It’s Payback Time – Directors Interview
Channel 4 recently released 4Creative’s latest bold campaign to promote this year’s ‘killer night of fundraising’ Stand Up To Cancer, the partnership between Channel 4 and Cancer Research UK. 4Creative’s defiant approach to the film’s subject matter represents the turning point reached in the fight against cancer, with as many people now surviving as dying from the disease.
The two minute animation,was brought to life by multi-award winning Nexus Directors Adam Foulkes and Alan Smith, with sound design by Factory Studios, sees cancer personified in such a way for the very first time. The cells live in a world of endless construction reflecting the ability of the disease to spread aggressively and relentlessly. We spoke to Foulkes & Smith on creating the project…
Can you give us a brief introduction to the project?
4Creative came to us with a unique and ambitious idea to promote the Stand Up To Cancer fundraising event. They wanted to turn the tables on Cancer, dramatizing the disease as a civilisation facing collapse in the face of an unknown threat… Humans.
How did you go about tackling the brief for the film?
Their concept was to parody the relentless visual impact and condensed storytelling of the Disaster Movie trailer. So we began to work out how we could tell the whole story, while keeping the relentless chopped up energy of the trailer format.
Their is a disaster movie feel to the piece, were you influence by any films in particular when making this one?
We watched a few disaster films, particularly ones based around mysterious deadly outbreaks spreading through an unsuspecting population. But it was more useful to study how the actual trailers to those films were constructed. We had to tell a complete story rather than capture an essence, so some scenes were necessary that probably wouldn’t normally make it into a trailer. Obviously a movie trailer is two minutes edited from a two hour film, but we didn’t have that luxury. We made two minutes! But we wanted to maintain the illusion that those two minutes came from a much larger story.
Can you tell us a bit about the process of making the film?
It was really useful to have a prolonged pre-production time for this project. Having six months to exchange ideas with a client was a real luxury, and meant that we could make sure the message was coming across in the right way. Initially we got a bit over excited and wrote hundreds of scenes and gags, some way off the mark. But time allowed us to hone the storytelling.
What’s been the most challenging aspect?
The main problem early on was just how to visually portray the Cancer cells. Their world and their behaviour had to be recognisable to us in order for the Disaster Movie conventions to work. But there was an important line which we couldn’t cross, as we didn’t want people to sympathise with Cancer. We wanted to steer away from the obvious route of showing cells as a bunch of grotesque alien germs, but we were also acutely aware of not making them too human or cute. So we focused on a cohesively designed population which blindly acts collectively, rather than singling out heroic individuals. In times of trouble the cells then reveal the very worst traits of human behaviour. In a desperate bid for survival its every cell for themselves.
We also had to find a way to illustrate the new therapies, drugs and scientific breakthroughs which are turning the tide in the battle against Cancer. We represented this as the arrival of a magical blue orb, an unexplained light descending upon a shadowy world. Then we see how this mysterious alien substance begins to spread through their society, with a few spectacular and comic demises along the way. It is only at the end of the film that we reveal our human scientist introducing the blue drug into the Cancer colony.
Have you always wanted to work in animation?
We both come from Illustration and Graphic Design backgrounds, but Animation crept into our lives somewhere along the way. It gave us the ability to make our designs move! Though it was probably more a love for The Simpsons, and wanting to tell stories with humour that pushed us in that direction. But we still like to be visually ambitious.
Where do you find is the best place to come up with ideas?
If we have to sit down with a blank page and start writing ideas then it never really works. Lack of discipline you might call it. Luckily we both seem to have brains which unconsciously mull over ideas as we do other things. So we tend to go off and scribble down our thoughts, then meet up and try to entertain each other.
What projects will you be working on next?
That’s the best thing about this job, there’s always another project around the corner. Unless you mess up your last one of course, so we try not to do that. We have an interactive graphic novel for the ipad in the works which keeps getting delayed by other projects, but we’re devoting some proper time to it now.
What words of advice would you give to aspiring animators?
That depends on whether you are directing your own work, or animating commercially. For directors, find your unique voice and offer something different to the audience (not easy, its a crowded market). For animators, get off your chair and act out your scene before you start. Only then can you understand what is happening in a character’s head as their body moves. You are a performer, not a desk monkey.
What was your earliest memory of animation?
Children’s animation seemed slightly scarier and more surreal when I was a child, and all the better for it. We were lucky to grow up in a Golden Age. The Clangers, Mr Benn, then oddball character comedies like Dangermouse. Although Adventure Time carries on that fine tradition today.
What animated film do you wish you could have made?
The first half of most Pixar films.
