The Days of Claymation...

This week as I was snuggled up on the couch staring at my beautiful Christmas tree I realized that Rudolf the Red-Nose Reindeer was about to be on the television. I remember watching this show with my family when I was little, but I really don’t think I’ve seen it in maybe ten years. I was definitely missing out on a wonderful little show. I remembered bits and pieces (the little elf who wanted to be a dentist, Rudolf’s girlfriend, and Yukon Cornelius) but I had forgotten how the show was made. I guess when I was little I just thought it was a normal cartoon. But now watching it… which was kind of painful because we are used to such action packed, fast moving things, I realized that it was Claymation. Holy smokes, that must have taken forever!

I was very interested in all of the business so I did a little research and for a typical 30 minute show there would have been 21,600 stops in production to change the figures for the frames. So I was thinking about the people that made this show, that has been one of the longest running televised holiday shows ever, and how patient they must have been and how organized an operation like that would have had to been to create the show. Pretty cool, I thought.

Most people are probably thinking I am going way too far into all of this, but it got me thinking about how there is no way our society today would do something like that. We have the mindset that instantly replied to emails and text messages are normal, and that every human being accessible 24 hours a day is the common place. We want things NOW, and if we have to wait it’s unacceptable. Everything is so fast paced and I honestly can’t imagine doing my job 20 years ago… I’m honestly not sure how it was done. Thinking about it makes me kind of crazy!

Yes, I am extremely thankful for all of the wonderful advancements in technology, I don’t think I could function without some of them. And keeping in theme of my blog, my favorite technology is DVR! But are they all necessary, probably not. Maybe we should, even if it’s just for a day, go back to the days of Claymation. I guess I’ll go buy lots of stamps and turn on the fax machine at work!