It's
rare that little lumps of plasticene can make you feel lumps in your
throat, but such is the common reaction to Mark Osborne's MORE. This
simple animated film about creativity, passion, and the perils of selling
out struck a chord with audiences. It was nominated for an Oscar in
1998, and won Honours at the Sundance Film Festival in 1999.
Yet acclaim was not Osborne's goal in creating the short. He set out
to make a film about the forces that were pulling on him around the
time of the birth of his daughter -- should he take that staff job,
or try to remain a bit more independent? The film was his statement,
his litmus test, and ultimately his Manifesto. It has resonated with
audiences, who relate to the film on varying levels, for 5 years now.
Meanwhile, Osborne is not content to rest on his laurels. He has teamed
up with brilliant entrepeneur Justin Sewell of Despair.com
to form a new online distribution company, HappyProduct.com,
and may very well be on the way to pioneering a business model for the
independent animated short. But more about that in the interview below.
(By the way, you NEED to see Despair.com's line of "Demotivators"
satirical products which poke fun at those sappy, useless corporate
motivational / inspirational materials some managers use to try to coerce
their workforce to Get Happy.)
As Osborne prepares to release a MORE Special Edition DVD full of commentary
and behind-the-scenes info, he sat down for a few moments to answer
some questions for us. (If you are one of the few who still haven't
seen MORE, there is a Quicktime
version of it up at the Happy Product site.)
OGDEN: Talk a little bit about what drove you
to make this film, MORE.
OSBORNE:
There really are so many reasons why I made the film. Career-wise, I
was in a limbo between jobs wondering where to go next. Stop motion
jobs were few and far between and I knew I wanted to continue working
in that medium. Creatively, I was trying to establish my own style after
doing a lot of work that was following the trends that had been set
already by the likes of Wil Vinton and others. And spiritually, I really
needed to make something of my own again after helping a friend Mike
Mitchell make his short film "Herd". Seeing him make his film
really kicked me in the ass to start making my own films again. From
there the inspiration was hard to find, but finally came with the birth
of my daughter and the New Order song Elegia that served as the foundation
for the entire project.
OGDEN: What gave you the idea to make it for
the IMAX format?
OSBORNE: I was a fan of the IMAX format, and never imagined I'd
have a chance to work in it. When I was conceiving the story for MORE,
two friends from CalArts, Debra Callabresi and Kelly Moren, approached
me about experimenting in IMAX. They were both working in large format
at the time and spearheading the Large Format Cinema Association's Experimental
Animation and Film Task Force. Amazingly, they brought the entire large
format aspect to the table for the project and it was their connections
and hard work that made that amazing opportunity a reality. And once
that opportunity surfaced, I couldn’t pass it up, no matter how much
it increased the difficulty for the entire endeavor.
OGDEN: Why did you create this film in animation,
and why did you use clay as a medium?
OSBORNE: Animation (and particularly stop-motion) is the most
engaging form of expression and poetry I have ever experienced. My path
to animation was a long and winding one since childhood as I explored
painting, drawing, video, sculpture, writing, acting, etc... In college
I discovered animation as a method to combine all of my varied creative
interests. From there I attended CalArts and through the eclectic examples
personal creative films from all over the world presented by Jules Engel
and Christine Panushka , my eyes were opened to a universe of animation
films that were as much entertainment as they were art pieces. I think
ever since then I have been striving to make a film that would mean
something as well as entertain.
And I only used clay for the heads of the characters. This allowed for
changing expressions on faces, something I preferred over creating multiple
heads or just static carved expressions on puppet type heads. I have
done some full clay animation and frankly, it is much more time consuming
than I have a capacity for.
OGDEN: From way back when I was a kid, I have
been fascinated by scale models and other practical elements in Special
Effects, as well as the sets for stop-motion animation. Do you share
this fascination?
OSBORNE:
I totally do. I was obsessed with Star Wars as a 7 year old who believed
everything I was seeing on screen. Then when The Empire Strikes Back
came out, I was a ten year old that was starting to learn how the stuff
actually got made. I'll never forget the first time I saw a behind the
scenes image of the snow walkers being animated -- it totally blew my
mind. I am certain that I can point to that film in particular as the
single event that kicked off my deeper appreciation for stop-motion
and miniatures in general.
OGDEN: If you were to make MORE today, do you
feel you would make it the same way, or would you be tempted to use
some sort of CG solution?
OSBORNE: As much as CG has advanced, and as much as I appreciate
some things that have been done with CG these days, I do believe that
MORE absolutely needed to be a stop-motion film. There is a visceral
quality in stop-motion that will never be duplicated in a computer,
no matter how advanced the technology becomes. They are very different
tools. I strongly believe that the stop-motion process is part of the
reason that people connect to the film so strongly, on a level that
they are not really aware. It just feels different in so many subtle
ways, even to the layperson.
This is not to say that CG can't engender an emotional response, or
that there aren't films that can only be made in CG, I just believe
in stop-motion animation there is an inherent sincerity in it simply
because the brain knows (on some level deep down) that it was all handmade.
And there is something touching about the age-old process in this day
and age, and this feeling definitely feeds into the themes of MORE.
I believe it makes the film much stronger than it could have been rendered
in CG.
OSBORNE
AT WORK ON THE MINIATURE SET OF "MORE"
OGDEN:
Talk a little bit about the colour theory you employed on this film.
OSBORNE:
The world of MORE needed to be as dark and grey and depressing as it
could possibly be. It seemed like an easy thing to shoot for, to make
everything look as if it were filmed in black and white by painting
everything black and white. But it is actually pretty hard to get grey
to look grey. One example: the grey clay is really quite greenish so
we had to make the rest of the puppet's body greenish to match. In the
end the grey stuff really had all sorts of bluish and greenish tints
to it. But it was OK, it sort of made everything feel even more drained
of pigment this way, like things used to be colorful.
What I was really looking for was a drab and colorless canvass to splash
colorful light onto when the fire in the belly leaks out into the world.
And this "fire in the belly" stuff needed to be everything
the world wasn't: bright, warm, vibrant and lit from within. I chose
yellows, reds and oranges to represent the fire. These seemed like the
most natural colors to represent passion. And it is these colors that
are accents in the Happy Product and Bliss product packaging that remind
the drones of better days gone by. And in the end we discover that the
children are still colorful, full of life and vibrant. Perhaps it is
the cold world which drains the pigment out of them little by little
(if you choose to look at it this way).
OGDEN: The cartoon bits, visions through the
Happy lenses... they seem part Peter Max, part Dr. Suess. What, if anything,
do you credit as an influence on those segments?
OSBORNE: When we were still trying to figure out how those scenes
would be created we looked at a lot of Dr. Seuss's “secret” and less
mainstream artwork, Yellow Submarine and even Gaudi's architecture.
It needed to be fantastical, otherworldly and somewhat surreal. It was
like trying to design a fantastical “garden of eden” that was the opposite
of the grey city.
I started with some loose sketches and a friend and fellow filmmaker
Mike Mitchell made some cool concept drawings to help out. Designer
Lorilei Pepi helped finalize the designs and made the final layouts
we needed. From there an amazing independent animator Jenny Walsh did
the animation and coordinated the efforts to get all that material done
in a very short period of time. Everything for that sequence originated
as a hand drawing and inked and colored in Photoshop.
OGDEN: Do you feel you have any other influences
on the visual style or writing method in this film?
OSBORNE: The style of the film is influenced heavily by a crazy
mixture of animation and live action films all spun in a blender. Things
like Terry Gilliam's films (like Brazil and 12 Monkeys) as well as the
films of the Quay Brothers, Pee-Wee's Playhouse, Wallace and Grommit,
Martin Scorcese, The Coen Brothers and all sorts of experimental animation
from all over the world. I'd have to say the stop-motion short film
“Balance” was also a huge inspiration. It is such a simple film, yet
so deep and meaningful. That film in particular got stuck in my head
as a great example of artistic personal expression that was reaching
out to a larger audience, conveying multi-layered layered themes.
OGDEN: How big was your team?
OSBORNE:
There were so many people that helped out in so many ways. I don't want
to exclude anyone but if I have to make a list of the key players who
put in the most time as far as production goes, it really is a list
of 8: Debra Callabresi: Co-Producer, Lead Compositor, Visual
Effects Coordinater, etc… Kelly Moren: Co-Producer, Large Format
Supervisor and expert, Optical Printer, Scanning Department, etc… Shannon
Lowry: Line Producer, Fabricator, Assistant Animator, and everything
else… Keith lowry: Multi-talented everything guy, he did Lighting,
Camera, Motion control, Assistant Animation, Fabrication, etc… Rick
Orner: Production Designer, Lead Fabricator and Rigger. David
Candelaria: Puppet and Miniatures Fabricator Assistant Animator
and resident genius. Nick Peterson: Set Construction , Fabricator,
Assistant Animator and disgruntled Runner. And last but not least, me
for a whole bunch of yelling, pointing and general indecisiveness.
