Poppy art
Director James Cunningham and producer Paul Swadel discuss making their CGI animated short, which features in the New Zealand International Film Festivals.
Note: a shorter version of this interview ran in Onfilm’s July issue.
Director James Cunningham and producer Paul Swadel discuss making their CGI animated short, which features in the New Zealand International Film Festivals.
Note: a shorter version of this interview ran in Onfilm’s July issue.
First of all, congrats on Poppy – it’s an extremely impressive piece of work. Can you discuss how the script came your way and what it was that recommended it to you?
Paul Swadel: The South Seas Film and TV School runs a thing call ‘Dragons Den’ every year, where students pitch their short film ideas to a panel of industry folks that includes people like John Barnett, Nick Ward, who in turn give very free and frank responses. The best pitch wins a cash prize to make their film.
In 2007 I was on the panel and a young guy David Coyle blew everyone one away with his pitch for a film called Poppy. It won that year. All good. A couple of weeks later James had heard about the project completely independently through Kathryn Burnett, a tutor at South Seas who’s also a member of a writers group he’s a part of. So James came to me: “Hey let’s do this as an animated short”.
To begin with I was quite ‘hard-balls’ about it and threw it back to James: “Tell me why it shouldn’t be shot as a normal film? Prove to me that it should be done as an animation. Convince me. I’m not completely sold.”
James Cunningham: As Paul said, I came across Poppy when Kathryn Burnett told me about the script at our writer's group. Something about the pitch clicked and I could see it had potential as a CGI short. I then contacted David, who sent me the script. When I read it I had a strong, emotional reaction. A key element to Poppy is it presents a unique problem – what do you do with a baby in a war zone? The stakes are really high, so you are immediately drawn in.
From a production standpoint the cast is small and the scale of the story is small. The location would be expensive to film really well but maybe not that hard to do CGI. But I also thought that there is something about the process of making an animation that would help this story. With animation you are always stripping away the unnecessary and just keeping the most essential visual elements, which creates an exaggeration that felt right for this unbelievable story. It’s hard to explain but I felt if it were an animation it would be easier to be drawn in and accept the narrative. Then when David told me it was based on the stories his grandmother told him about his great grandfather, well, that sealed it.
Would I be right in thinking that as a filmmaker, James, you’re an animator first, second and third? I mean, all your directing credits for animation, and your “day job” is as head of 3D at Digital Post, yeah? So presumably when you find a script that you respond to and want to make, you’re automatically seeing it by default through the prism of animation rather than live action?
JC: I don't see myself as an animator as such and I've never been trained in traditional drawn animation techniques. Based on my years at art school I am supposed to be a photographer but I was drawn to telling stories. Then, as digital animation started, I saw a way to move toward becoming a digital filmmaker. I have been tempted by trying my hand at live action but so many other people have taken that path. I'm interested in finding a path less well-trodden, one that is still being discovered.
Now, after 15 years of mixing computers and images, computer graphic imagery (CGI) and all the digital ways of capturing and realising a film is what I know. I am also more comfortable and confident with these new media. So when I read a story and wonder about making it into a film I filter it through my experiences of all the possible ways 'x' could be realised. If it is more suited to my approach then I am more inclined to follow it up.
So Paul, what exactly was it about James’ response to your ‘hard-balls’ routine that convinced you, yup, he’s right, it should be made as an animation?
PS: The background to this goes back to our experience of Infection screening in competition at Cannes 2000. It was the only CGI animated film on show, but was screened very much as a drama – a character driven narrative to which the audience was responding regardless of it being animation. This proved to us that, regardless of technique, story is king. I was reminded of this again recently when I happened to see Benjamin Button in the same week as The Wrestler. Sure, the technique and concept of‘Benjamin Button was astounding, but in terms of story? Give me a hand-held camera any day if it works best to deliver an affecting cinema experience.
With Poppy, normal movie logic might have required us to get two actors to play dress-up as soldiers in the mud. Most of the film would have to be shot at night, with lots of explosions. Locations and art department would be large to say the least, with the cast and crew soldiering away somewhere in the middle of all the smoke.
James’s response in using CGI was to pare everything back a desolate landscape to focus right in close on our two main characters and allow the actors to lead. His belief was that the technology was ready to do a serious performance-driven CGI animated film that was for adults and maybe brought a tear to the eye.
With this in mind, we took it all up quite a few notches in terms of performance-driven CGI filmmaking. In practical terms this meant: cast the best actors and use a process where their every nuance drives the onscreen characters; base the character’s looks on the actors too; workshop the script with the cast and have that process inform the script development.
Originally we planned a process using key-frame animation (and if we’d continued that process we’d probably still be making the film), but the performance-driven objectives in turn informed our final method of production.
Casting itself was very simple. Paul Glover and Matthew Sunderland were obvious choices, and it pretty much involved two phone calls and us all having a beer.
It was nice to put Matthew Sunderland into a lead/hero role as he’s usually the ‘bad guy’ (the role of David Gray in Out Of The Blue, for which he won Best Actor at last year’s awards, being a case in point).
Although James had never worked with actors before, but he had a very clear vision of the what and the why with which to steer everyone forward through the process.
Okay, so how did you find directing actors for the first time, James? I imagine Paul’s experience in this area would have been useful to you? Can you tell us about how you prepared for your first time directing warm bodies, what this part of the process involved on the day, and some details about the technology you used that facilitated this approach?
JC: Working with these actors was wonderful.
I was a bit nervous and Paul Swadel's experience was very helpful.
We had a few nights of rehearsals at Paul Glover's place. For rifles, Paul G an umbrella and I think Matthew had a golf club, and we rearranged the lounge into a mock crater. Because I’d storyboarded the whole thing out, I knew the spaces and the blocking, so told them roughly how I saw the action then let them loose. In they came huffing and puffing like they had just crossed no man's land – it was fantastic. We worked through the scene a few different ways with both Paul and I directing and prodding. By the end of the evening I realised I was going to be able to hang the whole film on their performances. It was a great relief. Not that I doubted the actors, just whether I was going to be able to capture their performance in a way that brought the film to life.
As for the motion-capture shoot at Weta Digital, it went incredibly well. They are an amazing crew and I cannot thank them enough. They made my day easy and a lot of fun – even though I was in the hot seat, I was loving it.
Paul was in the wings, like a quiet owl, watching and listening carefully to the voices, making little observations here and there. To know I had him covering my back and making sure we didn't miss anything was a great comfort.
The rehearsals’ prep work became invaluable on the shoot day. We moved quickly and smoothly, finishing half an hour early. We had the time to get each scene in one long take that covered everything perfectly. We also had time to try a few options based on our rehearsal play at Glover's house, in particular when Glover's character dies. We swapped the baby around for the last take and had it in Glover's arms as he died. The effect on the actors was powerful and that was the take we used.
The other amazing moment for me was between Sunderland and Camille Keenan, playing the nun. They had never met, let alone rehearsed, but by the third take they both had tears in their eyes and I knew we were done for the day. It is so much easier and faster to work with actors than animating from scratch, and for a story like this it was the best way to go.
As we were shooting with motion-capture we were not restricted by lighting and cameras on the day. I knew roughly were I wanted to place the camera later in the computer but essentially I could just focus on the performances. It is all quite hard to explain how it all works – suffice to say on our website we have some making of clips that show the process and how much it is actor driven: see www.poppyfilm.com.
PS: The mocap crew had just come back from LA where they were prepping with Mssrs Jackson and Spielberg, and PJ was sighted working upstairs on the mezzanine. Hmm – that's pressure on a director. That said, James already had mocap experience and was going to be doing the animation himself – so he knew what he needed. At the same time, this process was completely new for the actors so they were very much in his hands. And because he had fully workshopped with them, James was perfectly prepared to lead everyone through on the day. Beyond that it was a family affair, with our young writer doing clapper, EP Roger Grant manning a reference camera and EP Rawiri Paratene on hand for moral support.
The animation is stylised, rather than attempting to be photo realistic. Why did you decide to go this route?
JC: I was certainly going for something other than photo-realism, for several reasons.
High level realism would have more than quadrupled the workload and I'd still be making the film.
That said, boffin types (myself included) can get quite a bit of satisfaction in making things look real, so there is a temptation that has to be resisted, otherwise it becomes a distraction from working on the story.
Also, as an audience member, the experience of watching a photo-realistic film becomes one of continually judging how real it looks, instead of accepting the world of the film.
That said, Poppy is far from stripped back. Some level of realism was required; rough ground, dirty clothes etc... Deciding how much realism you will put in is always hard. For Poppy, the look development took us about three months. You're after something that feels right for the film and is also unique.
Did you have any particular inspirations as far as the look goes?
JC: Yes, there were several influences. Initial concept sketches, by staff at Freelance Animation School, were very helpful for me in nailing the tone of the film and became key to our pitch pack to the executive producers, Conbrio Shorts (Christina Milligan, Roger Grant and Rawiri Paratene).
They EPs then threw me a curve ball by asking if the film could look exactly like the sketches. I went away and thought about it for a bit. The sketches were rough and full of character. While making the film as a 2D animation was not possible for several reasons, the EP's provocation led me to the Elam library and I went through dozens of books on sculpture. I found that several bronzes by Rodin, in his late period, were very expressive and rough, and I saw them as three-dimensional equivalents of these concept sketches. So that became the initial target – Rodin bronzes. But once we got into production and I started carving heads in plasticine and we were building digital heads in sculpting software (ZBrush), it quickly evolved into something more carved and original.
In terms of the actual animation process, what did this involve? I understand you did this solo for a while, James?
JC: No, I was not solo very much. For eight months I had the invaluable help of a very talented employee – Leslie Chan – who took a lot of the technical burden off my shoulders. While I fussed about edits, camera moves, animation, and lighting, he was building all the characters and prepping them for animation.
The general process was as follows... We built the characters and had the mocap shoot at Weta Digital. We edited using the ref video footage. We told Weta what takes we wanted, and they started processing them, sending back the roughly processed takes. I then did all the camera work in the animation software and updated the edit with rough 3D, and we sent this edit back to Weta and they did a fine clean up on only what is visible through the final cameras.
Two students at Freelance Animation did most of the facial animation, matching footage of the actors, although I have to confess I didn't let them do all of it – I wanted to do some too and kept the juiciest, most dramatic scenes for myself. Once that was animated I updated the edit with less rough 3D. Now it was ready to move into lighting and rendering.
Six months later, for extra render power two students and I were camped out at Digipost (where I’m head of 3D), putting the final touches on the full HD renders of the film.
How does one keep motivated over such a long period? Were there any particular milestones during the animation process that served to boost your morale?
JC: For much of it I was motivated by the fact that we'd run out of money to pay Leslie and I needed to get finished so I could get back to work at Digipost and start earning money to pay bills. But I can't say that I needed milestones to boost morale. I was loving it. Every day was a blessing to be able to work on my film.
It’s not a linear process is it, where you're fully finishing a scene before moving on to the next one?
The process is more like passing through stages. R&D, the edit, cameras and 3D edit, animation, then lighting. You keep working over the film, revising, polishing and improving.
What does a producer do during this period, Paul – nod sympathetically when your director/animator complains about how arduous it is and make approving noises about the work thus far while also trying to get him to working harder and faster?
PS: I'm not the cliched 'producer', whatever that is – we work as a team. We've been doing that for a long time now so we tend to bounce off each other’s instincts and be able to read each other’s silences.
During the hard yards I was doing my best to feed in without burdening James with too many worries; trying to keep James honest and hopefully help him not get lost in the details. Which was tough because there were an awful lot of details.
We'd look at a pass and I'd have a list of niggles, then we'd discuss fixes etc. Sometimes it might be easier to sneak the edit a few frames than to lose a week on something that was obviously going to be a nightmare. Because we kicked off with a strong story that had a clear beat structure, that reigned supreme in terms of what was ultimately important.
JC: Yeah, Paul was right by my side through the shoot and edit. Then as the year developed he'd pop by once a week to check on progress (he lived just down the road). If anything, I was worried that he was doing too much, but it gave me pleasure to see that he was excited by it and that my film was not a burden on him.
How do you feel about the finished film? Have you achieved what you set out to do and is it at all different from how you envisioned it?
JC: It’s better than I hoped. I had the time to get everything the way I wanted it and to respond to people's reactions and make adjustments.
It is a bit different from what I thought it would become. It is more polished and the performances are so strong. Poppy elicits a strong emotional reaction from many people, and that was one of my goals – to make a CGI film that has the power to move an audience.
What kind of response have you received from others?
JC: The response has been great so far. It has not been tested internationally yet but I wonder if Poppy will be more successful here at home, as it is a NZ story and plays upon all the baggage we carry around.
PS: I think it's a universal story but, yes, there's a gut Kiwi connection there at its core.
And what's next for your point company, Supercollider? Back to the toil of bringing animated feature film Marshal to life? Surely your success with Poppy – both in terms of execution and the way the short has been received -- will help bring this project to fruition?
JC: That would be wonderful and would make me very happy. I would love the chance to make more films – films that people like to watch.
PS: Marshal is moving forward. It's a big one. Luckily the technology marches forward too. That part works in our favour.
• Find out more about the making of Poppy at www.poppyfilm.com.
• Poppy is currently screening at the NZFF as part of the Homegrown – Works on Film and Animation Now shorts programmes, and with Ken Loach's feature Looking For Eric.
Paul Swadel: The South Seas Film and TV School runs a thing call ‘Dragons Den’ every year, where students pitch their short film ideas to a panel of industry folks that includes people like John Barnett, Nick Ward, who in turn give very free and frank responses. The best pitch wins a cash prize to make their film.
In 2007 I was on the panel and a young guy David Coyle blew everyone one away with his pitch for a film called Poppy. It won that year. All good. A couple of weeks later James had heard about the project completely independently through Kathryn Burnett, a tutor at South Seas who’s also a member of a writers group he’s a part of. So James came to me: “Hey let’s do this as an animated short”.
To begin with I was quite ‘hard-balls’ about it and threw it back to James: “Tell me why it shouldn’t be shot as a normal film? Prove to me that it should be done as an animation. Convince me. I’m not completely sold.”
James Cunningham: As Paul said, I came across Poppy when Kathryn Burnett told me about the script at our writer's group. Something about the pitch clicked and I could see it had potential as a CGI short. I then contacted David, who sent me the script. When I read it I had a strong, emotional reaction. A key element to Poppy is it presents a unique problem – what do you do with a baby in a war zone? The stakes are really high, so you are immediately drawn in.
From a production standpoint the cast is small and the scale of the story is small. The location would be expensive to film really well but maybe not that hard to do CGI. But I also thought that there is something about the process of making an animation that would help this story. With animation you are always stripping away the unnecessary and just keeping the most essential visual elements, which creates an exaggeration that felt right for this unbelievable story. It’s hard to explain but I felt if it were an animation it would be easier to be drawn in and accept the narrative. Then when David told me it was based on the stories his grandmother told him about his great grandfather, well, that sealed it.
"Did you hear that?”: An image from CGI animated short film Poppy.
Would I be right in thinking that as a filmmaker, James, you’re an animator first, second and third? I mean, all your directing credits for animation, and your “day job” is as head of 3D at Digital Post, yeah? So presumably when you find a script that you respond to and want to make, you’re automatically seeing it by default through the prism of animation rather than live action?
JC: I don't see myself as an animator as such and I've never been trained in traditional drawn animation techniques. Based on my years at art school I am supposed to be a photographer but I was drawn to telling stories. Then, as digital animation started, I saw a way to move toward becoming a digital filmmaker. I have been tempted by trying my hand at live action but so many other people have taken that path. I'm interested in finding a path less well-trodden, one that is still being discovered.
Now, after 15 years of mixing computers and images, computer graphic imagery (CGI) and all the digital ways of capturing and realising a film is what I know. I am also more comfortable and confident with these new media. So when I read a story and wonder about making it into a film I filter it through my experiences of all the possible ways 'x' could be realised. If it is more suited to my approach then I am more inclined to follow it up.
So Paul, what exactly was it about James’ response to your ‘hard-balls’ routine that convinced you, yup, he’s right, it should be made as an animation?
PS: The background to this goes back to our experience of Infection screening in competition at Cannes 2000. It was the only CGI animated film on show, but was screened very much as a drama – a character driven narrative to which the audience was responding regardless of it being animation. This proved to us that, regardless of technique, story is king. I was reminded of this again recently when I happened to see Benjamin Button in the same week as The Wrestler. Sure, the technique and concept of‘Benjamin Button was astounding, but in terms of story? Give me a hand-held camera any day if it works best to deliver an affecting cinema experience.
With Poppy, normal movie logic might have required us to get two actors to play dress-up as soldiers in the mud. Most of the film would have to be shot at night, with lots of explosions. Locations and art department would be large to say the least, with the cast and crew soldiering away somewhere in the middle of all the smoke.
James’s response in using CGI was to pare everything back a desolate landscape to focus right in close on our two main characters and allow the actors to lead. His belief was that the technology was ready to do a serious performance-driven CGI animated film that was for adults and maybe brought a tear to the eye.
With this in mind, we took it all up quite a few notches in terms of performance-driven CGI filmmaking. In practical terms this meant: cast the best actors and use a process where their every nuance drives the onscreen characters; base the character’s looks on the actors too; workshop the script with the cast and have that process inform the script development.
Originally we planned a process using key-frame animation (and if we’d continued that process we’d probably still be making the film), but the performance-driven objectives in turn informed our final method of production.
Casting itself was very simple. Paul Glover and Matthew Sunderland were obvious choices, and it pretty much involved two phone calls and us all having a beer.
It was nice to put Matthew Sunderland into a lead/hero role as he’s usually the ‘bad guy’ (the role of David Gray in Out Of The Blue, for which he won Best Actor at last year’s awards, being a case in point).
Although James had never worked with actors before, but he had a very clear vision of the what and the why with which to steer everyone forward through the process.
Okay, so how did you find directing actors for the first time, James? I imagine Paul’s experience in this area would have been useful to you? Can you tell us about how you prepared for your first time directing warm bodies, what this part of the process involved on the day, and some details about the technology you used that facilitated this approach?
JC: Working with these actors was wonderful.
I was a bit nervous and Paul Swadel's experience was very helpful.
We had a few nights of rehearsals at Paul Glover's place. For rifles, Paul G an umbrella and I think Matthew had a golf club, and we rearranged the lounge into a mock crater. Because I’d storyboarded the whole thing out, I knew the spaces and the blocking, so told them roughly how I saw the action then let them loose. In they came huffing and puffing like they had just crossed no man's land – it was fantastic. We worked through the scene a few different ways with both Paul and I directing and prodding. By the end of the evening I realised I was going to be able to hang the whole film on their performances. It was a great relief. Not that I doubted the actors, just whether I was going to be able to capture their performance in a way that brought the film to life.
As for the motion-capture shoot at Weta Digital, it went incredibly well. They are an amazing crew and I cannot thank them enough. They made my day easy and a lot of fun – even though I was in the hot seat, I was loving it.
Paul was in the wings, like a quiet owl, watching and listening carefully to the voices, making little observations here and there. To know I had him covering my back and making sure we didn't miss anything was a great comfort.
The rehearsals’ prep work became invaluable on the shoot day. We moved quickly and smoothly, finishing half an hour early. We had the time to get each scene in one long take that covered everything perfectly. We also had time to try a few options based on our rehearsal play at Glover's house, in particular when Glover's character dies. We swapped the baby around for the last take and had it in Glover's arms as he died. The effect on the actors was powerful and that was the take we used.
The other amazing moment for me was between Sunderland and Camille Keenan, playing the nun. They had never met, let alone rehearsed, but by the third take they both had tears in their eyes and I knew we were done for the day. It is so much easier and faster to work with actors than animating from scratch, and for a story like this it was the best way to go.
As we were shooting with motion-capture we were not restricted by lighting and cameras on the day. I knew roughly were I wanted to place the camera later in the computer but essentially I could just focus on the performances. It is all quite hard to explain how it all works – suffice to say on our website we have some making of clips that show the process and how much it is actor driven: see www.poppyfilm.com.
PS: The mocap crew had just come back from LA where they were prepping with Mssrs Jackson and Spielberg, and PJ was sighted working upstairs on the mezzanine. Hmm – that's pressure on a director. That said, James already had mocap experience and was going to be doing the animation himself – so he knew what he needed. At the same time, this process was completely new for the actors so they were very much in his hands. And because he had fully workshopped with them, James was perfectly prepared to lead everyone through on the day. Beyond that it was a family affair, with our young writer doing clapper, EP Roger Grant manning a reference camera and EP Rawiri Paratene on hand for moral support.
The one-day motion-capture shoot for Poppy at Weta Digital – for more on the mo-cap process, see www.poppyfilm.com.
The animation is stylised, rather than attempting to be photo realistic. Why did you decide to go this route?
JC: I was certainly going for something other than photo-realism, for several reasons.
High level realism would have more than quadrupled the workload and I'd still be making the film.
That said, boffin types (myself included) can get quite a bit of satisfaction in making things look real, so there is a temptation that has to be resisted, otherwise it becomes a distraction from working on the story.
Also, as an audience member, the experience of watching a photo-realistic film becomes one of continually judging how real it looks, instead of accepting the world of the film.
That said, Poppy is far from stripped back. Some level of realism was required; rough ground, dirty clothes etc... Deciding how much realism you will put in is always hard. For Poppy, the look development took us about three months. You're after something that feels right for the film and is also unique.
Did you have any particular inspirations as far as the look goes?
JC: Yes, there were several influences. Initial concept sketches, by staff at Freelance Animation School, were very helpful for me in nailing the tone of the film and became key to our pitch pack to the executive producers, Conbrio Shorts (Christina Milligan, Roger Grant and Rawiri Paratene).
They EPs then threw me a curve ball by asking if the film could look exactly like the sketches. I went away and thought about it for a bit. The sketches were rough and full of character. While making the film as a 2D animation was not possible for several reasons, the EP's provocation led me to the Elam library and I went through dozens of books on sculpture. I found that several bronzes by Rodin, in his late period, were very expressive and rough, and I saw them as three-dimensional equivalents of these concept sketches. So that became the initial target – Rodin bronzes. But once we got into production and I started carving heads in plasticine and we were building digital heads in sculpting software (ZBrush), it quickly evolved into something more carved and original.
In terms of the actual animation process, what did this involve? I understand you did this solo for a while, James?
JC: No, I was not solo very much. For eight months I had the invaluable help of a very talented employee – Leslie Chan – who took a lot of the technical burden off my shoulders. While I fussed about edits, camera moves, animation, and lighting, he was building all the characters and prepping them for animation.
The general process was as follows... We built the characters and had the mocap shoot at Weta Digital. We edited using the ref video footage. We told Weta what takes we wanted, and they started processing them, sending back the roughly processed takes. I then did all the camera work in the animation software and updated the edit with rough 3D, and we sent this edit back to Weta and they did a fine clean up on only what is visible through the final cameras.
Two students at Freelance Animation did most of the facial animation, matching footage of the actors, although I have to confess I didn't let them do all of it – I wanted to do some too and kept the juiciest, most dramatic scenes for myself. Once that was animated I updated the edit with less rough 3D. Now it was ready to move into lighting and rendering.
Six months later, for extra render power two students and I were camped out at Digipost (where I’m head of 3D), putting the final touches on the full HD renders of the film.
How does one keep motivated over such a long period? Were there any particular milestones during the animation process that served to boost your morale?
JC: For much of it I was motivated by the fact that we'd run out of money to pay Leslie and I needed to get finished so I could get back to work at Digipost and start earning money to pay bills. But I can't say that I needed milestones to boost morale. I was loving it. Every day was a blessing to be able to work on my film.
It’s not a linear process is it, where you're fully finishing a scene before moving on to the next one?
The process is more like passing through stages. R&D, the edit, cameras and 3D edit, animation, then lighting. You keep working over the film, revising, polishing and improving.
(top) Director James Cunningham (right) directs Matthew Sunderland (sitting); and (bottom) the finished scene.
What does a producer do during this period, Paul – nod sympathetically when your director/animator complains about how arduous it is and make approving noises about the work thus far while also trying to get him to working harder and faster?
PS: I'm not the cliched 'producer', whatever that is – we work as a team. We've been doing that for a long time now so we tend to bounce off each other’s instincts and be able to read each other’s silences.
During the hard yards I was doing my best to feed in without burdening James with too many worries; trying to keep James honest and hopefully help him not get lost in the details. Which was tough because there were an awful lot of details.
We'd look at a pass and I'd have a list of niggles, then we'd discuss fixes etc. Sometimes it might be easier to sneak the edit a few frames than to lose a week on something that was obviously going to be a nightmare. Because we kicked off with a strong story that had a clear beat structure, that reigned supreme in terms of what was ultimately important.
JC: Yeah, Paul was right by my side through the shoot and edit. Then as the year developed he'd pop by once a week to check on progress (he lived just down the road). If anything, I was worried that he was doing too much, but it gave me pleasure to see that he was excited by it and that my film was not a burden on him.
How do you feel about the finished film? Have you achieved what you set out to do and is it at all different from how you envisioned it?
JC: It’s better than I hoped. I had the time to get everything the way I wanted it and to respond to people's reactions and make adjustments.
It is a bit different from what I thought it would become. It is more polished and the performances are so strong. Poppy elicits a strong emotional reaction from many people, and that was one of my goals – to make a CGI film that has the power to move an audience.
What kind of response have you received from others?
JC: The response has been great so far. It has not been tested internationally yet but I wonder if Poppy will be more successful here at home, as it is a NZ story and plays upon all the baggage we carry around.
PS: I think it's a universal story but, yes, there's a gut Kiwi connection there at its core.
And what's next for your point company, Supercollider? Back to the toil of bringing animated feature film Marshal to life? Surely your success with Poppy – both in terms of execution and the way the short has been received -- will help bring this project to fruition?
JC: That would be wonderful and would make me very happy. I would love the chance to make more films – films that people like to watch.
PS: Marshal is moving forward. It's a big one. Luckily the technology marches forward too. That part works in our favour.
• Find out more about the making of Poppy at www.poppyfilm.com.
• Poppy is currently screening at the NZFF as part of the Homegrown – Works on Film and Animation Now shorts programmes, and with Ken Loach's feature Looking For Eric.
© Copyright Onfilm magazine, July 2009 www.onfilm.co.nz