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Interview with Chris Randall, Creative Director and Co-Founder of Second Home Studios

Chris Randall in the Mills & Reeve Innovation 50 list. Source: https://twitter.com/SecondHomeChris/status/904681346060230656

“I came to animation mainly from a point-of-view of blind curiosity,” Chris Randall—the creative director and co-founder of Second Home Studios, a Birmingham, United Kingdom-based, award-winning animation studio—tells Stop Motion Geek. “I’d always loved the medium but never took it seriously, or saw myself with a part to play in it. It wasn’t until after Uni that I realised I basically like tinkering and trying out new things, whilst at the same time telling stories. So, animation is a perfect fit for me.”

First founded in 2004, Second Home Studios has garnered multiple BAFTA and Royal Television Society awards and nominations for many of the films in their diverse repertoire of artistic and commissioned projects, encompassing all styles of animation—from stop motion to CGI to 2D—as well as puppetry and mixed-media. In their fourteen-and-counting years, they’ve worked with universally known brands and broadcasts such as the BBC, Bechtel, Cadbury, Coca-Cola, Lego, National Express, PayPal, and Sony to create a variety of online campaigns, music videos, commercials, title sequences.

Chris Randall speaking at ANIMARKT Stop Motion Forum. Photo courtesy of Iwona Buchcic.

At the studio, Randall has directed and produced a number of projects, including the BAFTA Children-nominated film The Mechanical Musical Marvel, the RTS-winning stop motion short film My Motorbike—made as a part of the CITV ‘Share A Story’ competition—the commercial Book of Legends for Pilsner Urquell, which won a British Animation Awards Public Choice prize for Best Commercial and a Golden Panda at 2013 Sichuan TV Festival in China. He also co-directed the short film The Animal Book, which was made possible by the the Digital Shorts Scheme and was screened at over forty festivals, including Cannes Film Festival, Anifest, and Edinburgh Film Festival.

A still from The Animal Book. Source: Vimeo.

Earlier this year, Randall appeared as a guest speaker at the annual ANIMARKT Stop Motion Forum—with whom Stop Motion Geek collaborated to organize this interview, the fourth in a series of interviews with several of the distinguished guests at this year’s ANIMARKT—where, alongside the creative duo Kijek/Adamski, he spoke about his experiences working with agencies and clients in commercial projects, and the presence of stop motion in the marketing communications.

A still from Pilsner Urquell – Book of Legends. Source: Vimeo.

In our interview, Randall discusses his path to his career, his employment process at Second Home Studios, and how he and his associates choose which medium to make a given project in. He also tells us how his approach to creating educational material differs from other kinds of projects, why he believes the funding process for animated short films needs to be revolutionized, and the thought process behind Second Home Studios’ Manta Motion Control.

You can read our interview below in full.

A.H. Uriah: Hello, Chris! Thank you so much for doing this interview! I’m quite excited to feature you and your work on Stop Motion Geek—you’ve created an incredible body of work thus far, and it would seem you show no sign of stopping any time soon!
To start, can you tell us a bit about how your passion for filmmaking—animation in particular—was first ignited, and how you got from that point to where you are now—the founder and Creative Director of your own studio, as well as a director and producer of numerous music videos, commercials, title sequences, and theatrical projection design, spanning many mediums, from stop motion to 2D computer animation to CGI to puppetry?

Chris Randall: I started out as a camera assistant on motion control and VFX shoots in the mid-90’s working on things like BBC’s Red Dwarf, which was great fun - helping to blow up spaceships in my uni semester breaks. I was very lucky to learn from a great mentor, Peter Tyler, who taught me camera discipline. From there I worked for Central TV, running a small rostrum studio for the broadcast design department. I’d always made models so this was a nice way of working in front of and behind the camera at the same time. I started messing about with animation in my lunch breaks and ended up making tonnes of stuff for CiTV, the children’s strand. My first proper bit of animation (although it looks very basic now) was The Junkyard Jungle, which unexpectedly won a Gold Promax Award. When a swathe of redundancies happened, Second Home Studios was a way to carry on not just with animation for broadcast, but with theatrical projection design too. It’s been 14 years and counting...

A photo from the commercial Together Works for Touchwood, made by Second Home Studios. Source: https://twitter.com/SecondHomeChris/status/1035427979684442112

A.H.: The website Accelerate Animation, in its article on Second Home Studios, purported that, prior to 2014, you hired “in a regular pool of freelancers as needed on a project by project basis,” and that in early 2014 you took on two part-time staff.
What experiences and qualities do you look for in new employees, and how have you gone about hiring freelancers, as well as your part-time staff?

CR: The number of inquiries I receive (both for paid work and work experience) has gone up from one or two a week, to around 1-2 per day. If people send in some useful visual references of their work, it makes selection reasonably easy. For some jobs, we just need to go to experienced hands, for speed and convenience. We do work quite organically and have to be flexible, so people who can think on their feet and fix problems in whatever format will always be called upon. The job has become a lot more about cultivating a decent working environment, so having people with a shared level of passion makes a project smoother and more enjoyable.

Stills from Second Home Studios' four-time BAFTA winning "Share a Story" competition for CITV. Source: https://twitter.com/SecondHomeChris/status/952966637761781760


A.H.: Second Home Studios is known for utilizing a myriad of techniques—all styles of animation, as well as mixed-media and puppetry—to produce films for all kinds of clients, and for every audience.
Although I imagine it differs from project to project, how do you, your associates, and your clients decide on which medium to use to produce a given film?

CR: It’s mainly down to budget and time. If a project won’t fit either case, we make recommendations for alternative approaches. As a rule, I’ll always try to interrogate the brief as to why a particular medium has been sought by a client and if it can’t be told better through other means.

A still from Pilsner Urquell – Book of Legends. Source: Vimeo.

A.H.: Many of Second Home Studios’ commissioned projects have had the challenge of having to educate an audience (one that’s often very young) about a particular real-world piece of engineering. The examples that come to mind are the mixed-medium piece Bechtel – The Engineering Machine (created to promote Bechtel’s educational STEM outreach), and the hand-drawn/CGI, BAFTA Children-nominated film The Mechanical Musical Marvel, which you directed and produced.
For these pieces in particular, but also in general, what has been your approach to conveying an educational message across these and other projects?

CR: I get a real kick out of the educational stuff. And the feedback we’ve had from these kinds of projects is always amongst the most rewarding.

Regarding approach, there is no formula, but sometimes the film is a means to a different end. For example, the prerequisite for Bechtel was that it had to have a student crew. Another project we did, Chasing Fate (for which we did the projection design) took sixty or so teenagers who were considered to be at risk, and turned them into a confident, performing ensemble cast. The Mechanical Musical Marvel had to be technically on point whilst speaking to a wide age bracket – the work here was 80% front loaded into script development. All different projects with different needs. Recognising the need being solved by the film I suppose is half the battle.

A still from My Motorbike. Source: Vimeo.

A.H.: On your LinkedIn profile, a past associate of yours—Adam Fenwick—remarks that you are “so hands on with every project that not only is he involved with scripting, designing, modeling and animating himself, he is also directing a whole team of animators and modelmakers while supervising the post production to bring the whole job together – I don’t know how he does it, but he does it brilliantly!”
How do you manage to do everything you do in a given day, week, month, or year? Do you have any tips for time-management to offer creatives—specifically those in charge of a group of people on a given project?

CR: Adam is very kind and someone I wish I could sincerely work with more often. I try to plan as much as possible whilst leaving enough room for interpretation, especially rom animators. No tips really, other than learning Excel helps. Sounds dull, but blocking things out in simple terms, schedule, storyboard, or props list can be helpful.

A still from The Mechanical Musical Marvel. Source: Vimeo.

A.H.: Can you tell us a bit about Second Home Studios’ Manta Motion Control system? What led to the decision for Second Homes Studios to engineer their own motion control system, and what have the results been thus far?

 CR: Basically the rig is upcycled from an old 35mm film rostrum which I’d been hanging on to for about 10 years. I’m glad I did. We used it to build the chassis and the track bed. For the rest of the mechanics, I did some very rudimentary sketches which were interpreted by the brilliant Rich Sykes who made it all a reality to work with Dragonframe. I grew up with MOCO, and love the capabilities it opens up creatively, so it’s a nice tool to have ready. We’ve used it pretty much non-stop since we switched it on. The last project we did was for Penny’s latest Christmas ad, through Glassworks, shooting some pretty big miniatures to have the CG characters dropped in. I’m really pleased with the results especially the Arctic stuff. It’s on air in Germany and will be available to see (I believe) on December 26th.

Several stills of the Manta Motion Control system. Source: https://secondhomestudios.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Manta_Axes_Montage_SFW_1-1024x589.jpg

A still from one of Second Home Studios' most recent projects—a commercial for Germany's Penny store. Source: https://twitter.com/SecondHomeChris/status/1065992240651227136

A.H.: Also on Accelerate Animation, you’re quoted as saying, “I wish I’d known how to animate! I taught myself. I didn’t really take it seriously until I landed a job that gave me the chance to experiment with animation. It would have made life a lot easier rather than learning on the job, if I had I understood the basic principles better before I started. But then if I had studied animation, I might not have ended up practicing it!..Don’t always believe what you are told, or where you are pushed at University.”
Speaking from your own experience, can you elaborate on the point you make in those latter two sentences, specifically gearing your advice towards those at or considering university?

CR: I came to animation mainly from a point-of-view of blind curiosity. I’d always loved the medium but never took it seriously, or saw myself with a part to play in it. It wasn’t until after Uni that I realised I basically like tinkering and trying out new things, whilst at the same time telling stories. So, animation is a perfect fit for me. Some of the things at Uni I learned to death until I no longer cared about them. Learning on the job was how I came to animation, and I’m very grateful for that opportunity. Would I have had the same confidence to experiment my way into it, had I not been to Uni? Who knows?

A still from an ident for Sony's Movieland made by Second Home Studios. Source: https://twitter.com/SecondHomeChris/status/943795580614135808

A.H.: What’s next for you and Second Home Studios?

 CR: We’re a small operation and we’ll keep going for as long as we’re able. At the moment we've got plenty to keep us occupied, so long may it continue.

Chris Randall speaking at ANIMARKT. Photo courtesy of Iwona Buchcic.

You can explore more of Chris Randall’s work by visiting his Twitter, LinkedIn, and Vimeo. You can also do so by visiting the Second Home Studios’ website, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Vimeo.

This article is the fourth in an ongoing series of articles Stop Motion Geek organized with several of this year’s prestigious keynote speakers from ANIMARKT Stop Motion Forum, about which you can learn more by visiting their website, Facebook, and Instagram.

You can read the first article in this series—an interview with the acclaimed director and animator Barry Purves, most well known for his groundbreaking short films Next, Operavox, Achilles, Gilbert & Sullivan: The Very Models, Hamilton Mattress, Rupert and the Flying Dragon, Rupert Bear, Plume, and Tchaikovsky – An Elegy—by going here. In our interview, Purves discusses his outlook now as a more seasoned veteran of the industry on his critically acclaimed work, his philosophy when it comes to creating art, and what’s next for him.

You can read the second article in this series—an interview with Carlos Bleycher, a scriptwriter, content consultant, and story editor on numerous animated, children-oriented content in his native Spanish as well as English for the likes of Disney xD, Cartoon Network LA, and Discovery Kids—by going here.

You can read the third article in the series—an interview with Angela Poschet, a veteran in the stop motion industry with credits including production supervisor of Wes Anderson’s Isle of Dogs, head of scheduling of Tim Burton’s Oscar®-nominated film Frankenweenie, and director of photography of Bob the Builder—by going here.

As always, thanks to Iwona Buchcic—ANIMARKT’s PR and Marketing Manager—for arranging these interviews and making sure everything went along smoothly.

Stay tuned for upcoming interview articles in this series and others by subscribing to the Stop Motion Geek email newsletter via the “subscribe” button at the top right corner of our homepage, by following us on Facebook @StopMotionGeek, or by following us on Instagram @stop.motion.geek.blog.

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