Oct 28, 2024

Oscar contenders for 2025:-Yuck!-Director Lois Espce

Welcome to the spotlight series of Cartoon Brew, which focuses on the 2025 Academy Award-nominated animated shorts. Films in this series have been certified on one of several routes, including winning an Oscar at a film festival, exhibiting in a theater or winning a Student Academy Award.

Today's movie is Yuck. (Or Beurk. Co-production with Iliade et Films, from French filmmaker Roy C Espuche and production company Ikki Films (with the original title). The short story won the qualification of the Academy Award through a theatrical exhibition.

, a group of children witness young and old adults kissing in public during their campsite holidays. For Leo and his friends, there is nothing more disgusting. And the worst thing is that you can not miss it: when people are trying to kiss, their lips turn shiny pink. That's when things start to get complicated for Leo. Even if he laughs at those ugly kisses, because Leo secretly wants to try it too.

Cartoon Brew: On the Festival Circuit, your film has won many audience awards.Often they receive awards from young audiences. Why do you feel that this film is so well connected with children-

Loic Epce: It's a film that really takes a young audience. I remember some screenings when the kids were screaming and I didn't even hear the sound of the movie. I'm happy because the kids react like movie characters and are full of ambivalence about the kisses they see.

They also自分自身や懸念するタブーの主題について話す映画を見て満足していると思いますthem.In After the discussion screening, there are a lot of questions from the children, and it's great to see them. They can discuss the theme of the film in their own words. But I think it's not just a story for kids. In fact, it has also won several audience awards from adults, and I get a lot of reaction from them during the screening. For me, it was really important to make a film that would appeal to both young and older people.

The film was partly inspired by the embarrassment I felt as a child, and sometimes even today. I was also a very attentive little boy, so the concept of gaze also exists in the staging of this story. When you are small, I think you are very influenced not only by the way others see you, but also by the way you see the world around you. For me, it's more a movie about childhood than a movie for kids.

What was it that forced you to connect with and direct a film about this story or concept -

.I got the idea during the screening of my previous short film Mutation, going out to war, and at the beginning of the film, he says goodbye to his fiancee and kisses her a little. It was in a cinema full of children, and at that time all the children of the audience began to scream. They are going to kiss. I have not seen."It was very interesting to see these reactions, and that's when I told myself, I absolutely have to make a movie about kissing, and that I immediately realized that the concept of pink mouth symbolizes the desire to kiss, which is screaming in contrast to the voices of children."While we were able to explore themes such as the birth of emotions and fear of the gaze of others, the idea that everyone had a secret garden could also be explored in a playful and humorous way.

What did you learn through the experience of making this film, production-wise, filmmaking-wise, creative, or about the subject-

For me, the main launch of this film This was especially true during the recording of children's voices.Without animatics, they were free to find their own rhythm and bring out something very peculiar.

It was also the first time I worked with such a large animation team, because there were so many characters per shot, which we especially in acting also made me really understand the importance of layout. On that stage, Leo Schweitzer (director of animation) and I drew a lot of inspiration from the drawings of Studio Ghibli. It's a real source of inspiration for us and we've made a lot of progress between the beginning and end of Yuck, even though it's still a long way to go until we master their level.'s the layout.

I also felt very strongly the importance of the human side in this shooting. Basically, there are 13 minutes of the film itself and 5 and a half years of its production - 2 periods. And they were filled with unusual encounters. It also contributed to making this film an incredible adventure due to the fact that we were roommates with the entire animation team for more than 5 months.

You can explain how you developed your visual approach to cinema- why did you settle for this style/technology?-

The art and style of cinema was developed in harmony with all the pink mouth concepts: the design had to be clean, without outlines, so that the colors come to life. In contrast to all the graphics are plain to emphasize the glittering mouth. For the pink lips themselves I wanted to create a glittering, vibrant texture that would be attractive to look at. We were inspired by the sensation of sweets we ate as a child, crackling under our tongues.

I designed the character simply so that the viewer would focus on the lips and not lose attention to too many useless details. It was also a way for animators to really focus on expressiveness, not the complexity of the picture. This pink mouth concept, we have developed a unique film language inherent in Yuck. It influenced every aspect of the film, from screenwriting to compositing, graphics, color scripts and even sound.