A Scanner Darkly

"In many of today's films, rotoscoping is used not as a means of 'hiding' the fact that live footage is traced, but rather as a starting off point in more experimental films such as those produced by Bob Sabiston and Flat Black Films. In these cases, the artists go beyond the rotoscoped look and add their own unique artistic vision to the projects." - (Kriger, J. (2012) Animated Realism. Oxford: Focal Press)

I've chose to research into A Scanner Darkly, as it is a film that has been entirely rotoscoped and will be a good example to refer to in my dissertation when I speak about rotoscoping as a technique.

Personally, it took me a while to understand what was going on in the film due to how uncomfortable I was watching it. There was just so much going on visually, that it was hard for me to focus on what was actually happening. I was curious to see if anyone else shared this viewpoint, and by researching film reviews online, I've found that I'm not entirely alone. Michael Booth from The Denver Post, writes in his review "the artiness gets in the way of thrilling plot twists; we're still trying to sort out images when we should be sorting out facts."

On the other hand, once I was able to look past this and settle down and take in what was going on, I don't think this film would have been as effective as just a life action. Sabiston has been able to use rotoscoping to bring to life the scramble-suits and the sci-fi elements of the film, which they would not have been able to do in live-action, and this would have been much more expensive using CGI. The rotoscoping also made for very interesting hallucination scenes, which again, just wouldn't have been as effective in another medium. Bob Sabiston also doesn't feel that the film would have worked as a live-action, stating in Animated Realism "the subject of these documentaries is just the means to determine whether or not I can find something that is meaningful to animate. I don't know if the subject without the animation would stand on its own."

I also didn't feel that the performance was 'wooden', rather it is still incredibly life-like, so much so that I questioned why it wasn't left as a live-action film (before I was made aware of the relevance of the rotoscoping). By watching the special features of the DVD, I found that the actors were encouraged "to contribute and to try things" so they would often over-act or perform in a way they wouldn't normally as "it was going to be animated." The rotoscope wouldn't have felt lacking as "the performances were fantastic to begin with." (One summer in Austin: The Story of Filming 'A Scanner Darkly' [Special Features])