Just in from the screening of films by Adam Beckett at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I was a little late, getting caught in Depeche Mode Hollywood Bowl traffic and then left my lights on when parking and had to call AAA for a jump start. Had a Winchell's donut while waiting since I was parked directly in front, across the street from the Academy on Vine Street.
Adam Beckett was an animation genius who went from Antioch College to Cal Arts to the Star Wars crew. He died unexpectedly in a fire at the age of 29 and one can onlky imagine what he would have done had he lived longer. He had already become a master at the optical printer and Oxberry stand. His films use all of the great deep potentials of those machines, from matte effects to incredibly complex overlays. He did things that looked like video art feedback with film.
The screening presented new prints provided through the restoration work of Mark Toscano at the Academy and funding from the iotaCenter. I missed the 3 loop projection provided for audience entrance. The prints looked very good and have aged well, remaining full of life and a deep understanding of sequence in time, of process and pattern. There was some minor softness at some points to the focus and color chroma which may have been part of Beckett's art, involving long non-stop overnight stints at the animation stand, drawing as he ran the pages through the camera stand. Projection of this work could be challenging, as Beckett has forms morphing from edge to edge of the frame, so most projectors would have a hard time keeping the entire frame in focus.
Adam Beckett's work is what animation is all about, I mean: it is essential work. Large format drawings which begin with seemingly simple loops patterns of morphing shapes and/or words and letters and then grow into much larger and deeper pattern pieces, the artist drawing more design between what he started with, then deepening it again by creating matte and color filter effects with multiple passes through the printer. "From the kernel to the cosmic", someone quoted him saying. All of the pieces describe processes of evolution and cyclical return and work at theme and variations taken from small-ish tidal pools of graphic material. Beckett could take a small group of drawings into the animation chamber and come out with cans full of new motifs and orchestrated chaos on film. It was a pleasure to see this presentation, with Beckett's mother in the audience and many alumni from the Star Wars technical crew together to talk olde times.
Reminded me of studying animation with Flip Johnson at the Boston Museum School beginning in 1981. I was getting into pattern drawing for animation and may have headed down a similar path, although I don't have a head for numbers the way Beckett evidently did. Unfortunately the animation department at the Museum School was more geared towards exploding frogs so I moved on to running through stadiums with super8 cameras.
