# animate! › Films › How to Get Rid of Information by Damian Gascoigne › all › synopses › direction & collaboration › full production credits › film stills › tools & processes › format & distribution › background material Canonical: https://animate.org.uk/films/howtogetridofinformation/all Discovery terms: 1990s animation, projected animation, live action and animation, information overload, sleep, media saturation, narrative short, filmmaker, illustrator, animation director The following is the archived page text; discovery terms above are separately sourced metadata. Archive status: restored in 2026; historical calls, deadlines and services are closed. --- **How to Get Rid of Information** a film by Damian Gascoigne 1998, 7 min 10 sec ![How to Get Rid of Information, still](https://animate.org.uk/stillslarge/howtogetridofinformation02.jpg) ### animate! synopsis The original story: a man in a room besieged by the world. High drama as he fights off rogue and random information swoops. An anti-cable/satellite film, this is a manifesto for simple living. ### one sentence synopsis A choreographed battle between a man and projected animation, determined to deprive him of a good nights sleep. ### short synopsis A man is drawn into an escalating battle with streams of projected animation determined to disturb his sleep, and keep him from his dreams of the 19th century ice trade. “I didn’t need another fifty channels… I needed to find out how to get rid of information” – anon. ### key credits **director** Damian Gascoigne **actor** Guy Dartnell **lighting camera** Phil Burgess **production designer** Clem Thomas **production manager** Amanda Tinker **editor** Lisa Gunning **music** Ben Park **dubbing mixer** Nigel Heath ### Damian Gascoigne #### biography Damian Gascoigne joined Picasso Pictures in 1993, already an established illustrator and animation director, having directed work such as the BBC Holiday Programme titles and a number of short films. Whilst at Picasso Damian has directed many successful title sequences and commercials whilst continuing his filmmaking. His BBC titles for **Situation Vacant** (‘95) and **Proms** (’97) both won silver BDA’s, and Damian directed **The Franklin’s Tale** on the much acclaimed *Canterbury Tales* for S4C in ’98. Other notable projects have been commercials for Mercury One2One and Watermans for McCann Erickson in New York. His previous short films include **How to Get Rid of Information**, an animate! film commissioned by The Arts Council and Channel 4, and a personal story about Damian’s own family, told through the eyes of his mother, in **A Cream And 2 Plains**. Damian has supplied Illustrations for magazine and print work. Presently he is working on long form sketches for various new animated comedy shows. 1988 – 1995: Visiting lecturer in Animation and Illustration at Camberwell School of Art 2000 – Present: Lecturer in animation Kingston University 14 September 2005 #### short biography Damian took a Graphic Design BA at Kingston Polytechnic in 1984, and is now a lecturer there in animation. He is London-based and has worked as a freelance animator on commercials and titles, staged live animation/dance performances on the Southbank, London, and is currently completing a tv series for the BBC. He made the self-financed short film **A Cream and Two Plains** in 2001. In 1998 he completed his first animate! commission [How to Get Rid of Information.](https://animate.org.uk/films/howtogetridofinformation/) July 2004 #### artist statement **Careful** is an attempt to wrestle with the seductive charms of the digital world and protect and push on the idea that drawing is King, no matter what technology promises. 3D Computer animation offers amazing possibilities, especially in relation to movement through space, which have until recently been beyond the fingertips of the drawn animator. However, this Pandora’s box comes with its own brand new set of problems. In particular computer animated movement tends to deliver an over co-ordinated, smoothed out visual language. Once objects and ground are linked they tend to form a very severely locked together sense of space. This becomes both ugly and boring- the trick is seen and the game is up. Another problem is that computers are by nature ‘anti dirt‘. Most of the accidental components that make drawing and movement exciting – dirty mistakes, smudges, glitches, scratches, and ‘wrongness’ – are not going to be found in a software package. To counteract these tendencies I decided I needed to push against the working process that one is nudged into in working with 3D animation. I did this in a number of ways, working closely with a gifted computer animator, James Kirkham, whose own aesthetic and ‘eye’ I trusted completely. Firstly I questioned the way in which the 3D line work objects are constructed, by putting together deliberately mismatching surfaces of objects, so that the final piece looked liked badly made flat pack furniture. This betrayed its origins as a series of drawings. Secondly I left in all the rough by-products of my ink drawings, spatters and blobs, inconsistent line weights, accidental transfers from page to page. The exciting thing for me was that these elements began to exist in the space as well as the main objects, trailing around on their own strange orbits, as chairs and turntables twisted and turned. Thirdly I decided to disconnect the objects from their ground and background, because somehow every time we connected them together to a camera, the whole thing just ended up looking like an arty computer game. To do this we separated layers of line work and set them on slightly offset paths and then created faked backgrounds that did not follow the same camera path at all, but moved in independent but sympathetic directions. Fourthly I decided to leave some objects as 2D drawings and others as full 3D objects. Placing them in the same space we allowed the nature of drawing as suggestion of form to remain close to the surface. The thinking underpinning these decisions came from a belief that the pursuit of ‘reality’ that dominates current thinking in 3D computer animation is a misguided and limited path. We don’t need to worry about how things really look. We can see them perfectly well. It is our job as artists to imagine them again. 22 September 2005 #### filmography **Two Stations** – drawn and 3D animation (12 mins) 1994 **How to Get Rid of Information** – (7mins) 1998 **The Franklin’s Tale** – animated version Chaucer’s Canterbury Tale (5 mins) 1998 **A Cream & 2 Plains** – live action and animation (7 mins) 2002 **Careful** – animation for animate! (6mins) 2005 Commercials include Powergen (Miller Bainbridge), L’eggs Khakis (DDB Chicago), First Plus (Black Cat), Panto (UK Gold), Waterman (McCann Erickson NY), Which? (BBC Broadcast) Broadcast Evan Dando *Stop my Head* (Pop Promo) *Morty* Ikea (BBC Broadcast), *Monkey Dust* (BBC), *Sketch Show* (Cartoon Network US) 14 September 2005 #### artist’s photo ![Damian Gascoigne, portrait](https://animate.org.uk/films/downloads/animate_damiangascoigne_portrait01.jpg) 14 September 2005 ### animate! films by this artist [Careful](https://animate.org.uk/films/careful/) [How to Get Rid of Information](https://animate.org.uk/films/howtogetridofinformation/) ### a film by Damian Gascoigne ### direction **director** Damian Gascoigne ### cast in picture **actor** Guy Dartnell ### live-action personnel **lighting camera** Phil Burgess **camera assistant** Andrea Zimmerman **production designer** Clem Thomas **production manager** Amanda Tinker ### image personnel **editor** Lisa Gunning, The Whitehouse ### sound personnel **music** Ben Park **dubbing mixer** Nigel Heath, Hackenbacker ### production personnel **post production** Quentin Olszewski, Moving Picture Company ### support **thanks** Picasso Pictures, Moving Picture Company, Peter Tupy, Soho Images, Martin Dray **primary funding** Arts Council of England/Channel Four Animate! award © Damian Gascoigne 1998 [![How to Get Rid of Information, still](https://animate.org.uk/stillslarge/howtogetridofinformation01.jpg)](https://animate.org.uk/stillsfull/howtogetridofinformation01.jpg) *click on image for full size still* [![How to Get Rid of Information, still](https://animate.org.uk/stillslarge/howtogetridofinformation02.jpg)](https://animate.org.uk/stillsfull/howtogetridofinformation02.jpg) *click on image for full size still* [![How to Get Rid of Information, still](https://animate.org.uk/stillslarge/howtogetridofinformation03.jpg)](https://animate.org.uk/stillsfull/howtogetridofinformation03.jpg) *click on image for full size still* [![How to Get Rid of Information, still](https://animate.org.uk/stillslarge/howtogetridofinformation04.jpg)](https://animate.org.uk/stillsfull/howtogetridofinformation04.jpg) *click on image for full size still* [![How to Get Rid of Information, still](https://animate.org.uk/stillslarge/howtogetridofinformation05.jpg)](https://animate.org.uk/stillsfull/howtogetridofinformation05.jpg) *click on image for full size still* ### master copy format **colour or black & white** colour ### video distribution format **video format** BetaSP **screen aspect ratio** 4:3 **video standard** PAL **sound type** stereo ### distributor LUX [info@lux.org.uk](mailto:info@lux.org.uk) +44 (0)20 7503 3980 [www.lux.org.uk](http://www.lux.org.uk/) **How to Get Rid of Information** film, stills and other materials © Damian Gascoigne 1998