''BLA BLA'' is an interactive animated film for computer created by with Montreal studio AATOAA, and produced by the

National Film Board of Canada The National Film Board of Canada (NFB; ) is a Canadian public film and digital media producer and distributor. An agency of the Government of Canada, the NFB produces and distributes documentary films, animation, web documentaries, and altern ...

. The online work has been described as exploring "the principles of human communication," and follows Morisset's collaborations with

Arcade Fire Arcade Fire is a Canadian indie rock band from Montreal, Quebec, consisting of husband and wife Win Butler and Régine Chassagne, alongside Richard Reed Parry, Tim Kingsbury, and Jeremy Gara. The band's touring line-up includes former core ...

on ''

Neon Bible ''Neon Bible'' is the second studio album by Canadian indie rock band Arcade Fire. It was first released on March 5, 2007, in Europe and a day later in North America by Merge Records. Originally announced on December 16, 2006, through the band's ...

'', considered the first interactive music video. The characters in ''BLA BLA'' were designed by Caroline Robert using

stop-motion Stop-motion (also known as stop frame animation) is an animation, animated filmmaking and special effects technique in which objects are physically manipulated in small increments between individually photographed frames so that they will appe ...

puppetry Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance that involves the manipulation of puppets – wikt:inanimate, inanimate objects, often resembling some type of human or animal figure, that are animated or manipulated by a human called a puppeteer. S ...

and

traditional animation Traditional animation (or classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation) is an animation technique in which each frame is drawing, drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation of the 20th century, until there wa ...

as well as

computer animation Computer animation is the process used for digitally generating Film, moving images. The more general term computer-generated imagery (CGI) encompasses both still images and moving images, while computer animation refers to moving images. Virtu ...

methods such as

ActionScript ActionScript is an object-oriented programming language originally developed by Macromedia Inc. (later acquired by Adobe). It is influenced by HyperTalk, the scripting language for HyperCard. It is now an implementation of ECMAScript (mean ...

animation Animation is a filmmaking technique whereby still images are manipulated to create moving images. In traditional animation, images are drawn or painted by hand on transparent celluloid sheets to be photographed and exhibited on film. Animati ...

and real-time 3D mapping. The work is designed to be principally

non-linear In mathematics and science, a nonlinear system (or a non-linear system) is a system in which the change of the output is not proportional to the change of the input. Nonlinear problems are of interest to engineers, biologists, physicists, mathe ...

, with users constructing the story through

point-and-click Point and click are one of the actions of a computer user moving a pointer to a certain location on a screen (''pointing'') and then pressing a button on a mouse or other pointing device (''click''). An example of point and click is in hypermedi ...

choices. The music by composer Philippe Lambert and characters' speech was broken into short clips and distributed randomly throughout the programming, which was created by Édouard Lanctôt-Benoit. As an added bonus, ''BLA BLA'' users can also access classic NFB animated films, including works by

Ryan Larkin Ryan Larkin (July 31, 1943 – February 14, 2007) was a Canadian animator, artist, and sculptor who rose to fame with the psychedelic Oscar-nominated short ''Walking'' (1968) and the acclaimed '' Street Musique'' (1972). He was the subject of the ...

René Jodoin René Jodoin (30 December 1920 – 22 January 2015) was an animation director and producer who founded the French-language animation studio of the National Film Board of Canada. Born in Hull, Quebec on December 30, 1920, Jodoin died in Montreal on ...

and

Michèle Cournoyer Michèle Cournoyer (born November 14, 1943) is a Canadian animator who on 1 March 2017 received a Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts for her body of work. Early life Born in Saint-Joseph-de-Sorel, Quebec, Cournoyer began draw ...

and

Norman McLaren William Norman McLaren, LL. D. (11 April 1914 – 27 January 1987) was a Scottish-Canadian animator, director and producer known for his work for the National Film Board of Canada (NFB).Rosenthal, Alan. ''The new documentary in action: a caseb ...

. ''BLA BLA'' was produced for the NFB by

Hugues Sweeney Hugues Sweeney is head of French-language interactive media production at the National Film Board of Canada, based in Montreal. Sweeney's recent credits include '' My Tribe Is My Life'', the online interactive animation work called '' Bla Bla'', ''R ...

. The work stands apart in its emphasis on achieving an emotional response in the viewer/actor. "I wanted to create moods and generate emotions through an interactive piece," Morriset says. "It's quite hard to do dramatic crescendos on a website… I thought it would be an interesting challenge."

Amid Amidi Amid Amidi is a journalist. He is the publisher and editor-in-chief of the ''Cartoon Brew Cartoon Brew is an animation news website created by Amid Amidi and animation historian Jerry Beck that was launched on 15 March 2004. Cartoon Dump It ...

(11 April 2011)
“Bla Bla”, An Interactive Short by Vincent Morisset.
artoon Brew. Retrieved 23 March 2018. ''BLA BLA'' was featured in spring 2012 at a month-long live interactive presentation in Paris.

Awards

In March 2012, ''BLA BLA'' received the

SXSW Interactive South by Southwest (SXSW) is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in mid-March in Austin, Texas. It began in 1987 and has conti ...

Art Award as well as the Entertainment Award in the Communication Arts Interactive Competition. In May 2012, it received the

Webby Award The Webby Awards (colloquially referred to as the Webbys) are awards for excellence on the Internet presented annually by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a judging body composed of over three thousand industry experts a ...

for best web art.

References

External links

*
''Introducing BLA BLA, a new interactive tale by Vincent Morisset''
NFB.ca blog post
Vincent Morisset websiteCaroline Robert websitePhilippe Lambert website
Interactive films Web animation National Film Board of Canada animated short films Quebec websites Webby Award winners 2010s Canadian animated films 2011 animated short films {{short-animation-film-stub