Inking Life: Rotoshop and A Scanner Darkly
Visual Essay II, 4-22-09
Film 301
Joe Brady
Animation has been used in film for decades and has produced some of the most beautiful, breathtaking, and successful films of all time. A great advancement in animation technique came in 1915, when Max Fleischer invented Rotoscoping. This technique involved projecting a pre-recorded live action film image onto a glass panel that would then be traced over by an animator. In recent years this technique has been adapted by animators at Flat Black Films into a computer animation program called Rotoshop. The program interpolates between brushstrokes, saving time and smoothing out the motion of the animation. Here, I will look at how the use of this technology in A Scanner Darkly (Richard Linklater, USA, 2006) affects the narrative, and helps the viewer interpret the film’s stance on technology.
The novel A Scanner Darkly, written in the 1970s, takes place in an imagined 1994. So, at the time of its initial publication readers could use their imagination to picture what such a future would look like. A Scanner Darkly, the film, made in 2006 takes place sometime in the near future, how far it does not say. The film’s use of Rotoshop provides the viewer with an image of a familiar world, yet a world not bound by the limitations of current technology. Christine Cornea writes:
“Since the inception of the science fiction film, the genre has been built upon a thematic interest in the social and philosophical delights and dangers associated with industrial, communications and biological technologies.”(1)
Since we know that this narrative takes place in the future, the Rotoshop technology allows animators to conceive gadgets beyond the scope of current technology. The perfect example of this is the “scramble suit”. The scramble suit is a full body covering worn by police officers in the film that allows officers to officially interact with each other while maintaining their undercover identities. The suit projects millions of fragments of bodily features over the entirety of the suit, constantly changing the wearer’s image to protect his/her identity. Obviously, such a suit is unheard of today, as no such technology currently exists.
Another way that the film’s use of Rotoshop delineates the world of the narrative from the “real” world is through character hallucinations. Throughout much of the film many characters are under the influence of the psychotropic drug Substance D. Their drug use frequently causes hallucinations. Rotoshop allows the animators to seamlessly integrate the hallucinatory image into frame without having been actually filmed. This function of Rotoshop helps further demonstrate a character’s perspective of his/her own world. Though the character sees a familiar room, he is also hallucinating that his friend is a giant insect.
J.P. Telotte writes:
“More so than any other film genre, science fiction relies heavily on what we might most broadly term special effects, and this reliance requires that we consider how the form’s paradigmatic/syntagmatic elements are linked to its very creation, that is, how the genre’s concern with the technological engages us in a complex system of reflections on its own technological underpinnings, and thus on its own level of reality.”(2)
Basically, science fiction films often serve as a reflection of how they are made. The scramble suit masks and covers every aspect of the undercover police officer just as Rotoshop uses animation over the live action footage to give the film it’s distinct visual style. The overarching surveillance technology employed by the film’s police and government agencies can be seen as a reflection of the all-encompassing animation that covers every inch of the film. Though the characters of A Scanner Darkly are largely unaware of the surveillance they are under, the film itself is definitely aware of its portrayal of technology. The live-action footage may be masked by animation, but the film’s reflection of society and technology shines through in every scene.
Endnotes
1. Christine Cornea, “Conclusion: The Technology of Science Fiction Cinema” Science Fiction: Between Fantasy and Reality. (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2007) pg. 248
2. J.P. Telotte, “Introduction: The World of the Science Fiction Film”, Science Fiction Film (Genres in American Cinema) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001) pg. 24
