The Art of the In-joke

More recently, I have been taking note of the way in which films and animation in particular reference elements, dialogue or sequences from other films or animations. In films, one can find a producer who references a shot from a famous film in the past and remakes it almost like for like in their own production. Sometimes a dialogue from a scene in a movie can be recreated in another movie as an tribute or homage to the earlier movie or its actor or a telling performance.

One visible example of this is how a certain sequence in one of the original Planet of The Ape (Franklin J. Schaffner, 1968) movies is recreated in the animated feature Madagascar (Eric Darnell, Tom McGrath, 2005). This scene is where Alex the lion is building a Statue of Liberty. When Melman his giraffe friend sets it on fire, Alex jumps off and says. "DARN YOU, DARN YOU ALL TO HECK!!!!". This referenced a scene in the movie Planet of the Apes when the main character says "DAMN YOU, DAMN YOU ALL TO HELL!!!!" Another is when Mason and Phil (the two monkeys) come to the plane with a thousand other monkeys to help fix it. As the other monkeys are working on the plane, Skipper says to Mason (the monkey that talks), "I could kiss you, monkey man." Then Mason says, "Well, okay, but you're so darn ugly." Then he kisses Skipper. This is also a scene from the movie, Planet of the Apes.

In the recent movie Hugo (Martin Scorsese, 2011), the producers included numerous references and reenacted remakes from famous film sequences from the past; some of these include the actual Paris skyline in the movie which match exactly the skyline of famous films of the period, most particularly from Rene Clare’s Under The Rooftops of Paris (1938), The ‘poster shot’ for the movie was an homage to Harold Lloyd hanging from the hands of a clock high above the street in Safety Last! (
Fred C. Newmeyer, Sam Taylor, 1923). One such major noticeable reenactment according to an article published on www.fxguide.com website, states, 

The train in the film shown by the Lumière Brothers is the sequence from Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat – L’Arrivée d’un Train à la Ciotat (1895). Not only was there a shot recreation in the circus tent scene when Georges Méliès first sees a projected film, Grossmann also points out they went much further. “There are two other scenes in the film where we exactly matched that same shot,” he says. The same lensing and camera angle were used of two completely different shots in the actual station shown in the film. In each case the separate and seemingly unrelated shots had all the extras, lines of sight, and train position perfectly matched by the effects team to the original 1895 film.[1]

There are many other tributes to techniques of the past like hand tinting film, stop motion animation and numerous other shot matches to classic films; one of which is The Human Beast / La bête humaine (1938) by Jean Renoir with its unusual depth of field.

Moving on to animated features, one studio that has continued a tradition of self reference in their own work is Pixar. In each film a reference to a character or element from an older film or an upcoming one can be noticed. Some of the easily notable ones include the Boo’s fish toy in Monsters Inc ending up being the title character of Finding Nemo, the "Incredibles" manga that the little boy is reading at the dentist's office in "Finding Nemo, the Pizza Planet truck, the yellow ball with the blue strip and red star, even the lamp from their logo has made appearances in their movies at different times. The title of this animation studio's very first short (i.e. "The Adventures of André and Wally B") which was also the name inspiration for Wall-e and indeed many other animated titles at that time end up being printed on the spine of the storybooks that you see behind Woody in Toy Story (John Lasseter, 1995).



This wholehearted pursuit of self referencing is why the Dinoco gas station that Andy's Mom pulls into in "Toy Story" became the racing sponsor that Lightning McQueen was lusting after in Pixar's "Cars. There are multiple references to Apple and the number A113, which was a reference to the classroom number that was used by Animation students at CalArts which the likes of John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton attended. In fact, there are so many of these in-jokes in their feature films that I even managed to find a blog post dedicated to and describing almost obsessively every known in-joke ever seen in work produced by Pixar studios. It can be found here.

This culture of the in-joke, the self-reference, tribute or homage to previous work is something that i have found highly interesting. Not just as a technique in itself or for the humor factor that it invariably creates, but as a way of weaving a deeper thread of meaning and connection not just to the narrative of a film but to the very progress of the industry as a whole. It is a way a of celebrating the many breakthroughs of technology and the creative process over the years. It can also be a way of reminding ourselves of the pedigree of design and ingenuity that has brought the trade of the cinema thus far. To the audience, the inside joke and subtle humor it it represents can only bring a smile to the face when one notices one of these references. It is all the more so when they are not made obvious and are only noticeable by the keen observer or ardent movie historian or critic. I find most importantly, that it is also a way of creating with the audience a sense of connection by the artist,producer or animator, almost as if embedding a puzzle or message within a film that only the true fan or admirer will be able to see, decode or decrypt.

While this is not a technique of creating work in itself, the concept of creating a deeper connection with the viewer on that level  as an animator and 3d artist is one that I find interesting and worthy of more focused research. Most importantly, it is one that I am going to seek to exploit in greater measure in work I produce and I'm indeed already doing, as seen in some of my upcoming work.

 (Work in Progress - the table lamp and the poster on the wall pay homage to 

the inspiration that Pixar Animation is to the work I produce)

References

Planet of The Ape, 1968. [Film]. Directed by Franklin J. Schaffner. USA: 20th Century Fox Ranch

Madagascar, 2005. [Film]. Directed by Eric Darnell and Tom McGrath. USA: DreamWorks [United States]

Hugo, 2011. [Film]. Directed by Martin Scorsese. USA: Paramount Pictures

Under The Rooftops of Paris, 1938. [Film]. Directed by Rene Clare. France: Films Sonores Tobis

Safety Last!, 1923. [Film]. Directed by Fred C. Newmeyer and Sam Taylor. USA: Hal Roach Studios 

[1] Fxguide.com, 2011. Hugo: a study of modern inventive visual effects. [online] Available at: <http://www.fxguide.com/featured/hugo-a-study-of-modern-inventive-visual-effects/> [Accessed 20 December 2011 ]. 

The Human Beast / La bête humaine, 1938. [Film]. Directed by Jean Renoir. France: Paris Film
 

Toy Story, 1995. [Film]. Directed by John Lasseter. USA: Pixar Animation Studios