NFB Filmmaker-in-Residence

ANIMATE THIS! [metaphors and metamorphosis]

June 16th, 2007

Fimmaker-in-Residence is spreading its documentary wings into the world of animation.

The idea came months ago when I had just begun shooting a new documentary, and the subjects, over and over again, all spoke in a highly visual language to describe their inner worlds. So Gerry and I started thinking how we could get beyond the my-dinner-with-andré syndrome and to illustrate this inner world, without resorting to the tiresome documentary b-roll approach. We wanted to riff on this visual language and lift the film to another level. Like break out into musical, or animation genres. Thankfully, animation won out.

Now, we’re working with Seneca College (not the first time NFB has done this!), collaborating with programme head Mark Jones and a team of animation students over the summer.

This morning, we held our first workshop. I showed 10 minutes of a rough cut, and then the team had an hour to sketch out and discuss animation ideas.

What’s so cool is that the animation is being conceived early in the editing process, not as an afterthought, so the animators’ ideas and vision also help inform how we will cut, structure and shape the final film out of over 35 hours of raw documentary footage.

The students are brilliant at visualizing metaphors and metamorphosis. They have the gift of creating “the illusion of life” as one of the students so aptly described it.

It’s the first time I’ve ever tread into the animation world, but Gerry, the FIR producer, is an old hand at this. He’s close to finishing a 3-hour docu-animation extravaganza, called THE DARK YEARS.

I’ll try and post snippets and excerpts from our project here as the summer progresses….

Entry Filed under: Docu-Animation