Ballgames
Ballgames is a visual exercise of what can be done with stop motion animation on a shoestring budget. It focuses on animating the real world, large objects and people. The artificially rendered movements of a basketball have been done as simple as possible, while yet trying to look convincing. What the film really asks is, how crude can an animation be and still trick the brain? It is not our eyes that see film, it is our brain. Cognitive science has just started to discover and name the functions of our visual cortex that allows us to so blatantly misinterpret flickering lights on a flat surface as to imagine objects and movements. Is it a ball we see, and if so, is it really bouncing? Is a ball suspended from strings and made look like they’re bouncing in a way any less real than the fragmentary mirror images caught from a ball that were actually in motion? And where to draw the line? How much will the audience believe?
Sternberg Tobias