Jan 13, 2021

Maureen Furniss on the animation that changed me, "Voices"

Maureen Furniss is featured this week on The Animation That Changed Me. The series features leading artists and industry luminaries discussing animation works that have had a profound impact on them.

Furniss, one of the world's leading animation scholars, is the author of many books on animation, including The Animation Bible, Art in Motion:, Animation Aesthetics. Animation Aesthetics, and A New History of Animation. He is the founding editor of The Animation Journal, a founding member and past president of the Society for Animation Studies, and co-director of the Experimental Animation Program at the University of Colorato.

Furniss chose "Voices," one of the short films that Joanna Priestley created as part of her MFA in Experimental Animation at Kalatz. The film revolves around Priestley's rotoscoped head, and Priestley discusses the various themes that occupy her mind. Below, Furniss discusses why she chose the film:

Maureen Furniss: I first saw "Voices" around 1985. I won tickets to an early Spike and Mike show (aka Spike and Mike Festival of Animation) at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art in San Diego. It was a film by a woman, featuring a woman (her rotoscoped image), talking about very non-animated topics. I had never seen anything like it.

I won a ticket from a radio station and went to the screening. This was long before the big Comic-Con in San Diego, so I was able to get in and out of the venue without reservations or long lines. The Simpsons had not yet appeared. Cable television had just begun. Liquid television was still a few years away. I was in graduate school at San Diego State University (SDSU), majoring in a live-action program.

I generally credit Voice with launching my career. I knew nothing about independent animation, but I thought, "Maybe I can do it." I was very naive.

At the time, I loved to draw, but SDSU didn't offer animation courses. Nevertheless, as an undergraduate student, I drew a cel animation based on a picture book called "Harry, Blow Me a Kiss." That picture book was about a naughty kitten who wouldn't give the reader a kiss. Of course, I did not have permission to use this picture book, and none of my teachers advised me to do so. It didn't matter. The film was finished, but it was not festival material. It was made for fun, as an independent study.

It is a little known fact that one year I won the "Best Film" award at the festival for my film "Dancing Shoes Blues". The film featured all of my friends and a dream sequence that takes place when one of them falls asleep. I set it up so that it would be an animation of my friends popping out of their closets and tempting her party shoes to start dancing. It was probably shot in Super 8 or 16mm. I have also shot a dance film in the style of Norman McLaren's pas de deux, with the two dancers portrayed directly on 16mm film. It must have been a good film because the two dancers fell in love.

When I decided on a topic for my thesis, I decided to research independent film distribution. However, the library had very few books, only "Of Mice and Magic" by Leonard Maltin and "Experimental Animation" by Robert Russett and Cecile Starr. So I decided to do a study with the lofty title, "The State and Future of Independent Animation in America."

I sent a questionnaire to a list of people I found in the book Frames. The questions were ridiculously academic, but about 30 people responded. I am now friends with most of them. The main thing I learned was that I should start teaching. So I went to the University of Southern California and got my PhD, struggling to study animation in a live-action oriented program.

I am certain that I featured "Voices" in at least one of my books, but I did not analyze it in the sense of deconstructing it. Looking back now, I can see how it fit into the larger system of development in the animation world. I now teach at Kallertz, where this film was produced, and I also became acquainted with Jules Engel, who was Joanna Priestley's mentor. At Kalarz, there is a thriving experimental animation program, at least at the master's level, that involves mostly women.

At the time, rotoscope was seen as a novel approach to animation, but it is probably less experimental now: in 1985, the music video for A-ha's "Take on Me" was released. The rotoscoping in that film attracted a lot of attention. The film's director, Michael Patterson, was also a graduate student at CalArt, and his graduate film "Commuter," which used rotoscoping, was completed in 1981.

I review "Voices" from time to time. It was my graduation project, so perhaps now I look at it like a teacher looking at the work of a great student. I also met Joanna. I have a lot of contextual information now that I didn't have [when I first saw it]. Nevertheless, it remains an important work for me because it introduced me to my future profession and professional world. It opened doors for me.