FILMMAKER IN FOCUS: WEBSTER CROWELL

A Stop-Motion Animator Explores the Sound of Motion

By Webster Crowell

A frame from Webster Crowell’s Parasol, featuring Sarah Harlett and Jonah Von Shprecken.

One of the inexplicable aesthetic facts is that stop-motion animation sounds like accordions. Just does. Ok, maybe bagpipes and a little pipe organ. If there ever was a camera with bellows and ivory keys, it was assembled for animation.

Stop-motion falls into a dangerous musical sub-genre of post-retro absurdism – the style is so tactile, so Eastern European. Every stop-motion animator alive has a weakness for outdated instruments, just as we all fight a compulsion to animate bugs.

When I met Joe Zajonz to compose a score for my Grand Illusion film [a promo trailer for the fabled Seattle cinema], we agreed that if it didn’t come off a little rough the film would feel like it was pulled from a vault instead of the year-in-the-making premiere it was at the time. The film was essentially silent—dramatic moments relied on the music and Foley effects not only to set the mood, but also to let the audience know it was contemporary. Joe scored the music to match a few key gestures and introduced a couple rough edges into the melody, creating a Looney tunes score for a Bergman film.

On my feature film Borrowing Time (2004) we arduously sifted through pre-recorded music to match the action. Classical music leant scale but it helps to know your composers as some pieces are too well known. Try to steal from “Ride of the Valkyries” or Mozart’s “Requiem” and your audience will probably recall the last movie that borrowed that score. I had an advisor, Josef Krebs, who previewed the film and returned with stacks of music to audition until we found something that matched. With a lot of cutting and looping, Strauss sounds magnificent accompanying toy planes flying on wires through smoke and cotton balls.

My current project, a short film called Parasol, is another silent film with some huge visual cues and actual tango dancing animated into the narrative. Composer Jason Staczek is working on the score and again, the trick is to keep something as traditional and grounded as Tango music from making the film feel dated. We’re still figuring that out, our own twist on the Gotan Project or Electrocutango (electronica using classical instruments) timed to the action of the film and built around a score of found sound and Foley work. More than ever before, the film is tactile and the music lays on a bed of bicycle noise, traffic and the percussive whump of opening umbrellas. The score evolves with the story and engages with the sound and speed of the animation. Close your eyes and the soundtrack alone should make you want to jump on a bike and ride in the rain.

For me, the best way to do that is finding a strong composer whose sound I like, giving them an idea what theme I’m looking for and a few vital scoring moments to emphasize actions, and then trust them to figure out the rest.