For many who lack persistence, watching stop-motion animation is akin to watching a magic trick. Even shortcuts don’t minimize down the time-consuming course of — and watching the Czech stop-motion animated movie “Residing Giant,” the characteristic movie debut from director Kristina Dufková, is a jaw-dropping surprise.
Nevermind the stop-motion characters; the Jury Award winner on the 2024 Annecy Worldwide Animated Movie Pageant additionally contains unique animals rendered in stop-motion, together with a number of cooking sequences concerned sufficient that the creators launched a companion cooking guide within the Czech Republic and France. Is it any surprise that Dufková spent 13 years on the movie?
First launched to the story — 12-year-old Ben is hit arduous by puberty, which supplies everybody a purpose to touch upon his weight, whereas juggling divorced dad and mom, a burgeoning band together with his associates, past love, and bullies — when she learn Mikaël Ollivier’s novel aloud to her daughter, Dufková was decided to carry it to screens for her. “We now have an important custom within the Czech Republic of puppetry,” Dufková informed IndieWire by means of producer Matej Chlupacek. “And puppetry was very becoming for the theme of the movie.”
Over the course of the story (written by Petr Jarchovský, Barbora Drevikovska, and Anna Vásová), the happy-go-lucky Ben undergoes the traumas of adolescence in vivid and memorable methods, from singing whereas cooking to battling melancholy. However “Residing Giant” by no means turns into bleak or too pointed; Ben is as adept at cracking a joke to defuse a tense state of affairs at college as he’s at making dinner for his mom, an unique pet vet. And his final design was a prolonged technique of trial and error.
“It was very sophisticated to [design] Ben as a result of he would want to look sympathetic and likewise, together with his greater scale whenever you examine him to different characters, it was sophisticated to suit him within the body and for the pictures themselves,” the filmmaker stated. “And we spent lots of time designing him. We have been doing a little assessments again in 2015 or ’16.”
A part of the design for all of the characters is their distinctive hair — and all of the puppets used actual human hair. “I needed to animate the hair so it’s transferring a bit,” Dufková stated. “We tried totally different supplies, and we came upon actual hair is the factor that may be animated the easiest way potential. They really wanted to be washed after [every day fiming]. As soon as, we have been lacking a puppet, so considered one of our animators needed to minimize her personal hair and implement it on the puppet.”
Dufková and her crew utilized the movie’s 5 units to movie scenes concurrently, however even that hack might solely accomplish a lot when it comes to time-saving. All through, they relied on stunning supplies to carry the story to life, from the actual hair to costumes made out of used clothes (together with one made out of Dufková’s daughter’s shirt) to cat meals.
The latter was used for a sequence involving beef stew, nevertheless it didn’t make the ultimate minimize. “After we noticed the edit, we have been like, ‘It’s nonetheless not working someway,’ so we determined to make use of actual beef stew and reshot the take,” Dufková stated. “After which it labored.”
Nothing might have alleviated the stress of the stop-motion scenes set at a group pool, one thing so daunting that the crew determined to make it the ultimate shoot of the movie. “It was the most important problem of this shoot as a result of we have been very afraid of animating water and the entire sequence,” Dufková stated. “Lastly, we simply determined to faux it a bit. You don’t see that many takes of the water itself — you see simply a few basic pictures, after which it’s largely close-ups [of characters]. And we have been utilizing mild design closely. So it’s created this sense of water, nevertheless it’s not current on a regular basis.”
Because the movie turns darker and Ben struggles together with his feelings, Dufková leaned on her expertise elevating her personal youngsters. “It was very troublesome to seek out the stability within the script,” she stated. “The entire movie continues to be balancing on the sting. It’s not for [children], it’s not for adults solely. It’s a really sophisticated, complicated story.”
In different phrases, a narrative for grown-ups — and extra proof that animation can carry to life even probably the most complicated tales. Beef stew included.
“Residing Giant” is presently enjoying an awards-qualifying run in L.A. theaters; it will likely be launched theatrically in 2025.