Physicist Versus His Neighbor's Cat

From Cuddly Pirates to Surreal Horror   

Carol and I met during our first year at Filmakademie Baden-Württemberg (FABW). We both had been working a few years in the industry at that point. Carol in advertising and visualization, me in concept art and games. In our first year, we realized that our talents complemented each other and that we got along very well. After that, we worked together virtually our entire time at FABW.

The biggest project before our diploma film was probably our third-year film PIRATE SMOOCH, produced as part of the AniFilm/AniPlay semester. Back then, the films produced there had the chance to be selected as festival trailers of Internationales Trickfilm-Festival Stuttgart (ITFS) or FMX – Film and Media Exchange. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to win this competition. Accordingly, from the beginning, we constructed the project with the goal in mind to achieve an impact on the audience. To our great delight, PIRATE SMOOCH was indeed selected by the 2017 ITFS.

When we had to start planning our diploma project about half a year later, we were in the comfortable position of having already produced an audience hit. We didn't feel any pressure to prove ourselves like that again. Instead, we decided to try something experimental. Opportunities to make exactly the kind of film you want to make are very rare. Usually, you are being accountable to others. Since Carol and I are fans of the horror genre, specifically surreal horror by Lynch, Cronenberg, or even Brothers Quay, we headed in that direction.

We started writing a plot, however, the narrative was not our main focus. I think the idea of a script is incredibly overrated in animated film. Instead, we tried to come up with a repertoire of images through stream of consciousness exercises.

After a while, we developed the images of “the cat with a human face” and “the scientist and the backpacker,” which function as opposites to each other in our world. Another area of tension would be the opposition of endless contemplation without action, represented by the protagonist N., as well as endless action without contemplation, embodied by the swarm of backpackers.

Relatively soon, we started thinking of visuals and planned our first sequences in a storyboard. In animatics, we experimented with the sound as well, which we wanted to make as big and bombastic as possible. Since the film was not supposed to contain any language, the communication between N. and “the Black Star" happens through music.

Instead of a classical story, the film was meant to be driven by a rhythm. With PIRATE SMOOCH, we already had experience with that and we wanted to do it again. Thus, the first months of production were characterized by almost endless revisions of the animatic.

The main character N. was one design factor that kept us busy for a very long time. We wanted something that felt unique. The myriad of sketches I made during that time were quite bizarre (a lot of gnome-like, fused cyclops were created). But that special spark was still missing.

During a random experiment, I, rather as a joke, put the face of a frightened looking actor from a Kurosawa movie on our character. It quickly became clear that we had found our special something. Numerous tests followed, in which we projected the filmed faces of fellow students onto 3D geometry and had them distorted by our glass dome. These tests were so promising that we finally found a lead actor with the help of our fantastic producer Laura Messner.