COP 3: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest Animation Idea Development: Studying the Acting of Jack Nicholson

In this post I want to focus on how I plan to go about animating THE jack Nicholson. I capitalise the THE before Jack Nicolson because the man is a multiple Oscar winning actor and wherever you like or dislike his acting few can undermine his ability, in particular in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest of which i believe is his best performance. My favourite scene of his in the movie and one in particular I wanted to animate was incredibly simple, but I believe incredibly effective. The scene is only around a minute in length and is arguably just a shot, yet the amount of emotions evoked by McMurphy in this scene is simply staggering, I counted 19. No words are said, yet it says so much, giving such valuable insight into the humanity of the character.

I feel it does a very good job at moving the narrative along and allows the viewer time to gain a further understanding into exactly where the narrative is right now, what has happened up till now, and where it's going. Furthermore, this scene allows the viewer to gain a bit of insight into what Randle McMurphy is thinking. This scene can be interpreted in many ways and it is the genius of Nicholson's acting that does not give it away too easily. Like a real person, you don't automatically know what they are thinking from their facial expressions, you might get an idea such as sad or happy, but it's impossible to gage exactly what their thinking.