Replay – Interview with Anthony Voisin

Anthony Voisin, a recent ESMA graduate, shares with us the journey of making his group thesis project and the challenges he and his team faced and overcame. The result of this group’s hard work and cooperation is an intelligent and emotional short named “Replay.” .

What was the initial concept of this short film?

At ESMA we are required in our second year curriculum to present some synopses to a jury of professors to select from, once it’s chosen we start working on the synopsis and develop it into a scenario and then a short.

It was Zakarian, nickname Zak, who came up with the initial idea of the synopsis. During the summer before, Zak worked selling fritters on the beach and during a break one day he sat on the water’s edge and closed his eyes and emptied his mind. He could only hear the sound of the ocean and the sounds of the vacationers; the kid’s happy screams, the mom’s chitchat. He started imagining a story that would take place in such an environment and later on we all started developing the story into a futuristic scenario, but we kept the interaction of the visual souvenir and the sound track with the nostalgia of a better world that, in our short, had been destroyed by men.

How did the script evolve once you started facing technical difficulties and new ideas?

The initial story was simple: a little boy is wandering in the ruins of a city and finds a suitcase that used to belong to a writer and in it he discovers a tape recorder. He presses the play button and all the sounds of the world we know fills the air: birds singing and kids playing. All the sounds of life coming from the tape recorder completely stand out against the silence of the kid’s deserted world and the kid’s imagination transports him into the world described by the sounds on the tape.

The scenario started evolving the more we worked on it in our group. We created a solid structure, a good story to tell and emotions to communicate through the art. Each brought his ideas and expectations without thinking of the technical problems and we faced some difficulties finding a common ground, but the fact that we worked in a team spirit helped the story a lot.
Next, we started working on the story-board and we estimated the length of the movie as we wanted it would be 17 minutes, which is of course too much, so we started thinking of ways to make it shorter so it would fit into the 5 minutes we were allowed.

When we started production we found some tricks to go around long scenes and cut details that were not essential to the story. I would say that the short never stopped evolving, even when we set the “final” story-board we went back and changed things to have practical results.

What about the team work? How did you guys share the responsibilities and how did you “build” the short?

We all took part in writing the scenario, as well in the step of doing cutouts and creating the story-board. Even though the best sketch artists did the story-board, each member of the team added his ideas and expectations. As we started the work, each one of us was ready to do everything, but with time talents appeared and we divided the tasks based on the team member who had the best skills for each specific task. We also started searching for someone to do the audio: music and voices.

What were the major difficulties that you faced during the making of this short?

Organization was difficult, we needed to save time not waste it, and we also needed to stick to the plan. The big mistake was to attack the production without enough planning and organization. At a certain point you realize that you have worked for hours on a scene that is not essential and that we have to delete it. We always had to regroup, discuss things and check on each other’s work and performance: especially when someone is waiting for someone else to finish part of the work to take it over to the next level. Then we faced the hard truth of rendering time. We had to organize ourselves to prepare the rendering scenes, the different layers, the backgrounds and the foregrounds, the objects to separate to be able to chain up the compositing directly after the complete rendering of a plan.

In what way do you think your short will touch the public?

We have tried our best not to make it very obvious that we are after the public’s emotions. The story itself ended up bringing out lots of emotions: the world’s end, the poisoned atmosphere, a childhood in such an environment, the souvenir of a better world, brotherly love, hope, death, etc.The responses of the public on YouTube and Dailymotion were mainly about the future of our planet and, of course, the pollution, which is one theme between many that we wanted to talk about in the movie. We made a lot of efforts to get the right music that would go along with the mood. The sad end also holds lots of messages. With the death of Theo we wanted to show this liberation, this escape from a doomed world to a better world where kids were free to be kids, breath clean air and play together in a safe environment.

We tried to make it both sad and happy at the same time. The spectator might feel sad for the death of the little boy, but then again Theo is in a better world with his imaginary friends in his imaginary world and death is nothing but a crossing to freedom.

Was you initial message about death as liberation?

Part of it yes, but we were trying to have something poetic, something sad and beautiful. The main message would be that we need joyful moments in life to keep going. Happy and warm souvenirs that give meaning to life and little Theo never had these moments. He was born underground in a sealed and artificial atmosphere with no other kids to play with, with no one but his sister around and other humans that are still motivated by selling and buying. All of a sudden this tape recorder appears in his life and brings him to a time that he never knew and he is introduced to a life of laughter, fun and games. The kid liberates himself from his present world to go to a better one.

Can you name some sources of inspiration?

Mainly movies of course, such as the Silence of the Lambs, Silent Hill, Mad Max 2, Le dernier Combat, and The Hills have Eyes. We were also inspired by pictures, photography, drawings and some other short films.

What material and software did you use?

We had 5 linked PC’s and we worked on MAYA8, Photoshop CS2, Digital Fusion, After Effects 7, Premiere Pro and we also used many helpful scripts and plug-ins. For the sound, ESMA is partnered with the “Studio des Aviateurs” of Montpellier, with whom we did all the audio.

Which scenes would you say were the most difficult?

The hardest scene was when Lana comes in the room where Theo is waiting for her. We had to go through this scene many times on the scenario level, the story-board level and the technical animation level. This scene had to tell so much about the lives of the siblings; their underground “bunker”, the closed atmosphere for a young kid and especially their state of mind. And also about their relationship, which looks more like a mother/son than sister/brother. Many viewers anyway thought that Lana was Theo’s mother.

The second hardest sequence was when Theo starts imagining the other kids in the school’s playground and wants to take off his mask. The hardest part was to place the elements in the image to have an interesting framing that is coherent.

Which scenes are you particularly proud of?

It is so hard to be satisfied. You always think that you can do better and that with time you could have done better! But of course we had a turnaround date and we will always have one in the future. We can’t keep ameliorating the short endlessly and we are satisfied with the first scene where Lana is rushing to get to the safe hub as her oxygen is running low. Other scenes we favor are the one when Theo is in the city and he is guided by the sounds of the tape and the scene where the paper plane hits the window pane and he sees his reflection in it and starts taking his mask off. I think because of the music in that scene and the emotions the scene provokes it is for all of us the favorite and most successful part of the short.

What would you have changed in this short?

I think that the weakness of this short lies in the poor quality of the animation. We did not give enough time for the animation and since these were our first tries we should have definitely dedicated more time for that, but we lost so much time in pre-production and to respect the deadline we had to stop animating and start rendering.

The music and the sounds contribute largely to the mood of the movie. Can you tell us more about this part and who helped you with it?

It is our responsibility to find someone to work on the audio band of the short and it was not an easy task finding someone and convincing him of the scenario and getting him to invest himself in it.Luckily, we met a fellow ESMA in his first year of 3D animation that makes music and was interested in the project. His name is Miguel Randrianasolo and he is a really hard worker and made himself available for us and did not hesitate to sacrifice hours of sleep and week-ends just to get the job done. He understood perfectly well what we needed and knew how important his role was for the short and he did an amazing job in finding the tunes that completed the mood of the film. We thank Miguel for his participation in this short and his talent in finding the appropriate music for it. The sounds were done with the collaboration of José Vicente from “Studio des Aviateurs” who was our guide in this matter. It was a very interesting and enriching experience.

How did the work with Miguel go?

Miguel was really friendly and helpful. We were in the same school and that made work easier. He started with some tests and made some propositions based on the scenario that he had. Later on he would meet with us regularly and we would give him what we had already worked on and this is where he started creating the music that went so well with the short. It is toward the end of the work that things got really precise for all of us as we were set on a final scenario and a time schedule. Miguel did a fantastic job and we can’t thank him enough, especially that he ended working much more than we planed. Initially we intended to have two musical sequences and we ended up with eight.

Tell us about the success of this short?

We have had really good responses over the internet via YouTube and Dailymotion. We also made some successful appearances in festivals such as IMAGINA2008. I hope things keep going this way and that the short reaches more and more spectators that will like it.

What did you learn from this experience?

One thing we learned the hard way: it’s not easy to produce a short! We also learned to work on a step by step basis. Having a time restriction taught us a very important lesson and it was very interesting to work with this restraint. We had 5 to 8 minutes to summarize all our thoughts and find a way of sending the main message in this short period of time and cut and delete all that is unnecessary for the story. Another thing we can all say is that we will never watch other movies in the same way after producing our own. We have also gained confidence and I think we are all more efficient. We know where to put time and where not to waste it. We also learned a lot about ourselves and it is after working on this short that some of us found our career direction and we now know in which field we would like to specialize. All in all, creating and producing this story was a very good introduction to the professional world.

Are you working on any projects right now?

I joined the “Chez Eddy” studio in Paris and things are going well, I hope I’ll get to work on some of their projects soon. I would like to one day join a studio where I can work on a feature film, such as BUF, DURAN DUBOIS or BIBO STUDIO who are all working on 3D films. Other than that I’m just doing the routine personal works and small projects.

Would you like to add anything?

A big thanks to the IT’S ART team who has helped us a lot in accessing a larger audience.