" of the popular short Rejected, and a similar 2007 "single" release of Everything Will Be OK is also now available.

[edit] View on commercialism

Hertzfeldt has been offered numerous lucrative commercial deals, including ad campaigns for Cingular Wireless and United Airlines, which he has declined. He has made various comments over the years about his distaste for corporate America and promises his fans he'll never be involved with the commercial world. [18] He believes that advertising campaigns are essentially "lies" and he never wants to be dishonest with his audience (as stated in the caption commentary of Rejected on the Bitter Films Vol. 1 DVD).

In a March 2009 blog entry, Hertzfeldt compared making films to his love of hiking and exploring new places: something he does just because he "enjoys doing it and will probably always enjoy doing it." He compared doing commercials to being paid not to go walking in the woods, but to walk around somebody's house eight hours a day wearing a sandwich board with a picture of a product on it. "Money's not the reason I take walks. It doesn't really factor into it. I take walks because I enjoy doing it. It's something I'd do if I was rich and it's something I'd do if I were poor." [29]

Nevertheless, several international ad campaigns have borrowed heavily from his unique style and bear enough resemblance to Hertzfeldt's work as to be mistaken for it. The most well-known instance of this is a series of 2004-2009 television ads for Kellogg's Pop-Tarts, which use black and white stick figures, "squiggly" animation, surreal humor, and even an occasional crumpling paper effect, all very similar to Hertzfeldt's style. Despite all these similarities, Hertzfeldt was not involved in any way.[30] It is unknown if the Kellogg Company is intentionally trying to mimic his style, or if these similarities are purely coincidental. In Canada, the not-for-profit corporation Encorp has used a Hertzfeldt-like style of short animation clips on TV and the Internet to promote its "Don't Mess With Karma" campaign to encourage recycling.[31]


[edit] Filmography

[edit] References

  1. ^ "An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt". evilmonito.com. http://evilmonito.com/2008/10/24/an-evening-with-don-hertzfeldt/. Retrieved on 2008-12-02. 
  2. ^ "THE EXISTENTIAL LIFE OF A STICK FIGURE". sundance.org. http://festival.sundance.org/2009/news/article/i_am_so_proud_of_you_the_existential_life_of_a_stick_figure/. Retrieved on 2009-02-05. 
  3. ^ "An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt". originalalamo.com. http://www.originalalamo.com/Show.aspx?id=5829. Retrieved on 2008-10-06. 
  4. ^ Timberg, Scott (February 2002), "Don Hertzfeldt is the most inventive underground animator in America.", New Times LA (Los Angeles, California: New Times Media), http://www.bitterfilms.com/articles-e.html, retrieved on 2007-03-28 
  5. ^ "February through June 2001". articles and interviews archive. bitterfilms.com. http://www.bitterfilms.com/articles-b.html. Retrieved on 2007-03-29. 
  6. ^ Parks, Finnegan (15 October 2007). "A Conversation With Don Hertzfeldt, Part Four". A Conversation With Don Hertzfeldt. Bridgerack.com. http://bridgerack.com/content/view/24/37/. Retrieved on 2007-10-30. 
  7. ^ Jones, J.R.. ""Truth in Doodling"". magazine article. Chicago Reader. http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/moviereviews/2007/070209/. 
  8. ^ ""the meaning of life"". production information about "the meaning of life". bitterfilms.com. http://www.bitterfilms.com/meaningoflife.html. 
  9. ^ ""rejected"". production information about "rejected". bitterfilms.com. http://www.bitterfilms.com/rejected.html. 
  10. ^ es. "Biography for Don Hertzfeldt". Internet Movie Database. http://imdb.com/name/nm0381116/bio. Retrieved on 2007-03-23. 
  11. ^ Don Hertzfeldt. bitter films volume one: 1995-2005 (audio commentary) [DVD].
  12. ^ Anderson, John. ""Contemporary Animators Rely on Traditional Techniques"". newspaper article. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/30/movies/30ande.html?_r=2/. 
  13. ^ Clark, Craig J. (April 12, 2007). "Aqua Teen on the Big Screen: Interview with Matt Maiellaro & Dave Willis". Animation World Magazine. Animation World Network. 5. http://mag.awn.com/article_view.php?id=3242&page=all&img=true. Retrieved on 2007-05-17. 
  14. ^ Tobey, Matt (May 29, 2008). "CC Insider Interview". Comedy Central. 1. http://ccinsider.comedycentral.com/cc_insider/2008/05/don-hertzfeldt.html. Retrieved on 2008-06-01. 
  15. ^ Longino, Bob (18 March 2005), "12 animated shorts aren't made for kids", The Atlanta Journal-Constitution (Atlanta, Georgia: Cox Enterprises) 57 (77): h1+h8, http://www.bitterfilms.com/meaningoflife.html, retrieved on 2007-10-18 
  16. ^ Reviews for Everything will be OK
  17. ^ Timmermann, Pete (July 3, 2008). "Playback STL". http://www.playbackstl.com/content/view/7777/160/. Retrieved on 2008-07-04. 
  18. ^ a b "frequently asked questions". bitterfilms.com. http://bitterfilms.com/faq.html. Retrieved on 2007-01-24. 
  19. ^ Interview with Don Hertzfeldt
  20. ^ Fans displaying tattoos and cosplay
  21. ^ Quote from article about comedy
  22. ^ James Digiovanna, "Tucson Weekly", April 14 2005
  23. ^ [http://www.bitterfilms.com/forum.html>
  24. ^ The Meaning of Life at bitterfilms.com
  25. ^ [1]
  26. ^ filmjourney.org : Robert Koehler's Best of 2007
  27. ^ [http://www.bitterfilms.com/forum.html>
  28. ^ "2007 Sundance Film Festival Announces Jury and Audience Awards" (PDF). Sundance Institute. January 27, 2007. 5. http://festival.sundance.org/2007/winners/2007_Sundance_Film_Festival_Announces_Jury_and_Audience_Awards.pdf. Retrieved on 2007-03-28. 
  29. ^ [http://www.bitterfilms.com/forum.html>
  30. ^ Vespe, Eric (July 27, 2006). "Killer Rabbit w/info on DARK CRYSTAL 2, PAN'S LABYRINTH, HELLBOY ANIMATED, CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE & more!!!". Ain't It Cool News. http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=23993. Retrieved on 2006-08-08. 
  31. ^ "Don't Mess With Karma". encorp.ca. http://dontmesswithkarma.com/. 

[edit] External links

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Hertzfeldt"
Personal tools