How has Adam Elliot’s use of colour changed from his 2003 short film ‘Harvey Krumpet’ to his 2009 full length film ‘Mary and Max’?
Adam Elliot is an Australian animator born in 1972, and has received over 100 awards, including an Academy Award for his 2003 film ‘Harvey Krumpet’. (1) Elliot has said that ‘so much animation is cluttered with colour and movement’ (2), and consequently both films have a minimalist quality. Elliot is known for coining the term ‘clayography’, a combination of ‘clay’ and ‘biography’. Both ‘Harvey Krumpet’ and ‘Mary and Max’ have a similar biographical tone, the stories over shadowed by an omnipresent narrator.
‘Harvey Krumpet’ was Elliot’s first venture into colour, as all previous work had been in black and white. It is also when he was able to extend the length of his animation, his first three films being 5 minutes and ‘Harvey Krumpet’ extended to 23 minutes. Elliot has said that he ‘let’s the characters tell him how long their story should be’ (3), which allowed ‘Harvey Krumpet’ to explore the use of colour and character with more depth and detail than before. Elliot said in an interview that ‘all our lives are full of contradictions and absurdity from one time or another’ (2). This shows in his use of colour, it has moments of absurdity (for instance in his dream sequence as seen above) that resonates with the confusion that the character is feeling. In the final 5 minutes of the film Harvey is in a retirement home for Alzheimers patients, rain hitting the window as the narrator poignantly says ‘time drizzled on’. The colours are red and yellow but have been worn down with time, making them dirty and grey. The room is dimly lit, suggesting the light is fading from their lives as they slowly loose themselves.
We then have a fade transition from Harvey’s face with his eyes moving in a confused state to him smiling and happy. The sound changes from a monotonous clock ringing and the rain hitting the widow, to a happy, humorous song, ‘God is better than football’. The colours used for this sequence are brighter and bluer, with flashing bulbs and a light, etherial background. Although it is happy, the absurdity of it reminds us that it is just a dream, and Harvey will soon be back to his life of darkness.
Maddy Caulfield Animation 