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Hi my name is Tony and[br]this is Every Frame a Painting.
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Today I’m going to talk about one of[br]the greats of the last twenty years
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the Japanese filmmaker Satoshi Kon.
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Even if you don’t know his work you have[br]certainly seen some of his images.
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He is an acknowledged influence on both[br]Darren Aronofsky and Christopher Nolan
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And he has a fan base that includes just[br]about everyone who loves animation.
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In one decade, he made[br]four feature films and one TV series
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all of them amazingly consistent,[br]all of them about
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how modern people cope[br]with living multiple lives.
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Private, public. Offscreen, onscreen.[br]Waking, dreaming.
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If you’ve seen his work you’ll recognize[br]this blurring of reality and fantasy.
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Today, I’m only going to focus on[br]one thing: his excellent editing.
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So as an editor, I’m always looking[br]for new ways to cut
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especially from outside[br]the realm of live-action.
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Kon was one of the most fascinating.[br]His most noticeable habit
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was matching scene transitions.
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I've mentioned before that Edgar Wright[br]does this for visual comedy
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--Scott![br]--What?
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It's part of a tradition that includes[br]The Simpsons
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and Buster Keaton.
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Kon was different. His inspiration[br]was the movie version of
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Slaughterhouse-Five[br]directed by George Roy Hill.
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--I can always tell, you know,[br]when you've been time-tripping
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This is more of a sci-fi tradition[br]that includes Philip K Dick
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and Terry Gilliam
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But even among peers,[br]Kon pushed this idea pretty far.
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Slaughterhouse-Five has basically[br]three types of scene transitions:
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a general match cut
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an exact graphic match
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and intercutting two different time[br]periods, which mirror each other.
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Kon did all of these things,[br]but he would also
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rewind the film,[br]cross the line into a new scene,
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zoom out from a TV,[br]use black frames to jump cut,
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use objects to wipe frame, and[br]I don't even know what to call this.
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To show you how dense this gets,[br]the opening four minutes of Paprika
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has five dream sequences and every[br]single one is connected by a match cut.
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Number six is not connected[br]by a match cut,
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but there is a[br]graphic match within the scene.
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Just for comparison, the opening[br]fifteen minutes of Inception
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has four interconnected dreams.[br]Number of match cuts: one.
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--What is the most resilient parasite?
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Cuts like this aren’t uncommon,[br]but they’re definitely not something
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most filmmakers build a style out of.
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Usually you see them as one-off effects.[br]Two of the most famous examples:
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Oh and this one because it's amazing
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Kon’s work was about the interaction[br]between dreams, memories,
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nightmares, movies, and life.
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The matching images were how[br]he linked the different worlds.
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Sometimes he would stack transitions[br]back to back,
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so you’d be getting used to one scene[br]before you got thrown into the next.
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All of this made him really[br]surprising to watch.
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You could blink and miss that[br]you’re in a different scene.
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Even when he wasn't dealing with dreams,[br]Kon was an unusual editor.
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He loved ellipses and would often[br]just jump past part of the scene.
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So you’d see a character look at a key.
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You expect to see her take it,[br]but that doesn’t happen.
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The scene just moves on.[br]Later on, in a different scene:
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Or you’d see a man jumping[br]out of a window and fade out.
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We’d then cut to a scene we didn’t[br]understand, reveal that this is a dream,
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back out, and then show the[br]conclusion of the previous scene.
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Even things like murder, he would[br]do the build-up and cut away.
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But he would show us the gory result.
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I particularly love the way[br]he handled character death.
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Here, an old man dies and[br]the windmills of his hut stop.
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Then it turns out he’s alive,[br]so they start up again.
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When we finish the scene,[br]the windmill shot doesn’t repeat,
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but you’ll notice they aren’t moving,[br]implying he is dead.
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Kon also had a habit of starting scenes[br]in close-up and you’d figure out
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where you were as the scene went on.
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Every once in a while,[br]he’d use an establishing shot.
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And then reveal that it was actually a[br]point-of-view. So without you noticing,
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he brought you[br]into the character’s world.
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He was constantly showing one image and[br]then revealing that it wasn’t
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what you thought it was.
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Your experience of space and time[br]became subjective.
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He could also edit in ways that a[br]lot of live-action filmmakers could not.
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During an interview, Kon said that[br]he didn’t want to direct live action
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because his editing was too fast.
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For example:
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This shot of the bag is only 6 frames.[br]For a comparable moment in live action
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that was 10 frames.[br]Or how about this insert of a note?
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10 frames. But in live-action...
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49 frames. Kon felt that as an animator,[br]he could draw less information
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in the shot, so your[br]eye could read it faster.
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You can actually see someone like Wes[br]Anderson doing this in live-action
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removing visual information[br]so his inserts “read" faster.
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It’s worth noting: you can actually cut[br]much faster than this, but the images
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pretty much become subliminal.[br]Some of these shots are 1 frame.
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None of this was for cheap effect.[br]Kon felt that we each experience
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space, time, reality and fantasy[br]at the same time as individuals
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and also collectively as a society.[br]His style was an attempt to depict this
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in images and sound. In the course of[br]ten years, he pushed animation in ways
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that aren’t really[br]possible in live action.
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Not just elastic images, but elastic[br]editing -- a unique way of moving from
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image to image, scene to scene. And he[br]was helped in this crusade by
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the studio Madhouse, who did[br]some of their finest work on his films.
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If you want to see a perfect summation[br]of his work, I present his final film:
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a one-minute short about how we feel[br]when we get up in the morning
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This is Ohayou
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--Ohayou
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Farewell, Satoshi Kon.