Breathing life into balsa
by Kieran Larkin
Stop-motion animation is infamous for how time-consuming it is to produce and famous for its unique ability to render three-dimensional bodies tangible. Unlike drawn animation, stop-motion offers opportunities for stylization and world building in not just the shapes, textures, and colors of characters and sets, but also in the special affordances of materials such as clay (known as claymation) or felt. In their short film, Alan, the Infinite, directors Dan Ojari and Mikey Please use balsa wood to construct their characters, giving them a playful yet stiff appearance to cast their type. The film also features a “bipolar” soundtrack of contrasting style to emphasize the difference between the potential and imagination of youth and the rigidness and monotony of adulthood. To play on Marshall McLuhan’s famous dictum “the medium is the message,” in the case of stop-motion, the material is the message.
The story follows Alan and Prea on their first day at a lamination company, eager to make their first strides from inexperienced novices to becoming like their lamination expert supervisor, Gary, super-set in his ways (not unlike the rigidity of the product of his company). But things quickly take an unexpected turn when Alan accidentally releases a magical particle in the workplace. The particle randomly turns all the objects it touches into something else, creating a chaos for Alan that remains inexplicably inconsequential. The point of the parable appears to be that there isn’t one: the story is a mere pretext for an exercise in ‘play-mation’ matched by music. The metaphysically grave matters that occur are treated with an anarchic levity, deflated of seriousness by opening and closing instances of flatulence.
Similar to the random plot, the soundtrack is topsy-turvy. The film opens on a supernatural note in a mysterious lab underground, where a seemingly magical particle is summoned before escaping. The first sensory stimulus as the image fades in from black is a gradual swell from low strings at a fifth interval, one often associated with space, the grand, and the mysterious.
The kalimba then enters. It introduces the foundation for a pattern which is expanded upon with fiery drums and quirky high string pizzicatos. The pattern creates a soundscape without a recallable melodic line, evoking emotions of curiosity without standing out apart from the images.
The norms established from this opening scene hold throughout the film, as less traditional lead instruments, such as the recorder and the xylophone, take center stage for the younger characters and the chaotic particles. This starkly contrasts the instrumentation used for the score when it underpins characters that exist free of creativity. The other employees of Lamin-8 are backed up by strings, piano, and woodwinds. The different styles of instrumentation used for separate characters contributes to the film’s overall juxtaposition between the mundane and the possible. While Alan, Prea, and the particle have not yet had their creativity squashed by society, their coworkers have allowed themselves to be molded into a cog in a system. As such, the children are represented by whimsical instruments orthogonal to any traditional orchestra.
In the sound effect track, the style of sounds used also take a binary approach. In Paul Taberham’s article “A General Aesthetics of American Animation Sound Design,” he outlines four approaches to animated sound design: syncretic, zip-crash, functional and poetic authentication. Alan, the Infinite finds itself selectively using both zip-crash and functional sound to build its world. Zip-crash sound is characterized by “sound effects [that] are both flamboyant and incongruous,” that prioritize conveying the meaning of something through sound rather than representing what sound something might realistically produce. This approach is used when building sounds for the magic particle. Its signature sound effects are the high-pitched pluck of a string as it hops along the office floor, as well as a xylophone hit when it changes an object into something else.
While these sounds are certainly not the true sounds an imaginary particle might make, it adds to the wonder and mystery of what the particle is. For other aspects of the film, a functional approach is used, where sound effects are meant to immerse the viewer by way of realistic and plausible sounds (Taberham 140). This is because outside of the particle’s shenanigans, the Lamin-8 office is the definition of stodginess, with nothing fun or whimsical of note. As a result, the whimsical sounds are reserved for the particle.
The visual stylization of the character design adds to the juxtaposition of mundanity with possibility. The interns and the particle, yet to be corrupted with society’s rigidness, are rounded and curvaceous.
Although they are made of balsa wood, just like their adult coworkers, they are far less defined and still have room to be shaped. The adult employees are all square with sharp edges and corners. They have been molded by society and no longer possess the literal and psychological fluidity that the interns do. When combined with the sounds, the audience may notice that while all the interns are visually round, only Alan and Prea are backed up by zip-crash sound effects and quirky instrumentation. This is because the other interns, Susan and Neil, are more prepared to ‘drink the Kool-Aid’ and surrender their individuality to society in the name of advancing toward adulthood.
While adulthood is physically inevitable, some of the monotony associated with it seems to deeply concern the filmmakers. In a workplace defined by the boss’s overt aversion to change, hence the importance of the permanence of lamination, the only source of interest is a particle that forces change on anything it touches. Perhaps Alan should not be so eager to define himself as something for his life, and should be open to the prospect of a journey through life. Maybe his experience with the particle will show him that not only is change inevitable, but can be wondrous too. The final poof renders everything a spoof.