Animation Guild | We are 839 Digital Magazine
Issue link: http://digital.copcomm.com/i/1153535
"An action sequence really should be thought of more as a sequence with action in it. The action is somehow advancing the story, expressing the emotional and thematic concerns." F E AT U R E A BALANCING ACT Determining the appropriate action-y mix can be a balancing act. On the one hand, if a character has super-cool powers, nobody wants to spend 22 minutes watching her playing chess. On the flip side, too much wall-to-wall " Wham! Bam! Kapow!" and you risk making your audience go numb. Artists who work in this medium have a term for that, too—action fatigue. "Ironically one of the first concerns you run into any time you bring up the subject of an action sequence in an animated movie is, 'Oh, we can't do too much or there will be action fatigue,'" says Peter Ramsey, co-director of Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse. "An action sequence really should be thought of more as a sequence with action in it. The action is somehow advancing the story, expressing the emotional and thematic concerns." Ramsey recalls a climactic "Avengers- like" scene from his 2012 film Rise of the Guardians where the titular heroes, now stripped of their power, have to somehow stay alive until their powers are restored. "I was kind of hoping that this would above: Peter Ramsey believes in advancing the plot through action, a perspective he infused in both Spider-Verse (this page) and Rise of the Guardians (opposite). 26 KEYFRAME Images courtesy of Sony Animation