''Down and Out'' is a 1979 short film created by

Aardman Animations Aardman Animations Limited, known simply as Aardman, is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England, United Kingdom. It is known for films and television series made using stop motion and clay animation techniques, particularly those fe ...

. It is part of the

Animated Conversations Animated Conversations is a series of short animated films, two of which were made by Aardman Animations Aardman Animations Limited, known simply as Aardman, is a British animation studio based in Bristol, England, United Kingdom. It is known f ...

series. In this short, creators David Sproxton and Peter Lord "applied the groundbreaking technique of using recorded conversations of real people as the basis for the script".

History

David Sproxton said "That was the first film of five minutes we had ever made and the first we had ever done using found sound, produced by a big producer called Colin Thomas. We sent x-BBC producer Jeremy Isaacsthe small amount of work we had, which was basically Down and Out and some kids' stuff. And he called us up to the London office...and said 'I've seen that film Down and Out. We'd like ten of those for our first week's transmission.'" These were the 5 shorts of

Conversation Pieces Conversation Pieces is a reworking of the Animated Conversations concept. It consists of a series of five shorts which aired on Channel Four between 1982 and 1983. Each short was five minutes long. As summarized in "All About Aardman": "plastici ...

, and later the five short of the

Lip Synch Lip sync or lip synch (pronounced , like the word ''sink'', despite the spelling of the participial forms ''synced'' and ''syncing''), short for lip synchronization, is a technical term for matching a speaking or singing person's lip movements ...

series. According to Aardman Animation,

Production

This was the first film to use the technique developed by Sproxton and Lordan of "animating puppet characters to spontaneous, realistic conversations, rather than prepared scripts...It impressed producer Jeremy Isaacs, who commissioned five five-minute films [entitled

] for the newly established Channel 4 in London. ''Animated Documentary'' explains "Confessions of a Foyer Girl and Down and Out were based on eavesdropped conversations and pair documentary sound with stop motion animation of Plasticine figures.

References

External links

Full movie posted by Aardman's official channel on youtube
{{Aardman Animations British animated short films 1970s English-language films 1970s British films Aardman Animations short films 1979 animated short films