Editing Pinscreen animation (section)

==The animation technique==
According to Claire Parker, the images created by the pinscreen made it possible to make an animated movie which escaped from the flat, "comic" aspect of cel animation and plunged instead into the dramatic and the poetic by the exploitation of [[chiaroscuro]], or shading effects. To obtain the desired gray tones that are cast from the shadows of the pins, several methods are used.{{clarify|date=April 2019|reason=Which are???}}

The original pinscreens built and used by Alexeïeff and Parker had more than 1 million pins. Today those pinscreens are at [[National Center of Cinematography and the moving image]], near Paris. The pinscreen currently in Montreal, at [[National Film Board of Canada]], has 240,000 pins.<ref name="VarietyJune4">{{cite news | url=https://variety.com/2012/digital/news/nfb-pushes-canadian-artists-in-edgy-direction-1118054435/ | title=NFB pushes Canadian artists in edgy direction | work=[[Variety (magazine)|Variety]] | date=June 4, 2012 | access-date=June 5, 2012 | author=Blair, Iain}}</ref> The pins are usually pressed with a small tool, groups of pins at a time, or with other specialized instruments. Being so thin, it is very difficult, and actually not desirable, to manipulate individual pins: moving one pin at a time there is the risk that it bends, thus ruining the pinscreen. Furthermore, the shadow cast by one single pin is negligible, almost non perceivable; only when manipulated in groups are the pins' shadows sufficiently dense to produce the [[chiaroscuro]] effect. Groups of pins are pressed and protruded with different tools, from specially created ones to more mundane, such as lamp bulbs, spoons, forks, and even Russian [[Matryoshka doll|Matryoshka]] dolls. Frames are created one at a time, each frame being the incremental modification of the previous one. After each frame has been photographed, the images are strung together to create an image without pauses. The frame assembly containing the pins was built very solidly and mounted in a secure fashion to offer a stable image to the animation camera day after day, week after week as each image of the movie was painstakingly composed.

<!-- Image with inadequate rationale removed: [[Image:Imprints1.jpg|thumb|''Imprints'' ([[2004]]), a short film by [[Jacques Drouin]].]] -->
This form of animation is extremely time consuming and difficult to execute, rendering it the least popular method of animation. An additional reason for its unpopularity is its expensive nature. Individually, the pins are relatively cheap; however, it is not uncommon that a million or more may be used to complete a single screen, quickly increasing the cost for manufacture.

Probably the most famous use of Pin Screen technique is [[Orson Welles]]' [[The Trial (1962 film)|1962 film]] of [[Franz Kafka|Kafka]]'s novel ''[[The Trial]]''; the film begins with a brief but striking memorable Pin Screen segment, elements of which reappear in a later scene projected onto and behind the actors.