‘How does the animator create a world beyond reality?’
Film animators design their story’s atmosphere with enough reality, so that the audience can relate to it. This association can then be balanced with a deliberate manipulation of key features to create a different reality in order to engage the audience and present a moral for their consideration. In 2008, Doug Sweetland created Presto, a Pixar-produced short film. Presto demonstrates a world stretched beyond our reality through the defiance of the laws of physics, human attributes in the character of an animal, and a human character’s seeming indestructability in order that the moral of the story could be communicated.
As a child, Doug Sweetland enthusiastically watched the classic Disney films, and drew cartoon strips for his local community in Pennsylvania, developing his passion for animation. A student of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), Sweetland left after three semesters in order to join Pixar and work on the animation of their upcoming feature-film Toy Story (1995). Sweetland continued working for Pixar, animating many subsequent films including A Bug’s Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc. Finding Nemo, Cars and The Incredibles, to which he was also promoted as a storyboarding artist. Building his reputation as one of the most talented animators in the business, Sweetland was awarded back-to-back Annie awards for his work on the character animation for Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo. Sweetland was granted the opportunity to write, direct and animate his own short-film, Presto, to precede Pixar’s WALL-E in cinemas.
Presto opens in the dressing room backstage of a very realistic-looking theatre using camera techniques familiar to the audience from regular movies. We, the audience, first meet a very cute and very hungry and irritated Alec Azam, a small white rabbit locked in a cage. Alec desperately tries to grasp a carrot outside the cage just inches out of his reach. Having finished a meal, Presto DiGiotagione, a tall, poised, Vaudevillian-like magician enters and locks the door behind. Presto prepares to test the well-known magic trick of pulling Alec out of his top hat though a wizard’s hat that acts like a portal through space placed on Alec’s head. Alec, however, continuously runs away from the portal/wizard’s hat towards the carrot, each time being dragged back or stopped by Presto. A knock is heard on the door to suggest that it is time for the show to start, rushing Presto out onto the stage and dumping Alec wearing the wizard’s hat next to the stage, all before Presto could feed Alec the carrot.
With the viewer’s sympathy for Alec’s difficulty established, the hungry and agitated bunny demonstrates a reluctance to cooperate, threatening Presto’s act. When Presto reaches into his top hat to pull the proverbial rabbit from the hat, he turns to see that Alec has now removed the hat from his head, holding it outstretched. Alec signals to his mouth implying he will put it back on when he is given the carrot. The rest of the performance comprises of Presto attempting to catch Alec through the hat; however, Alec outsmarts the magician’s actions and uses the hat’s magic against Presto to physically harm him numerous times. This includes directing Presto’s outstretched fingers into an electrical socket, catching his hand in a mousetrap and pulling his head into a ventilation pipe. The short film then concludes with Alec using the hat to save Presto from crashing into the stage floor after a fall from a great height. Presto rewards Alec with the long overdue carrot, the bunny’s hunger is satisfied, and the last shot of the film shows a poster advertising ongoing performances of the popular duo.
The initial pitch for Sweetland’s short film was centred on a “sympathetic magician who gets dumped by his rabbit” who then incorporates a new rabbit that is a fan of the show but suffers from stage fright. As it was too long and complicated to describe, Sweetland rewrote the film, creating it into more of a slapstick piece. The gag-based format of the film was greatly influenced by performers such as the Marx Brothers and Charlie Chaplin and shows such as Tom & Jerry and Looney Tunes, to which Alec is considered a nod to Bugs Bunny. Several Opera Houses and vaudeville theatres inspired the design of the theatre in Presto, but because of the expense of designing 2500 patrons, most of the footage used was developed from the audience models from Ratatouille. Presto was awarded an Academy Award nomination in the Best Animated Short Film category of 2008 and was included in the Animation Show of Shows of the same year.
Sweetland incorporates portals and magic into his short film, bending the level of reality to engage the audience and use it as the fundamental drive behind the conflict of the narrative. Later on in the intense battle between the magician and the bunny, Presto, once again, reaches into his top hat, but a quick-reacting Alec points the interconnected hat towards a nearby power point, causing Presto’s fingers to electrocute himself. The fight between the two becomes much more intelligent and humorous when expressed through indirect contact, rather than it just being a quarrel face to face. The magic of the portal, however, stretches the line of reality as it defies our laws of physics, in order that this alternative reality might assist the exploration of the film’s core moral of collaboration and cooperation.
Another defining feature of Presto is the human-like characterisation of Alec. Alec’s personality and appearance is easily comparable to Bugs Bunny, the world-famous charismatic star of the Looney Tunes franchise, which was a heavy influence on the narrative of the film. Much like Bugs Bunny before him, Alec is consistently exhibiting human-like facial expressions and emotions, such as hunger, anger, confusion, mischief and joy. These assist to express a personality in a way that is easier to relate to, as a viewer. This feature – an animal expressing human experience– is a well-used tool by animators to create a world beyond the limitations of our reality in service of the animator’s narrative vision.
Another element of unreality created by the animator is seen in the brawl between the two main characters, when Presto takes a beating and is apparently indestructible. After several harms are sent his way, enough to permanently damage a normal human, Presto manages to survive and get back on his feet. Though the injuries are visible, such as the magician’s black eye after poking himself through the connected hats, Presto still persists with chasing after Alec and continuing the act for the receptive audience. This enables the humour to be intensified so that, as the narrative concludes, the resolution is also intensified allowing the moral of the story to be crystal clear.
In conclusion, animators create a world beyond reality through carefully selected bending of the aspects of the real word. This suspension of reality within an animation is what engages audiences of a vast range of ages, languages and cultures and allows animators to share a moral through their films. In Presto, Doug Sweetland suspends the reality in his created world by using magic and the defiance of the law of the physics, animals with human attributes and an amount of nonsense in a human’s indestructability. Through these techniques we learn a deep truth about reality – that when we cooperate, everyone wins.
