In filmmaking, video production, and other media, the term live action refers to cinematography, videography not produced using animation. As it is the norm, the term is usually superfluous, but it makes an important distinction in situations in which one might normally expect animation, as in a Pixar film, a video game or when the work is adapted from an animated cartoon, such as Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones or Josie and the Pussycats films, or The Tick television program. Use of puppets in films such as The Dark Crystal is also considered to be live action, provided that stop-motion is not used to animate them.
The term is also used within the animation world to refer to non-animated characters: in a live-action/animated film such as Who Framed Roger Rabbit or Mary Poppins, in which humans and cartoons co-exist, "live-action" characters are the "real" actors, such as Bob Hoskins and Julie Andrews, as opposed to the animated "actors", such as Roger Rabbit himself.
Live action can also mean that a film or a television show is adapted from comics. Adaptations from comics include live-action film versions of Marvel Comics' Spider-Man and X-Men, DC Comics' Superman and Batman, or manga such as Death Note, Detective Conan and Great Teacher Onizuka.
Famous quotes containing the words live and/or action:
“It was evident that, both on account of the feudal system and the aristocratic government, a private man was not worth so much in Canada as in the United States; and, if your wealth in any measure consists in manliness, in originality and independence, you had better stay here. How could a peaceable, freethinking man live neighbor to the Forty-ninth Regiment? A New-Englander would naturally be a bad citizen, probably a rebel, there,—certainly if he were already a rebel at home.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“The bugle-call to arms again sounded in my war-trained ear, the bayonets gleamed, the sabres clashed, and the Prussian helmets and the eagles of France stood face to face on the borders of the Rhine.... I remembered our own armies, my own war-stricken country and its dead, its widows and orphans, and it nerved me to action for which the physical strength had long ceased to exist, and on the borrowed force of love and memory, I strove with might and main.”
—Clara Barton (1821–1912)