Issue link: https://digital.copcomm.com/i/30784
Short Film n n n n weeks in the US for Max, myself, and our partners. Beyond that, I think both Max and I felt humbled and happy to be allowed to see our film in the company of the other nomi- nated films, all of which we loved a lot. When did you start working on the movie? I started working on a first test in the sum- mer of 2007, and Max joined me in the spring of 2008, when the two of us started working on the actual storyboards. How long did it take to finish? From the very first boards to the final film, production took 18 months. How many people worked on it? At Soi, we had a good 40 people working on the project over the course of the production. That does not include anything sound-related though, as we recorded and mixed both voices and music in London. The movie looks amazing. Tell me about the backgrounds. Most of them were miniatures. There are two sets that were done in CG, but even these were built as miniatures first and photo- graphed for reference. Artists at Studio Soi spent a good amount of time working on the sets, which add a charming quality to the animated film that is reflective of the book on which it is based. (Inset) Co-director Jakob Schuh of Studio Soi in Germany. What made you decide to use “The Gruf- falo” book as the basis for your animation? The book was brought to us by British pro- ducer Michael Rose of Magic Light Pictures. From a directorial point of view, I’d say it’s just a very lovely book to sink your teeth into, and my co-director, Max Lang, and I felt privileged to get the chance to play with the story for two years. From a production perspective, the book’s immense success in Europe is surely something that helps in the making of the film. Was the intention always to make this into a TV special? Our intention was first and foremost to try and make a worthy short film of a book that has a huge following here in Europe. I think Michael probably hoped that it would be picked up as a Christmas special, and the decision to go for 20- something minutes might have been a result of that, but even that didn’t influence my or Max’s work as directors all too much. When did you decide to enter the short into various competitions? We do mostly short films at Studio Soi, and festivals are always an important factor in find- ing an audience for that format. In the case of “The Gruffalo,” the film was submitted to festivals by our UK producers, Michael Rose and Martin Pope, so we had very little to do with that this time around. What did you think about getting that Oscar nomination? That’s a pretty big deal. The nomination made for two exciting How large were the miniature sets? Most of the sets were approximately 10 by 10 feet. Why did you choose 3D as the medium and not 2D or even stop motion? An all-2D film would have been a possible route and one that would have made sense, but I always thought it might be nice to give some depth to the world of Axel’s illustra- tions. Once we had settled on miniature sets, 2D was no longer an option. The reason for April 2011 37 What made you decide to use miniatures as opposed to all-CGI for the backdrops? Axel Scheffler’s illustrations in the children’s book have a very tactile, handmade feel to them. I always thought that the warmth and organic detail of his brushstrokes and his pen- cil work were essential to the feel of the story. The miniature sets were sort of a three-dimen- sional equivalent of that. Also, that level of detail would have been very hard to achieve in CG within the framework of our budget and time- frame, and even if we had somehow managed to pull it off it, the ideal result would have been something people have become well acquainted with in productions much bigger than ours. So we thought we’d try things this way.