"Loving Vincent": a painted life, a mysterious death
Despite the autumnal weather, eleven of us met to discuss the extraordinary technical achievement that is "Loving Vincent", a film animated from Vincent van Gogh’s paintings, and telling a possible version of events after his death - was it really suicide or something involving a third party?
Sydney presented the film with a personal ‘rhapsody’ on the film, a wide-ranging exposition delivered with great bravura. To ensure that you can appreciate it in the form intended by Sydney, download the document below to read her exact words.
This wonderful exposition by Sydney was followed by David’s extremely clear description of the technical side of the film’s production.
The start points were (1) 74 actual Van Gogh paintings (2) the recruitment of artists to work on the animation - a concept trailer went viral, with 5,000 artists applying to be involved.
(3) Making a conventional film of the action using actors, who worked on it for only 2 weeks. The key to turning the film and the van Gogh paintings into the moving images of the final version was the development of the “Painting Animation Work Stations” (PAWS). Early versions were easily knocked out of alignment and had uneven lighting. The final PAWS design was a rigid metal frame with a 6K camera and a projector aimed at the canvas, a computer and a high-res monitor, and dual lights for even illumination of the canvas. The computer gave access to the database of Vincent paintings, the reference design paintings, and previous animations that illustrated the style to follow - all viewable in any level of zoom down to individual brush strokes. Different paints were tried, and the best turned out to be the sort of paints that van Gogh himself had used.
Once each frame was completed on the canvas, the artist took two pictures, yielding 24 frames per second with 12 adjustments to the canvas.
The reference video was a combination of live action shots and computer graphics animation (CGI). The CGI was for transitions, scenes for which they had no live action, and for small elements: a leaf blowing or a bird flying by.
Still, there were some effects that were invented by the animating painters, such as moving skies and water, stars twinkling, etc.
With training and the improved PAWS, they got the time for each painting frame from 2 hours down to 40 minutes on average. The final result is that every frame of the finished film is of oil paint on a canvas.
On a historical note, the inventor and first film-maker to use rotoscoping was the Polish-American animator, Max Fleischer (1883-1972). The makers of "Loving Vincent" have also released a DVD about its production.
Our lively discussion covered several aspects.
Our awe at the technical achievement. We agreed that the unusual form of animation took a little while to get used to, and then just seemed to be the normal way of viewing a film – in the same way that Van Gogh’s view of the world through his paintings also soon starts to look normal. He painted many of the characters in the film, notably Dr Gachet, plus his daughter and housekeeper. The boatman, innkeeper and his daughter also feature. We were intrigued that the actors were clearly recognisable in the final film, despite having been ‘animated’. The film didn’t reveal any new aspects of van Gogh’s art, but maybe that wasn’t the point.
The strength (or otherwise) of the overall plot ie use of Armand, the postmaster’s son, as an amateur detective to unravel the mystery of whether van Gogh really did commit suicide by gunshot, putatively because he knew he was becoming a financial drain on his brother Theo, who was his major (?only) funder. An alternative theory, that he was shot by someone else, first emerged in the 1930s. The film presents possible medical and other evidence that van Gogh could/did not pull the trigger, backed up by witness statements which seem to have changed over time. One alternative explanation is that he was shot by René Secrétan, the son of a wealthy pharmacist - he and his friends had been known to tease and bully van Gogh, presented as a rather strange outsider. Certainly van Gogh’s paints and easel were never found in the wheatfield where he had allegedly killed himself. But if he had been shot, why did he not say so to his brother Theo? Why would he have protected Secrétan? As with the art, we do not see any particularly new insights into van Gogh’s death, but the possibilities of what might have happened are intriguing.
The use of black and white for the flashbacks. Was this because truth and memory are grey areas, as in the changing witness statements?
Van Gogh’s emotional life - his beginning as ‘Vincent 2’, after the death of an earlier baby also named Vincent. He seems to have known this - what effect did it have? He was always a bit of an outsider, even within his own family, where his pastor father did not approve of his art. He found friends among other artists in Paris, notably Gauguin, but they also quarrelled (there is a theory that van Gogh’s severing of his ear was done by Gauguin’s sword). He was clearly prone to psychotic episodes requiring hospitalisation. Was his fondness for crows a harbinger of death?
His relationships and support. His brother Theo was clearly a rock in van Gogh’s life. Tragically, he died of syphilis only 6 months after van Gogh - did losing his brother precipitate his death? Interestingly, it was Theo’s widow who promoted van Gogh’s art, and successfully sold many paintings. Van Gogh’s doctor, Dr Gachet, seems an ambiguous figure - a keen amateur artist himself, he openly copied many of van Gogh’s paintings, to the point where they were difficult to separate from the real ones. He also took some paintings as medical fees.
We certainly covered a lot of ground, and we were grateful to Sydney and David for taking so much time and care to share their insights.
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