“Features being announced and worked on is great, but quality also needs to be focused upon.”
After having travelled to more than over 65 festivals all over the world including Cannes, Annecy, London Film Festival, Tokyo Short Shorts, Ukraine Krok Festival amongst others, Gitanjali Rao�s Printed Rainbow has been shortlisted in the final 10 for nomination, for the Academy Awards.
AnimationXpress.com Managing Editor Anand Gurnani met up with Gitanjali Rao at her Bandra based studio where the earthy director and animator was already absorbed on her next project “Girgit” a full length theatrical Animated feature.
Here are excerpts from the conversation…
Printed Rainbow has been making waves and waves and waves globally. How have the past two years been for Gitanjali Rao?
Fabulous. It was a great learning experience, especially about how different audiences react to different kinds of films. I also learnt that kids can watch and appreciate a slow film, and if you take kids into a story convincingly, they will be absorbed into it. Formulas, such as “this works for these kind of kids and this kind of TG”, don’t necessarily hold true for me. It is about the layers in story telling that matters, where the same film communicates different things to different people and age groups at the same time.
I also got exposure to a lot of new international cinema, as compared to watching films in India where one is generally exposed to American animation only. The kind of exposure you get to short film making, (both live action and animation) on the festival circuits is fantastic. Short film making is generally an independent effort and looking at these films opens your mind, the festivals give you a chance to know how the film makers work and how they approach their challenges.
I was very impressed with some of the Russian animation TV series, they are way ahead in terms of their story telling for children as compared to what we see coming out of mainstream Hollywood. The thing is that Russian animation has not been globalised yet, the same is the case with quite a few European countries where they have been making some really beautiful work, which gets broadcast in their domestic channels and they continue creating new stuff in their own rhythm. I think India is much more modeled on American animation and even the idea of commercialisation is similar.
What are you working on currently?
I am currently working on “Girgit’, a 2D animated, hand painted, theatrical feature (70 minutes).
It is scripted and directed by me. Phat Phish productions will be producing it and the animation will be done by Fisher Folk, the studio that we have set up here in Bandra. We will be a team of 25 to 30 artists eventually. We have been working on the feature for the past five months and currently the storyboarding and character styling is in progress.
The film has no dialogues or voice over, it is pure and complete pictorial story telling. It is my style I guess, it is lyricism without words. I find it beautiful when you see a character and when you can imagine the voices. Just like the beauty of reading a novel is that you read the dialogues, but you imagine the visual universe. In animation where there are visuals, the experience I prefer as a viewer is to be given the space to imagine the voices and words which are communicated visually. Human voices coming out of animated characters is something I don’t digest. Leaving some space for the audience to imagine part of what�s going on, involves them more.
The film will of course have music and sound effects.
Could you share some synopsis of the Girgit story line?
The three protagonists in Girgit
Its about 3 young individuals from 3 different villages of India. A 16 yr old girl from Madhya Pradesh, 17 yr old boy from Kashmir and a 10 yr old boy from Karnataka. These three kids end up living on the streets of Mumbai, where the story is set and which also keeps panning back to their lives in their respective native places.
The sequences are done in different animated styles that are influenced from the folk art traditions of their respective states. The film is about their capacity to dream, when they are faced with reality. That�s why it is called Girgit, it is about the ability to change in order to adapt and survive. The film is a serious coming of age story with lots of layers, lots of good feeling and optimism, it is not high on gags or a comedy.
All I am concerned about is that my film should turn out good. My producers have put full confidence in my film, thanks to the merits of Printed Rainbow. They are more confident of recouping investments than I am. They are the kind of producers who are putting their money into projects that they believe in and that are interesting, they have the capability and networks to commercially recoup investments from good works of art.
What are the challenges you are facing currently as a feature film maker?
I worked alone on Printed Rainbow and I had total control. The concept and execution and the iterations were all very cohesive. Now with 25 to 30 artists, the challenge I face is to translate my thoughts and feelings to people who come from various backgrounds. We are in the process of making the team shed its conventional rules of what Animation should be. My approach is that every film and project you work on has its own set of rules. The team sits together to explore what is the most effortless way of doing things without compromising on quality.
The backstory of each of the characters are painted and animated in different styles
We are working on new styles in the film which are justified by the story, but these have never been used before. Exploring new styles is very challenging. Telling a story without words is a challenge too. I follow the principles of live action more than animation.
Another challenge is finding good people. I am looking for people with 5-7 years of experience in 2D and the work requires a lot of patience as it is hand painted frames we are creating. I want people to join because the work excites them.
What is your perspective on the current scenario in the Indian animation Industry and the feature film rush that we are witnessing?
There are Pros & Cons. The financial feasibility of Animation features as a business and the confidence that the Film trade is showing in Animation augurs well, because otherwise I wouldn�t have been here making my own theatrical feature film. The flipside is that suddenly its become only a business. Art & Commerce need to go hand in hand, and it would have been better had the pace of developments been a bit slower. Features being announced and worked on is great but quality also needs to be focused upon.
I feel all the poaching and inflation of salaries that is happening is not good for the health of the Industry. Quite a few artists are moving just for a better salary rather than believing in their project. All over the world, people who have succeeded in animation are those who have been devoted and committed to their craft, the work produced from such commitment has given birth to business models and not the other way round. We, in India, are looking for short cuts and these will eventually hit us hard. Again the industry will eventually suffer due to its own over enthusiasm.
You can argue that India is the largest producer of live action films and the model here is that the handful of Hits take care of the business for even the rest of the films and the show goes on with exceptional, good, average and bad films all being part of the mix produced. The difference between Animation and Live action in India is that there is a 100 year old market for domestic live action films while Animation as a genre or a medium is new for a majority of the audience. Secondly in terms of technical finesse, a bad live action film will not look really bad, but a bad animation film can really look bad. Plus it is really sad to see so much of an effort gone waste, because even bad quality animation takes a lot of effort. I just hope that everyone who is announcing projects, give their all to them and builds a body of work that makes Indian animation proud.