As Shane Acker’s feature film based on his animated short 9 rolls on toward the silver screen, I thought I’d share a conversation I had with him about his short. If you haven’t seen the short, it’s definitely great, and you should check it out.
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The notion is irresistible. An animator, beavering away, alone in a dark bedroom studio. His face is bathed in the light of a computer screen on which is forming the result of a labor of love; a strange tale of ragdolls in a post-apocolyptic wasteland.
For Shane Acker, that notion isn’t just a romantic idea of what it means to be a modern-day auteur. It’s his reality, and the result is the fantastic animated short “9″.
And to any would-be director dreaming of following in Acker’s footsteps, the dream is big indeed. Because Acker didn’t just finish the film to worldwide acclaim. His film was spotted by the right people in the right festival, and is going on to a greater life than perhaps even he dreamt: a feature film based on the short, with a Hollywood brand name behind it!
That’s what you’re here to read about, isn’t it? Well, Shane Acker took time out from his busy film schedule in Luxembourg to answer our questions about his short and its promising future.
OGDEN: What inspired the story of “9″?
ACKER: Well I knew I wanted to make a non-verbal film, something that would force me to focus on character acting and visual storytelling. For several years I had this idea rolling around in my head of these ragdoll creatures that would scavenge the wasteland of a ruined world, adapting, evolving and finding a way to survive.
I am a huge fan of stop-motion filmmakers like the Brothers Quay, Jan Svankmajer and the Lauenstein Brothers. I love the worlds they create, haunting metaphorical spaces where these little self-contained stories play out. So I took all of these ideas and inspirations and started boarding out the film.
OGDEN: How did you stay focused on it over the 4 years? Were there times you felt like giving it up?
ACKER: I don’t know. I did 2 years of production at school. I was learning Maya, and 3D animation production, so it was exciting and challenging. I spent a great deal of time working on the story and made a really solid story reel.
Because the 3D side of things was moving so slow, I kept noodling and refining the animatic. I think that’s what kept me focused after I started working professionally. I always knew where I was going because I had this blueprint I was working from. About year 3 I was over it. I was starting to freak out a bit, overwhelmed with the feeling it might never get done.
OGDEN: One of the most interesting things about the film is the way the story unspools. At first, you don’t realize what the character is doing, and then at the end, you pay it off. How did you write that?
ACKER: I was inspired by a Moebius comic strip of Arzak, one of his fantasy characters. It was only about 4 pages long and contained no text or dialogue. In the story, Arzak puts himself in grave danger, challenging an enormous creature. A chase ensues and at the last moment when we think Arzak is going to meet his end, a twist happens and we realize that Azrak was leading the creature into a trap all along.
I thought it was a unique way of telling a story, and I wanted to do something like that with 9. Yeah I storyboard and write a lot. It’s a quick and easy way to test out ideas and think through staging.
OGDEN: Did anything influence the look of the short?
ACKER: The paintings of Zdzislaw Beksinski, Street of Crocodiles by the Brothers Quay, ruins of European cities destroyed in WWII, and a film by the Lauenstein Brothers named Balance.
OGDEN: What impact did working at WETA have on the short?
ACKER: I learned a TREMENDOUS amount about character animation while I was at WETA. There were so many amazing artists there. I took a hiatus from production while I was working there. I was so busy and I didn’t want to send over my workstations to New Zealand.
I did show my film to a lot of people for feedback. One of my friends from WETA animated a shot in the film.
OGDEN: What obstacles did you encounter during production, and how did you overcome them?
ACKER: I used Maya for 3D production, Photoshop for 2D art, Premiere for cutting and After Effects for compositing. Over the course of 4 years and different software upgrades you’ll encounter many problems.
I’m not a programming genius so when it came to particles, rigging and dynamics I tried to find simple solutions. I abandoned the idea of using cloth for the characters early, I didn’t want the headache. I would try fancy things for a day or two. If I couldn’t figure it out I’d just “brute force” it to keep the production moving forward. It usually involved me just grabbing points or objects and keyframe animating them, rather than running dynamic sims or particle sims.
But when you think about it, that’s just what stop-motion or 2D animators would do anyway. There is no “sim” to make your pencil draw something breaking, swinging, or blowing in the breeze, so just grab those points and animate it! I did develop a pipeline of rendering my frames as .rla files with z-depth channels and used After Effects depth filter for depth of field and rack focus effects.
OGDEN: How involved is Tim Burton going to be in the film?
ACKER: Tim is great, he’s amazing. He is Executing Producing and I feel very fortunate to have this opportunity to work with him. I am working with an amazing writer, Pamela Pettler, who has written a few films for Tim in the past. The feedback from Tim and the producers has been great and has really helped in shaping the film.
OGDEN: Were you involved with Henry Selick’s production company on this?
ACKER: No, we are partnering with Attitude, an amazing animation studio in Paris.
OGDEN: You must be very excited. What led the production to Luxembourg?
ACKER: Luxembourg? Don’t you know Luxembourg is the epicenter of all things happening in animation? It’s like a new renaissance there. [All of the 3D animation will be done in Luxembourg with Attitude Studio, the 3D house that worked on the gorgeous film Renaissance.]
OGDEN: Talk a bit about how you expanded this short into a feature. Is there a bigger story to tell?
ACKER: We have a kick-ass story to tell. A lot of people scratch their heads and ask how we are going to expand the short into a feature? For me the short was just a small glimpse into a much larger world that I was creating. In the film you’ll begin to see what happened to the inhabitants of that world, how the ragdolls and characters came to be, what this strange device is that they carry and how all these things are inextricably locked in a struggle for the future of the world.
OGDEN: Thanks for talking to us.
ACKER: Zzzzzz..
For more information, check the official Shane Acker site. All imagery from the movie TM and ©2005 Shane Acker. All rights reserved.
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