Seminar 3 - Auteurship and the Avant-Garde

In our third seminar, the theme of discussion was the definition of Auteur.

This word is French for "Author", generally used to describe great novelists; so talking about an auteur in the film industry would be describing the roll of the director, because they are writing and creating a story, and turning that into a visual picture.

After we all realised what an auteur is, our class realised that it's harder for an animator to be lauded an auteur, since generally on feature length films the credit gets shared between a group of animators. However, straight away, we all thought of Tim Burton as an exception to this theory, since several feature lengths are featured with his name.
But the public generally views animation as being an audience to children, which generally doesn't produce many auteurs.

There is one company that creates animations that can be viewed by children and adults alike: Disney.

When Walt Disney first started making films, such as "The Four Musicians of B" and "Alice's day at sea", he could be seen as an auteur, since he made these films solely on his own. It was when Mickey Mouse was created that he took a back seat in production, to organise the team and keep his company running, for all the ideas that were being produced.

So when thinking about this, does being part of "Disney"'s ownership and vision take recognition away from the actual creators?

Once he was established, Disney started creating versions of characters from other authors, continuing the story and adding his ideas onto it, from Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", Carlo Collodi's "Pinocchio", A.A Milne's "Winnie the Pooh"... Disney's visions of these characters became the stereotypes viewed by the world today; so do Disney's interpretations take credit away from the original authors, because this is a more established company?

Another debatable auteur is Ray Harryhousen. He has been elevated by his use of special effects, which define his signature cinematic style.
One of his creations, Avatar, particularly created some debate as to how good the film is, since it's said he used too many special effects. Is it all style and no substance? If you take away the beautiful imagery does it strip away the narrative too?

The Avant-garde was originally described by the French as the section in the army that marched into battle ahead of the main troops; but recently it's become the English and French description as pioneering or innovatory trends in artists, especially musical and visually. Basically someone who's being original in their work.

A good example of this description is Caroline Leaf, since her technique is traditional, but she's making her own films, such as this one:


This is my favourite work of hers, since it has a good narrative and smooth transactions between scenes.

To sum up, I think it is harder for an animator to become an auteur since if you work in a big company, the credit gets spread between everyone who was part of the film making process, unless you own that company. I think for a freelance animator to be classed as an auteur their films would have to have a distinctive style so people recognise it as theirs.