Stop Motion Geek

Negative Space  title card sequence. Source: Vimeo. For Edwina Liard, producer of the Oscar®-nominated stop motion short film Negative Space , a career in the film industry was by no means a childhood dream. In fact, as she tells Stop Motion Geek, the first kindling of her desire to explore the industry came about well after graduation from business school. “It came about as I was studying cultural management, after graduating from a business school in France,” says Liard. “A friend of mine was an intern in a production company and told me how diverse and interesting it was, and I thought ‘ok, let’s try that!’ That’s how I got caught!” Soon after this revelation, Liard began to dedicate herself to becoming involved in the filmmaking industry, at first starting to work as a production assistant in France for two years, before then working for two more years in Spain at a medium length film festival. After her work in Spain, Liard returned to France in November of 2011, at w...

One of the surreal flashback scenes from Negative Space . Source: Vimeo. “These are my guidelines for lighting,” Nadine Buss, the cinematographer of the Oscar®-nominated short film Negative Space , tells Stop Motion Geek, “feel, re-explore sensations,” she says, only to then lightheartedly add, “and remember the lights you saw.” Feel . If Buss’s creative fingerprint on Negative Space  could be described in just one word, it would be just that. A beautiful and heart wrenching story, Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter’s Negative Space  – a stop motion short film based on a poem of the same title by Ron Koertge – is, in many ways, one story presented as two: One half of the narrative is of a young man – Sam – as he packs a suitcase for travel before then driving to the funeral home where his late father’s viewing is being held. It’s a narrative colored by Buss in the hard, icy light of winter, which contrasts sharply with the sunny, warm light in which the second story is pa...

Dug and Hognob in Early Man . Photo courtesy of Aardman. “As a child, I was always making something or drawing something,” Marika Aakala, Finland born and bred model maker on Aardman Animation’s recent stop motion feature film, Nick Park’s Early Man , tells Stop Motion Geek. “I drew my own comics,” Aakala continues, “sculpted things with clay, sewed my own toys, and later built a dollhouse with furniture and dolls while I actually should have been studying for my high school exams.” Yet, despite her inherent knack for making things, Aakala’s journey to the puppet making industry was an indirect one, and the title she now claims – “model maker” – was a destination that took her many years of working in many other industries to discern. “I have lived most of my life in Finland where I was born in a relatively small village called Hollola. There are no practicing artists in my family, and pursuing an art-related career just did not seem sensible. Certainly, I did not think that I ...

The main character, Sam, standing in the vestibule of his apartment building after packing. Source: Vimeo. If there’s one steadfast truth about the medium of animation as a whole and about the inspired act of animating, it is that the probability for novelty is infinite, the possibilities boundless. In animation – unlike in the medium of live action film – the laws of physics don’t apply – or at least they don’t have to. The potential for strange new worlds to be conceived of and explored has no ceiling, nor does the expressiveness with which characters walk, talk, and emote. So whenever an animated film – particularly a stop motion film – of artistic excellence is released like Ru Kuwahata and Max Porter’s Oscar-nominated short film Negative Space  – which is a film that explores a father-and-son relationship and the burden of grief through a lens that is, more often than not, grounded in a reality not unlike ours – it should imbue us, the audience, with the ardor to ...