Interview with Victor Haegelin, Director and Animator of Stop Motion Action Mini-Movie, "Captain 3D"

Captain 3D in Haegelin's Captain 3D. Source: Vimeo.

Snatching a moment’s respite, a moment now drawing to a close, animation director Victor Haegelin—sporting wide-rimmed 3D glasses with big, red and blue lens—flips through the last few pages of a comic book boasting in big, red letters, “Captain 3D.” He reclines in a leather-backed computer chair, sitting at his desk, every inch of it crammed with something, though what exactly is anyone’s guess, stocked as it is with an animator’s lightbox, a glass jar filled to overflowing with colored pencils that lies an arm’s distance from of a litany of neatly stacked books and magazines—complete with a smattering with glossy comics coated in celluloid—the array finished off with every creator’s most essential companion: a sketch-pad and pen, the items lying closest at hand.

Victor Haegelin in Captain 3D. Source: Vimeo.

Victor Haegelin closing the cover on the "Captain 3D" comic in Captain 3D. Source: Vimeo.

Finally, coming to an end of the comic, Haegelin—chuckling at the final few exploits of our dashing hero, Captain 3D, a spandex-wearing superhero without any superpowers save for his pair of 3D glasses—sets aside the book, stacking it on the shelf along with the rest, just in front of which he rests his glasses.

Haegelin's desk in Captain 3D. Source: Vimeo.

Haegelin leaves his room in Captain 3D. Source: Vimeo.

Upon leaving the room, Haegelin slams the door behind him...which, displacing a casually misplaced book, triggers a chain-reaction of apparatus along the neatly ordered, near-chaos of his desk to fall, domino-style, until the last of the chain knocks over a flashlight, flickering on to shine through Haegelin’s oh-so-perfectly-placed 3D glasses projecting a blue-and-red light across the cover of the Captain 3D comic, at which change the eponymous hero himself bursts from the cover of his own comic book—where he’s poised in a running pose, suggesting a high-chase pursuit—and emerges, fully three-dimensional, into the zany world of Haegelin’s desk and room.

Apparatus along Haegelin's desk is upset by the door slamming, triggering a chain reaction in Captain 3D. Source: Vimeo.

Captain 3D emerges from the cover of his titular comic book. Source: Vimeo.

And so the adventure—Haegelin’s self-described “HO-LLY-WOO-DIAN” “stop motion action movie,” which made its online debut at the beginning of last month—begins.

Captain 3D stands atop Haegelin's desk in Captain 3D. Source: Vimeo.

“I’ve always been interested in mini-stuff, miniature worlds, little mysterious hidden creatures,” Haegelin tells Stop Motion Geek. “The day I understood how frame-by-frame animation worked was the day I realized I could create and give life to these inanimate things, and that was all it took for me to realize I’d found my passion.”

Haegelin on the set of Captain 3D. Source: Vimeo.

In our interview, Haegelin discusses everything from his humble beginnings of discovering the medium of animation in the days of VHS-C to how he’s fashioned for himself an illustrious career as an animator and director, which spans tvcs for the likes of McDonald’s, Lego and Renault, Bionade, and Christofle Paris, to music videos such as Wire and Flashing Lights for instrumental-EDM extraordinaire Professor Kliq to short films like the “pixelated” stop motion Le curieux dîner de Noël and stop motion/live action hybrid Captain 3D. He also gives us an in-depth look at the making of Captain 3D, walking us through every step of the production—from initial concept to final edit—his story of the film’s beginnings as an ill-fated green-lighted tvc pitch serving as much a wary caution to aspiring directors of the unpredictable world of television advertising as it is a story of creative and collaborative triumph. He also tells us exactly why he is, ironically, extremely proud of and content with the final result of Captain 3D when viewed in two-dimensions, and why he’s less than satisfied with the film when seen in three-dimensions, providing some insightful tips for filmmakers who wish to create a 3D film. You can read our interview in full below.

A.H. Uriah: Hello, Victor! Many thanks for doing this interview! I’ve been a fan of yours since Professor Kliq – Wire and Flashing Lights, so it’s a great pleasure to finally feature you and your outstanding work on Stop Motion Geek! I’d like to start off with the basics: Can you tell us about how you became interested in the medium of stop motion, and how you’ve come to have a career as a director and animator in the animation industry?

Victor Haegelin: Hi! Thanks for being a fan of me! :)

A storyboard from the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

I’ve always been interested in mini-stuff, miniature worlds, little mysterious hidden creatures. The day I understood how frame-by-frame animation worked was the day I realized I could create and give life to these inanimate things, and that was all it took for me to realize I’d found my passion.

A storyboard from the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo. 

When I was young I bought a camera (VHS-C!!!), with which my friends and I would make little films and saynète. Ever since those early, experimental days, I’ve been continually fascinated by film and cinema, so after trying math and physics studies at university I reoriented myself toward audiovisual and cinema studies. After that I went through a period of learning the craft of stop motion on my own, at which point I made my first animations, which helped me get some training at a few stop motion studios. That ultimately led to me getting an internship at Partizan Studios, where I was noticed by a producer who gave me my big break by giving me chance to direct my first commercial! That’s basically how it started!

Captain 3D as seen during the end credits of Captain 3D. Source: Vimeo.

A.H.: Captain 3D is an older project of yours—one you and your associates finished in 2015, the year it premiered at the prestigious Annecy Film Festival—and one that has only recently been released online. What made you want to make this film in the first place, and how does the final film differ from early iterations of it?

VH: Initially this film was created while I was pitching for a commercial in 2011. Nokia wanted to promote their newest phone at the time (the Nokia N8) and were looking for ideas for how to best show off the high-tech, HD cam integrated in the phone.

Captain 3D post-production workflow as seen in the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

Captain 3D post-production workflow as seen in the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

They had done a few short films promoting the N8’s HD camera in the past with other directors (Thomas Hilland’s live-action Dragonfly Love, as well as Aardman’s stop motion short films Gulp.—the world’s largest-scale stop motion animated short film—and the micro-scale production Dot) and they came to me, asking if I had any ideas. I suggested we film with two phones, side-by-side, so we could shoot in 3D! After the initial idea, I wrote a script, and that’s how Captain 3D was born! But, suddenly, almost three weeks before we began shooting, they stopped the production because they said they had no more money for it.

3D-printed facial expressions for the character of Captain 3D as seen in the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

That’s something that happens in commercial world: Until you’ve finished shooting and are no longer on-set, you don’t know if you are going to finish making a film.

3D-printed facial expressions for characters in Captain 3D as seen in the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

Armatures for characters in Captain 3D as seen in the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

By that point I had the story ready to shoot, and I really wanted to make it. Fortunately, I crossed paths with our two wonderful producers, Gizem and Nathalie, who funded the project till we finished it!

A puppet being cast for Captain 3D in the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

Four years after finishing the film, I actually looked at the first storyboard for the film—some of the material I’d created while Nokia still intended to produce it—and I was a little amazed to find that it was pretty close to the film in its final form!

A replacement facial expression for the character of Captain 3D as seen in the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

A replacement facial expression for the character of The Girl as seen in the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

A.H.: Earlier this year Stop Motion Geek interviewed the director duo and producer behind the 2018 Oscar®-nominated short film Negative Space—produced in France—who helped shed some light on the process of getting animated short films produced in France. How did you and your producers go about getting funding for Captain 3D and amassing your outstanding ensemble of animators, puppet, prop, and set makers, graphics team, and editors—not to mention your camera operator, artistic director, composer, and sound mixer?

VH: We had a few grants—one from CNC (National Cinema Center) and one from Brittany Region, and we also raised a little crowdfunding through Ulule.

Post-production workflow as seen in the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

The film is a co-production:
–Partizan held the film from the beginning and produced all of the post-production work on it with their post-production department Royal Post.
–JPL Film, a Brittany based studio, built the puppets and helped us get the Brittany Region grant.
–Manuel Cam Studio is also a co-producer. The studio’s owner is actually Jean Louis Padis—one of the producers of Negative Space, and someone I’ve worked with for more than ten years now—let us use his studio, and also transported and lighted material during the whole month of shooting. Thank you, again, Jean Louis!

We actually didn’t get all the money we estimated needing to make the film, but we decided to start the shooting, anyway, with the money we ended up raising—half of the money we predicted needed.

The set for Captain 3D. Source: Vimeo.

The crew was made up of people I know and who I’m used to working with. They knew it would be a long, hard production—with them working underpaid—but, nevertheless, they did it! Thank you guys!

A.H.: A place where Captain 3D really pushes the envelope of the stop motion medium—and, I should say, to immense success—is with its action sequences, which is a style rarely seen in stop motion (most likely due to its being a great challenge to animate, and something that is not quite as natural to stop motion as it is for, say, CGI or cel animation). You mention in the film’s behind-the-scenes video that it was your intention from the outset to create a “stop motion action movie,” which seems to me quite an ambitious undertaking. Can you walk us through the process you and your team took to create such enthralling action sequences?

VH: It was a really ambitious ‘yes’! Since the beginning and during the shooting my keyword was “HO-LLY-WOO-DIAN”!!

A "Captain 3D" comic book page in the midst of being designed as seen in the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

A "Captain 3D" comic book pages in the midst of being inked as seen in the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

That approach in this medium, of course, did lead to some challenges, but those mostly amounted to spending a lot more time in prep than we anticipated. Some shots—like one of the first where Captain 3D starts to run—took about a day to prepare and another day to shoot!

A "Captain 3D" comic book pages in the midst of being inked as seen in the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

One of the biggest challenges was preparing those “helicopter shots” with frame-by-frame travelling: We a motion control rig that we could incrementally move, frame-by-frame, and monitor with Dragonframe, but configuring the whole move before the shot was really time consuming.

Haegelin reading the final "Captain 3D" comic book as seen in Captain 3D. Source: Vimeo.

A.H.: I’m fascinated by the behind-the-scenes photo seen in the “pre-making of” video about the film, which shows that you split your studio/set in two—animating the animated segments in one half and filming the live-action segments in the other. This sounds like a fascinating challenge for you, the director—to manage your time between two sets! How did you end up managing your time and direction, and did you learn any tips or tricks that might help aspiring directors deal with similar situations?

VH: Actually, I was one of two animators, as well as the director! So, yes, it was non-stop. As a director, I couldn’t animate and prepare a shot for the other animator. Fortunately, some shots are really long, which allowed us to spend a lot of time animating peacefully without having to move on to the next shot very quickly.

A good tip for stop motion directors is to always be available on-set, and to be able to react at any time on any frame during the animation.

The set for Captain 3D as seen in the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

A.H.: What, in your mind—if you had to pick one—was the greatest challenge you and your team faced on Captain 3D, and why? How did you and your team work to overcome it?

VH: As I’ve already made mention, I think it was the camera movements.

Another hard point was configuring the 3D capture: We basically applied some calculations, and on each frame the camera moves from left to right to capture the photos for each eye. The space between two pictures depends on the distance of the subject you shot and ranged from 3 mm to 8 cm!!

Final "Captain 3D" comic book page as seen in Captain 3D. Source: Vimeo.

Also, when filming in 3D, you have to consider the time the camera “travels” from left to right. For example: when the space was about 8 cm, it took about 45s for the camera to come back to its left position once you pressed “enter” to capture the frame. 45s doesn’t sound like much...but when you’re shooting a 200-frame shot, it’s about 2 hours and 30 minutes lost!!! That’s something significant we discovered on this shooting.

A.H.: Being someone who has worked in the stop motion industry for quite a few years, looking back on your career now, what is the single most important skill or lesson you learned that has helped grant you the success you’ve had, and why? What resources would you recommend to animators just starting out to help them learn such a lesson or skill?

VH: 1st lesson: make films and show them to people...and to people other than your parents. Observe their reactions. Look at what doesn’t work in your films, then ask yourself, “Why?”

Haegelin on the set of Captain 3D. Source: Vimeo.

2nd lesson: watch animation you find really cool, frame-by-frame, and try to understand why the animator did what they did, and why.

Captain 3D as seen in Captain 3D. Source: Vimeo.

3rd lesson: make films and show them to people!

A.H.: One of the things I’m most impressed with in Captain 3D is the film’s ability to use the 3D effect to advance its story and to raise action sequences to exciting new heights for the medium. It’s curious to note that the 3D effect in films at large has, historically—and even in recent years—been viewed by many film critics as a “gimmick” to heighten spectacle instead of being used to best suit a film. From a technical and conceptual standpoint, what was your team’s approach to the film’s 3D effects—both of shooting the film to be viewed in 3D and of having a large part of the story surround 3D effects—and how did your approach change over the course of the production? Did you consciously attempt to avoid the “gimmicky” nature of 3D effects, and, if so, how did you go about doing so?

VH: The 3D effect was actually the starting point of this film—that was the technique it was suppose to show off in the original pitch.

An example of the final 2D result of a finished frame of Captain 3D as seen in the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

An example of the final 3D result of a finished frame of Captain 3D as seen in the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

That being said, what I wasn’t happy with was the added challenge that, during the shoot, I had to sometimes think about whether a shot would only “work” in 3D and, thus, decrease its quality in 2D. It’s a backwards way of thinking.

The camera setup for Captain 3D as seen in the "Making of Captain 3D" featurette. Source: Vimeo.

Also, curiously, I’m really happy with the final result in 2D...but not that much with the final result in 3D. I think some of the 3D effects are mind-blowing, but the film can be hard to watch because of those effects, resulting in headache!

The Captain 3D set. Source: Vimeo.

And I know what mistake I made that led to this problem: we did the editing in 2D (which is actually more comfortable on the eyes). Our approach to certain decisions in the editing, like the length of a close-up shot between two other shots, were made with a mindset of how to best edit a 2D film that best serve a film viewed in 2D, and some times these decisions don’t work so well in 3D, and, unfortunately, we didn’t focus on those differences or take the necessary time to check between 2D and 3D while editing.

A.H.: What’s you’re next big project?
VH: I’m thinking to turn Captain 3D into a series of short episodes!

Opening title sequence of Captain 3D. Source: Vimeo.

You can explore more of Victor Haegelin’s work by visiting his website, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, and Vimeo.

If you’re interested in learning more about the making of Captain 3D, you can go here and here to watch the first and second making-of featurettes. You can also go here to read Victor Haegelin’s interview with Stash Media.



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Captain 3D Title Card. Source: Vimeo.