Jan 19, 2022

Academy Award Nominee Interviews How to Tell a Story in a Short Film

This year, 15 animated short films were finalists for the Academy Awards, instead of the usual 10.

While waiting for the nominees to be announced on February 8, we posed the same three questions to all of the shortlisted filmmakers.

We are presenting their answers in three separate features, this being the first of them.

First question:

Joanna Quinn and Les Mills ("Affairs of the Art"):

The key is to get the structure and framework right, initially establishing a very simple synopsis, followed by a tight script, storyboard, and timed animation follows. The previous three "Beryl" films were simply structured "single event" films, each of 5 to 10 minutes in length. However, the time frame for "Affairs of the Art" is enormous, as it explores the backstory of the Beryl family and how their lives developed from childhood to middle age, delving into their familial obsessions and personal eccentricities. The film is "multi-event" and could easily have been longer than 16 minutes, but we preferred the short form.

Zacharias Knuk ("Angakusajaujuq: The Shaman's Apprentice"):

In our culture, we don't talk much about how things are made. So I enlisted the right people to help me make this film. A lot of care had to be taken to make sure that the set props, the clothes, and all the movements were accurate.

Claude Cloutier ("Bad Seeds"):

The short format determines what kind of story you can tell. Time constraints do not allow the viewer to empathize deeply with the characters, nor do they allow for overly complex scripts. Even with such constraints, I believe that short animated films can handle any theme. You just have to change the narration accordingly. That is why animation makers resort to archetypes, symbolic language, and graphic representations to compensate for the short running time. In this sense, animated shorts are closer to poetry than to novels.

Hugo Covarrubias (Bestia):

I think the most difficult part was to condense the time frame over several years without losing the essence of the premise and to maintain the intention of exposing the evil that reigned in one of the darkest decades of Chilean history. In addition, we would add a psychological element to the protagonist. We tried to solve this conundrum by means of symbolic elements in the scenes, action, materiality, and stage design. All of these elements were like pieces of porcelain, piecing together the pieces of the story. The absence of dialogue imposed difficulties that we had to face through the gestures of acting, the actions, the rhythm of the script structure, the editing, and the sensations given by the music.

Anton Diakov (Box Ballet):

The challenge is not to tell a story in a short running time. Rather, it is about finding the right proportion, the right amount of story. My criterion is the emotion I feel when the curtain rises. What makes things difficult is that it is all so subjective. What resonates with you may not resonate with someone else. The desire for the miracle of the audience's intuitive response to what I create is at the core of my work and what drives me.

Sandra Demaziere (Flowing House): [29] [30] The most difficult part is to tell a story that includes all kinds of issues, to tell the state of mind of the characters. In its brief 15-minute running time, Flowing Home depicts the aftermath of the Vietnam War through the eyes of two sisters who have been separated for 20 years. Through flashbacks, omissions, and music, the film depicts the sisters' journeys at different points in their lives from the 1970s to the 1990s. I provided enough information to guide the audience and put them in the private moments experienced and remembered by the sisters, showing them the living and the dead.

Hugo de Focomplet ("Mama Makes It Rain"):

For me, it's about being able to find the best way to communicate in the best way, according to the format we choose. Most of the time, I have more ideas than I can possibly put together into one film. It's hard to choose which idea fits best. Often I stick with one idea and think it must be the one, only to realize after talking with the producers and staff at Rydak Films that it should be the other way around for the sake of the story. I find that trying to think first in a narrative way is always a great help in choosing what to keep and what to let go. Even if it means having to give up a great visual shot that you really liked.

Reza Riahi ("The Musician"):

My films are very character-driven. I want the audience to connect with the old musician and his beloved. In a short film, there is no room to set up the characters and their circumstances, so every shot and frame is important to build that all-important emotional connection with the audience. I chose a pivotal moment in their lives, when the musician and his beloved are unexpectedly reunited after 50 years apart. The audience sees the story unfold from her point of view.

Eric O (Namou):

Making a short film is like writing a poem; a feature film is a novel. You need to tie the right idea to the right medium. Once we understand this and the strengths and weaknesses of the short film medium, we will know how to fully exploit the short film, instead of trying to make a short film. I believe that visuals, less dialogue, poetic and implicit are more successful than clear narratives.

Simone Giampaolo ("Only the Child"):

Even though Severn Callis-Suzuki's words were trimmed and re-edited to blend well with the visuals, the overall running time is mostly around 6 minutes, the length of the original speech and it was easy to respect and control that during the production. [Note: Only a Child is an animated adaptation of a speech given by Kalis-Suzuki at the 1992 UN Summit]. The real challenge was to make sure that the 20 segments, each about 10-15 seconds long, successfully told a mini-story that could be completed in a few seconds, and that they worked well in context (next to the surrounding segments).

Mikey Preece (Robin Robin):

There's not a lot of time to play with, so every frame is important. [Co-director Dan Ojari, editor Chris Morrell, producer Danny Gallagher, and I argued furiously, swapping frames every 24th of a second. At the heart of our struggles was the balance between packing in a fairly complex plot for a short film while still allowing space for comedy and "thinking moments" for the characters. We needed the audience to lean into Robin's inner journey, and we needed the space to do so. But when there were 10 other action-packed sequences vying for that space, it was hard to justify a quiet moment where seemingly nothing was happening. Dan, however, put up a great fight in that corner.

Bastien Dubois ("Souvenir"):

I'm pretty impatient and always worry about wasting the audience's time. So I tend to move quickly, tell the story quickly, and edit quickly. A bit too much. in Souvenir Souvenir, the problem was that the story I was inspired by (my life and my relationship with my grandfather) was running throughout the development and production of the film. This meant that the length of the film almost doubled (over time). I also had to cut nearly a minute to keep the film within the 15-minute limit of some film festivals. My editing was already tight.

Weija Ma (Steps to the River):

At first there was a longer version of the story with more characters. When I started writing the script, I tried to show every detail. When I showed it to my producers and friends, they sometimes lost track. So I cut a lot of stuff out to focus on the two main characters. I think it's good to show it to new people. I think it's good to be more prepared. You have to think through the world you've created and make it real.

Zach Parrish (Us Again):

Each frame of a short film is proportionally more important because the length of the film does not necessarily change the intent of the storytelling. in Us Again, every shot had to tell a multi-layered story and emotional detail. We had to convey layers of story and emotional detail in every shot. We boiled every shot down to its emotional intent and challenged the choreographer and animators to convey that intent through the characters' bodies alone. In a way, it's a simplification, but we hope that in the process, the audience experiences something deeper.

Alberto Mielgo ("Windshield Wiper"):

Someone once said that once you master short storytelling, you can adapt to any format. But I disagree. Short stories are really difficult to condense and synthesize. The audience has to be satisfied in a very small amount of time, and that is really difficult. Here, we can bring up perhaps the shortest story ever written by Ernest Hemingway (or allegedly written by Hemingway): "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." end.

Some responses have been edited for length and clarity.