The Society of Animation Studies and Archiving Animation: A 10,000 Foot View
The Society of Animation Studies (SAS) is a society focused on the study and promotion of Animation History. The society has published one book on the subject, A Reader in Animation Studies (1998) and has aided or mentioned in quite a few other books on the subject. The following is from their blog post on their history:
The Society for Animation Studies (SAS) was founded in 1987 by Harvey Deneroff. He had earned his PhD in 1985 and became interested in putting on an animation conference after attending what was then the Society for Cinema Studies conference at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He found that while there were academics interested in animation studies, it seemed to be the “neglected stepchild of film and television”, a notion that many animation scholars have felt over the years. He took it upon himself to gain the support of a small group of academics and filmmakers and formed a steering committee which would plan annual conferences and a membership newsletter. Harvey later described the founding of the group in Jayne Pillings’A Reader in Animation Studies (1997):
“Armed with a grant from the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists, IATSE Local 839… a mailing was sent out, and membership started coming in from the United States and Canada, as well as from Europe, Australia and New Zealand. The UCLA Animation Workshop (along with the UCLA Film & Television Archive) and Carleton University (with the Ottawa Animation Festival) put in bids to host the first SAS Conference, which took place in 1989 at UCLA. (Carleton hosted the 1990 conference).”
SAS, through its annual conferences and newsletter, has not only provided a focus for animation studies, but has led to papers and articles on animation appearing more regularly at academic conferences and scholarly journals. It also led to the publication of the first peer reviewed publication in the field: Animation Journal (founded by SAS member Maureen Furniss).
There are now several journals dedicated to animation, not least Animation Studies, the society’s own Open Access peer reviewed journal, and the Open Access blog Animation Studies 2.0. Even at the early conferences there was a wide range of topics being covered – there was a lot of history to catch up with. (This can be found in the past conference archive on the site here).
Membership numbers have grown steadily ever since that first SAS conference in 1989, demonstrating how much demand there is for such a group. Over the past three conferences we have seen our membership swell to include over 350 individuals worldwide. Though we often still feel neglected in comparison to film studies we have made great strides in such a short time fulfilling many of Harvey’s goals of publications, conferences, web forums and the dissemination of quality research. We expect to increase these activities over the next few years. With new forms of outreach through our website and social networking the Society for Animation Studies has surely become the first port of call for anyone interested in animation scholarship in its many forms.
A society after my own heart, I joined last year for the first time (reminds me dues are coming up). In realistic terms, what they offer is a bit confusing at first glance. The most beneficial aspect has been their email group which connects animation historians from around the globe. I've seen conversations on current topics effecting the animation spectrum, announcements of new history books, calls for papers and presentations at animation festivals (mostly online these days) around the world, the establishment of smaller study groups, and calls to write blog posts for their official online peer-reviewed journal.
This year, during the month of March the theme for new posts was "archiving animation", a topic of great interest to me. I submitted a short paper and was fortunate enough to be accepted. My blog post, Archiving Animation: A 10,000 Foot View, was published on March 2nd, 2020. The following is my post from the blog:
Our society is either at the precipice of the most significant informational loss or the beginning of a new golden age of recorded information. The capabilities of the Internet, much like film and the printing press, has skewed our collective understanding of preserving information. Deterioration of past technology is quickly approaching for some physical forms of media, putting this global task on a finite timetable. Some art forms, like interactive animation, have built communities around preserving every aspect of game design. In animation, that process is a bit more skewed and less understood.
Figure 1. A collection of various animation-related materials, including a maquette, an art book, and various DVDs.
However, before jumping into the “how,” it is necessary to start with the “what.” Animation is distributed in many different physical forms: nitrate film, magnetic tape, optical media, and, in some cases, completely digital. The materials that develop out of the production process can reveal not only important details of the creative process but also the limitations of the respective business structures or current socioeconomic forecasts. The pre-production materials of an animated film outnumber the end product 100 to one. Indeed, storyboards, background paintings, maquettes, promotional art and advertisements, and physical objects for stop motion are some of the possible byproducts of the making of an animated film. And yet, in the corporate world, if these materials are even preserved in the first place and not destroyed and reused, they are usually kept within the confines of the organization. Moreover, if these materials reach the general public, it is only in the form of information presented in art books and behind-the-scenes materials. Most story production history is delivered orally through public events or tiny journalistic entities tracking this industry. To lock materials behind closed doors makes sense from a business’ point of view, but what is good for the business is not necessarily what is good for the public. After a hundred years of corporate buyouts and institutional piecemealing of Intellectual Property portfolios, it is difficult to track who owns what. Sometimes even the IP owners do not know what they effectively own.
Independent films face similar issues as corporation ones. However, independent animators can have the nimbleness to archive by the necessity of the process. The obvious double-edged sword is that they have no studio backing. The ability to achieve wide enough acclaim to warrant preservation can be a challenge not approached until meticulous cultural incubation over a long period of time. For every Bill Plympton filmography distribution deal, there is a Bruno Bozzetto waiting on the sidelines to be distributed for the first time. Even when rarities are published, modern consumers’ technical expectations can distract from an object’s cultural influence or historical significance.
Where there is money, there will be bureaucracy. The push and pull of American copyright law in the last fifty years has had a direct impact on the creative output of decades of artists and companies. The irony of the public domain means it should have products that are available for everyone. However, concretely, the public domain is an untidy amalgam of good faith attempts at demystifying complicated laws. With no overhead structural committee, though, it is a mess distributed over many websites and institutions across the world. The Internet itself has evolved quite a bit over the last thirty years. What was once looked at as a repository of all information, it is today a dynamic and ever-evolving communicative web that keeps expanding into new spaces on this planet.
At the end of the day, the collective public has more monetary capacity and a far-reaching ability to research than any institution could hope to materialize. However, it is also the least educated on the subject. Those within the organizations that develop animation normally do not have the extra resources to set aside time to preserve what is done, as opposed to focusing on what is coming next. In practical terms, a developed third-party association that works closely with all studios could solve some of these problems, and many institutions are doing what they can to aid in the preservation fight. Nevertheless, for now, it feels as though the rules are as follows: the market dictates availability. And what guides the market? You do.
Chris “Orrin Scott” DeWitt is a Project Manager at Vala Marketing in Elkhart (IN) where he aids in storyboard production. He is a lifelong animation fan.
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