Professor Brian Fuller works with Philm student Zoe Barron
(Edinboro, PA – November 20, 2025)
Associate Professor of Digital Filmmaking addressed the Animation Club at its regular weekly meeting in Doucette Hall’s central auditorium. His topic was the creative symbiosis between the disciplines of Animation and Philm.
Fuller contends that Animation is the “movie-est” of film’s genres. “There are Western symphonies; there are Science Fiction plays; there are Noir detective novels. But Animation can only be cinema – absolute cinema.” Showing the inner workings of the Cinematographe’s first shutter-and-claw mechanism, Fuller continued. “Without the miracle of intermittent motion, without interstices between frames of film, there are no movies. Period.”
“Animators challenge live-action Filmmakers to imagine a world beyond physics, a world in which cameras and lights and microphones are free to twist and hang and move without regard for gravity or friction.” Sharing images of Peter Ellenshaw’s matte paintings (featured in movies like Mary Poppins and Spartacus), Fuller went on. “Because they can generate any world they dream, Animators challenge live-action Filmmakers to imagine limitless budgets. And, of course, because on screen characters don’t need to look like in-studio vocal talent, Animators might help live-action Filmmakers to think more broadly about casting beyond appearance.”
Reversing the paradigm, he suggested that live-action filmmaking might also inform the work of Animation. Young filmmakers who study cameras are more likely to innovate in lighting, depth of field, motion blur, and kinematics. Their workflow might become more standardized and collaborative in ways which ready them for careers in the entertainment industry.
Fuller concluded with some ideas for entering PennWest Animation in festival competition. “If you think of your work as an assignment, it’s something on your transcript that really doesn’t resonate with employers; if your finished films are distributed and marketed through something like Film Freeway, the resulting laurels and trophies become bullet points on a shining résumé that’s liable to get the attention of hiring professionals.”
“Animators are frequently most admired when their work mimics live-action filmmaking,” says the Emmy-Award winning professor, summing up. “Live-action Filmmakers are frequently most admired when their work mimics Animation.”