Terry Gilliam and Jan Svankmajer

summarise Jan Svankmajer and Terry Gilliam's careers and their way of working and storytelling.  Discuss their stop motions styles, how they were made and the effect they have, and how they blend stop-motion and live-action in their films. 

Jan Svankmajer was born on September 4, 1934, in prague, Czechoslovakia. He is renouned for his surrealist films and animations. his works often involve puppets or various forms of puppetry, with a mix of stop motion and live action. some of his notable works include Alice, Faust, and Otesanek. His personal style for filmmaking had a large focus on visual elements, which gained him praise from many critics. This paired well with his narrative style often leaning into surrealism, where hard logic could be put aside for a more free style of storytelling. Svankmajer studied in Prague at the School of Applied Arts, where he went on to enrol in the puppetry department. The use of puppetry as well as a blend of stop motion and live action segments can be seen across a wide range of his works. His very first short film was no expception, in 1964 he Released the stop motion/puppetry blend of film titled The Last Trick. The plot focused on two magicians in a fierce competition to display their skills, and other than the basic plotline, features many surrealist visuals and evens throughout the film.

many of his later works such as Alice (1988) also had a blend of stop motion, puppetry and live action performance, depicting the strange world of Alice in wonderland from the novel written by Lewis Carroll. throughout his work Svankmajer draws inspiration from fairy tales and childrens literature, notable through Alice, and Otesanek (2000)

Terry Gilliam is well renowned for his work on Monty Python,being one of the main creative forces on the team. His signature style is comedic and surreal paper/stop motion cutout animations
Terry Gilliam was born in 1940 in Massachusetts, USA. He grew up in America before moving to England in 1967. from 1969- 1974 he began working on Monty Python's Flying Circus, where he was given full creative freedom t create animated shorts for the program. His first venture into a feature length film came in 1975 with  Monty Python and the holy grail. Gilliam directed the film in partnership with Terry Jones. The production of the film ran into many time constraints, often cue to chaotic shoots. Terry Gilliam was also known to cause delays with his perfectionism and focus on visuals, leading to many re shoots and delays. 

His later works also included Brazil (1985), which won Gilliam an Oscar Nomination for the best original screenplay. While it met critical success, the movie was largely changed for the US market after it didn't do so well in the public eye, the 142 minute runtime was cute into a 93 minute Romance Comedy, by the orders of Universal studios. unpleased, Gilliam screened the original cut to film critics, they enjoyed it so much that a 132 minute version was released.

While a lot of Gilliams films recieve critical acclaim, this isnt always reflected in the box office, as both The adventures of Baron Muchausen and fear and loathing in las vegas failed to do well. The adventures of Baron Muchausen had a chaotic shoot that doubled the budget of the film to $47 million, and only made $8 million at the box office.