Benjamin Zander - On music and passion

I showed a talk by Benjamin Zander to a fellow animator today, as a reference for how an excited person would gesture while talking. And boy, is Benjamin Zander excited! His passion for classical music is infectuous enough that anyone would go home and listen to some Chopin after watching this talk!

I love this talk, as it holds a lot of points that are true for animation as well. I've written about this once before on the 11 second club blog, but I think it's important enough to be written about again!

During the talk, Zander shows how a young child might progress year by year as they play the piano. The first year there is an impulse on every single note, as the child struggles to find where to put their fiddly fingers.

As the years go by though, the impulses are reduced. Now the child can play with an impulse on every 4th note, then on every 8th note. Until finally, there are no impulses left. What is left however is a story, where the music goes on a travel. It might hit ups and downs, take unexpected turns, hit the grand finale, and then come home.

I try to apply the same thinking to animation. It's not just about animating movement after movement, as if it was an assembly line. It's about making those movements work together, to crescendo into a dramatic sforzando movement, until it calms down into a nice lento tempo...

You'll just have to google those last terms. ;)

Here's the talk! It's amazing, just watch it!