It is night, in a lonely train station when a young girl
meets with a strange... coincidence.
Literally.
What if coincidences were living, breathing entities? And
what would happen if a human and a coincidence met? Would
either one of them ever be the same again? Johannes Weiland
(director of "Hessi
James") has brought us "Annie & Boo",
a magical tale about a girl named Annie, and a coincidence
named Boo, which answers these questions.
This is a gorgeous film. The environment is very well detailed,
beautifully lit, and the characters are very appealing.
It has been showing in the festival circuit since 2003,
and there is little wonder that it has won so many awards,
including three -- Art Direction, Best Student Film, and
the Grand Prix Imagina -- at the prestigious Imagina Festival
in Monte Carlo.
CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE ANNIE & BOO WEBSITE
"I
was interested in telling a character driven story with
two strong emotional characters leading through the film.
To tell something like a romance between a human being and
a fantasy character was fascinating me. But, which fantasy
character could fit into a love story?
I brainstormed with the other team members and we came up
with this idea of having a personified coincidence, a creature
living in our human world, but hiding itself pretty well,
so no one of us has ever seen it before. This creature called
"Boo" is causing things to happen that appear
to us as coincidence. They both accidently meet in a train
station. But their conversation doesn't pass the usual way
because Boo can't stop being a coincidence.
Animating a human character was quite a challenge and I
never knew if it finally would work. So many times I've
seen almost real looking human 3d characters but acting
like robots without any soul, so I decided to keep Annie
being an "animated" character. Instead of motion
capture I used classical pose to pose keyframe animation.
But to get her acting more "girl-like" I tried
to put many typical teenage girl gestures into her movements.
As reference, the american actress Katie Holmes was a brilliant
Annie, not only because of her character, she also has a
very expressive way of acting, which was useful for animation.
I spend quite a lot of time watching films starring Katie
Holmes, trying to understand her acting in specific situations
to finally translate it into Annie's animation.
"Annie & Boo" is a student graduation project,
produced at Filmakademie Baden-Wuerttemberg in Stuttgart,
Germany. There are several subjects you can study at Filmakademie,
so the team consisted of students of different departments
of the film school (producer, screenwriter, character designer,
composer, sounddesigner). Time of production was about 2
years and 6 months. I did mainly direction, animation and
lighting/rendering but all the time I had this small but
wonderful, enthusiastic team that put all their energy and
knowledge into that production. It was the first time for
me working with a team, and sometimes it was really difficult
to explain to your team what you want them to do (sometimes
you just don't know what you want). But then they suggested
their ideas and so we always got a solution we were happy
with... Finally I'm happy with the whole film.
Currently, I'm working with StudioSoi. (StudioSoi is an
animation studio founded one year ago in Stuttgart, Germany.)
It's a group of talented directors and animators -- and
actually the animation class I graduated with -- with the
will to create high level animation for commercials, videoclips,
TV series etc. We occasionally work with StudioAKA ("Pica
Towers") and will stay in close contact with the studio
for future projects."
