1. Teaching Animation: Persepolis
Rick Instrell
Deep Learning
Version 1.1
13 November 2016
Association for Media Education in Scotland

2. Comic and animation comparison
Page-based i.e. sequence of panels in 2D space
Time-based i.e. sequence of shots/audio in time
Constrained by number of pages, page size or section on a page
Constrained by screen size/aspect ratio
Constrained by limited capability to represent action, body language and audio (music, speech, sound)
Capability of representing action, body language and audio (music, speech, sound) but constrained by costs of animation
Can go back and forth to any panel or page
In normal viewing cannot go back and forth to any shot
Reader responsible for rate of processing
Film manages watching time for viewer
Usually created by one or two individuals with a few assistants
Requires hundreds of individuals and expensive technology

3. Film: making, watching and thinking
CONTEXT(socio-historical, ideological, intertextual
PURPOSES: institution, audience
FILM (topic, genres, narrative, themes, style, tone, mode of address)
Acts & turning points
Sequence (editing, soundtrack, pace, repeated motifs)
Shots + transitions
Frame (mise-en-scène + cinemato-graphy )
MACRO
MICRO

4. Analysing comic and animation
The sociohistorical context, narrative, genre and themes of Persepolis in comic and animation form are similar.
For example, the themes that might be explored are:
Religious and political repression
War
Growing up
Rebellion
Family
Gender
Tradition and modernity.
Consequently we need to consider differences between the two: institutional and intertextual contexts and the three bottom levels in the filmmaking, watching and thinking diagram: frame, shots and transitions, sequence.

5. Orthodox & experimental animation
Orthodox animation
e.g. Disney animation
Experimental animation
e.g. Norman McLaren
Figurative
Abstract
Continuity
Discontinuity
Story
Interpretation
Hides construction
Foregrounds construction
Unity of style
Multiple styles
Absence of artist
Presence of artist
Verbal dynamics
Musical dynamics
Table based on Undestanding Animation, Paul Wells, Chapter 2
A good example of experimental animation is Chuck Jones Duck Amuck (1953).
Q. Which features of orthodox and experimental animation does Persepolis have?

6. CONTEXT

7. Institutional context
France is the third most important country for animation after USA and Japan
Press kit and official website
Directors: Vincent Paronnaud & Marjane Satrapi
Composer: Olivier Bernet
Production company: Films
Producers: Marc-Antoine Robert and Xavier Rigault
Animation studios: Pumpkin 3D and Je Suis Bien Content
Distributor: Sony Picture Classics
Budget: $7.3m
Box office: $25.4m

8. So filmmakers could not just use the comic book as a storyboard.
Film not a comic
So filmmakers could not just use the comic book as a storyboard.
View the Making of … documentary (also on DVD)

9. Film adaptation
Animation chosen rather than live action so that the film would have universal appeal and so that the audience could relate the film to their own experience
Hence the use of simple black and white caricatured characters
Hence the depiction of Tehran is like any other modern city (although it has bomb damage)
Greyscale was used for the backgrounds of Tehran and Vienna – this gives a sense of depth to images
Characters were hand-drawn and digitally composited on to the backgrounds

10. Production process Team of 100+ people
The project relied on the skills and dedication of its 20 animation artists. It was a lengthy process that involved Marjane Satrapi physically acting out scene after scene for the illustrators who used this, combined with the pre-recorded voices, to draw the characters’ each and every movement. At best, they managed 40 seconds of animation per week. ‘And this was pre-editing,’ she notes.
Each frame was then retraced using a special felt-tip pen to give the organic feel of the book. For this, the film-makers sourced the only French hand-inker, and wooed him to Paris from Lyon to train the others.
Characters were digitally composited with the backgrounds.

11. Voice artists French and English versions
Chiara Mastroianni as Marjane
Catherine Deneuve as Mother
French version
Gabriele Lopes as child Marjane
Danielle Darrieux as Grandmother
Simon Abkarian as Father
François Jerosme as Uncle Anouche
English version
Amethyste Frezignac as child Marjane
Gena Rowlands as Grandmother
Sean Penn as Father
Iggy Pop as Uncle Anouche

12. Use of colour and greyscale
Q. Colour is used for the present (in Paris) and greyscale used for the past (in Tehran and Vienna). Why?

13. Soundtrack Composer Olivier Bernet:
“… the movie contains four distinct parts, so naturally I created four different musical atmospheres. The first and second ones are quite sober, and chiefly with string instruments. The dream scenes, (or the dialogues with God) are plainer: a piano, a few string instruments. I also had fun in the first half of the film when we see people dancing to disco music. It had to sound like Iranian disco music, well, at least, what I figured the music sounded like! For other scenes, I drew my inspiration from an Iranian rock CD that Marjane had lent me.
The third and most diverse part is the one taking place in Vienna with the rock concerts, the hippies in the woods with their guitars, the night-clubs, etc… The music plays an active part in the movie. It becomes part of the setting and the action. In a nightclub, one of the characters even says: "What shitty music!", so it becomes a challenge, a sort of aesthetical exercise, and it's quite exciting for a musician.”

14. Greyscale
The use of greyscale gives 3-D form to the 2-D image

15. Representations of cities
The depiction of Tehran is like any other modern city (although it has bomb damage)
The depiction of Vienna is more specific to indicate Marjane’s sense of dislocation. The buildings at odd angles also indicate her feelings of not being at home.

16. Influences: Persian miniatures
Persepolis

17. Influences: Japanese ukiy-o
Ukiy-o (floating or sorrowful world) genre of woodblock painting (17-19C) seems to have influenced the title sequence which features multiplane animation to create the illusion of depth.
Q. The title sequence uses visual motifs that appear throughout the film. Can you identify these?

18. Influences: multiplane animation
Parallax scrolling is a technique where background images move slower than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth in a 2D scene. The technique grew out of the multiplane camera technique used in traditional animation. It can be seen in the opening title sequence which precedes a wide multiplane shot of Orly airport.

19. Influences: Puppet theatre
Persepolis
Very appropriate for a puppet regime!

20. Influences: Disney
101 Dalmatians
(Walt Disney, 1961)
Persepolis

21. Influences: WB cartoons
Hazel the witch in Warner Brothers cartoons
Persepolis

22. Stylistic influences: Reiniger
Cut-out silhouette animation in
Cinderella (Lotte Reiniger, 1922)
Persepolis

23. Influence: German expressionism
The Cabinet of Dr Caligari
(Robert Wiene, 1920)
Persepolis
Metropolis (Fritz Lang, 1927)

24. Expressionist low-key lighting
Nosferatu (F W Murnau, 1922)
Persepolis
The Killers (Robert Siodmak, 1946)

25. American film noir Orson Welles, A Touch of Evil, 1958 Persepolis
Charles Laughton, The Night of the Hunter, 1955

26. Influence: Italian neorealism
Rome, Open City
(Roberto Rossellini, 1945)
Persepolis
Germany, Year Zero
(Roberto Rossellini, 1947)

27. Influence: Italian comedies
Social satires by Pietro Germi, eg  Divorce Italian Style and (left) Seduced and Abandoned (1964)
Persepolis

28. Influences: tree imagery
Caspar David Friedrich
Walt Disney: Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
Persepolis
Vincent van Gogh

29. Slam zoom and iris in/out
Slam zoom as Iraqi missile attacks Tehran
Similar to slam zoom at start of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (Baz Luhrmann, 1996)
Also uses iris in/out which was a much-used transition in the silent film era

30. How have the filmmakers used these?
Not pastiche – imitations ‘copied and pasted’
Not parody – making fun of previous texts/genres
They take these styles and genres and mix them up to make something original and challenging
The influences are transformed, mixed and integrated into Persepolis in order to achieve their aims:
to make us see Iran and Iranians differently
to engage viewers so that they relate the characters and events to their own experience
to see animation differently.

31. Soundtrack
Central message of movie: war and repression can happen anywhere
Characters and the city of Tehran represented in a generic manner so they could be anyone in any country (no use of minarets or mosques)
The soundtrack reflects this representation
voices are all dubbed in perfect French or English
ambient or city noises are generalized
voices reflect age of characters
cartoonish music is also employed at times (mickey-mousing as Marjane transforms into a woman)
no use of traditional Iranian music
features western pop music of the period (e.g. an off-tune version of Survivor’s Eye of the Tiger) which uses pop video editing to satirize the ‘false gods’ of the Western obsession with the perfect body.

32. Opening titles Title sequence Loren Baybrook
“The opening credits present a montage of ancient Iran springing to life as a land of celestial enchantment, where snowflakes double as floating jasmine and angels double as coursing birds, overseeing the hatchling Persia, where even the fish can fly. Freedom abounds. But this origin story ends with a crouching demon, sitar in hand, serenading a winged mermaid on the rocks, her flight arrested. Flames billow from an urn, a civilisation burning.”

33. Continuity editing and montage
Classic Hollywood style is a set of techniques which are designed to make the technical construction of the film ‘invisible’ i.e. to make the inherent discontinuity of film appear ‘continuous’. In Classic Hollywood the plot is more important than the style i.e. its prime motive is storytelling.
An alternative to continuity editing is discontinuity editing or montage in which the images seem to be random and do not maintain spatial or temporal unity. Such montage was a feature of Soviet cinema of the 1920s but can be found in advertising, pop videos and art/indie cinema.

34. Continuity Editing The techniques of continuity editing are:
Establishing shot: shows the setting and 180° line (the camera will stay on one side of this line)
Shot/reverse shot: cutting back and forth between characters (sometimes using over-the-shoulder shots)
Eyeline match: shot A: someone looking; shot B what is looked at with direction of look maintained
Match on action: action carried on across two shots
Connecting sounds: same sound carried across cut
Redundancy: repeating the same plot information through images, performance, dialogue, sound, music.
Orthodox animation tends to use continuity editing to organize shots.

35. Transitions In continuity editing the most common transitions are:
Cut: shot A followed by shot B (used for switches of POV in real-time sequence; also used to switch to another setting)
Dissolve: shot A superimposed on shot B (often used to indicate that some story time has passed e.g. flashback; omitting some unimportant story time)
Wipe: shot B wipes shot A from the screen, usually vertically or horizontally (usually indicates a change of setting)
Fade out: image fades to black to indicate a major section of the film has ended
Fade in: black screen lightens to show image (often used at the start of film).
Audio can be used to emphasise the change of setting or period.

36. Film analysis Q. Analyse a sequence in Persepolis.
Does it use continuity editing techniques?:
Establishing shot
Shot/reverse shot
Eyeline match
Match on action
Connecting sounds
Redundancy
Conventional transitions (cut, dissolve, wipe, fade in/out).
Does it use discontinuity editing (montage) or unusual transitions?
Why have these techniques been used?

37. Persepolis resources Bibliography Berkley Center resource.
Film Education resource.
Tribeca Film Institute resource.
Transcript of English dialogue version of Persepolis.
Bibliography
Wells, P. (1998) Understanding Animation. London: Routledge.