European Films

 

A child’s fear of the dark is imaginatively explored in the Franco-Spanish animation film Nocturna from debuting directors Victor Maldonado and Adrià García. The two boys from Barcelona  -- both still under thirty -- were artistic supervisors on the 2003 Spanish feature El Cid before making the plunge and directing their first feature. In Nocturna, the little protagonist is an orphan who discovers that the dark of night conceals not only scary monsters but also an army of do-gooders who work on important tasks such as messing up sleeping people’s hair, putting sand in people’s eyes or taking care of the moon and stars. Boyd van Hoeij, the editor of european-films.net, sat down with the couple during the recent Venice Film Festival, where Nocturna had its world premiere. It premiered in Spain earlier this month and hit French screens yesterday (Wednesday).

An obvious first question for the writer-directors is of course whether they used to be afraid of the dark themselves, a question that makes both directors laugh. Says Victor: "It was not really something that I was traumatised by as a kid, not by any means. But I guess it is that universal theme that is not even necessarily darkness but just the unknown". Adrià, who complements what Victor says (or vice versa) in what almost feels like two twins talking, adds: "We had this concept, and we started working on it and found out that it was a pretty universal theme; everyone we spoke to related to it immediately. I guess for us it is more the feeling of not knowing what’s in the darkness, what surrounds you. It’s not that we were actually traumatised as children".

So how does one become an animation director at such a young age? Victor explains that the couple got quickly fed up with TV animation (where they had started their careers), because they didn’t have much artistic freedom. "So we started throwing around some ideas," he explains, "and the idea was to make a short film out of it". Adrià adds: "That would have been the logical thing to do". Victor: "But then it started growing and didn’t stop. The Nocturna universe was just so big".

"It was basically our pet project and we worked on it during our free time. So at a certain point we saw the opportunity to make a feature out of it," explains Adrià. "This was…" Victor says, before pausing dramatically, "about a thousand years ago". Adrià, the more serious of the two, translates: "I think it must have been eight years ago".

On their work as a directorial team, Victor says: "We've known each other since high school but it feels like forever. We’ve always worked together in the different companies we worked for". So are they inseparable -- the dynamic duo of animation directors? "Basically, yes," Victor says, laughing. "Maybe one day we will fight or something, I don’t know, but for the moment, definitely, yes".  Adrià adds, as if it is the most normal thing in the world: "We've never had a fight," something that Victor is quick to confirm by vigorously nodding his head.

On their rather peaceful modus operandi, Adrià says, nodding in Victor’s direction: "Basically, anything he does is great – I trust him. And he trusts me for anything I do. We knew more or less the direction of the story, so we could generate a lot of ideas and see if and how we could incorporate it. The way we worked together depended on the production phase: in preproduction we talked a lot, when we worked on the storyboards with the storyboard artists we talked a lot. When we went into the production phase, we knew what was expected of us and we would see each other less".

"I would say we are not really directors who talk a lot. We simply trust each other. We have the same taste and the same references, so if we do something we know the other will think it’s good," Victor says, not without a genial laugh. "It’s easy! And there are enough other people to fight with, so we should be united," Adrià adds, before the two directors share a laugh as only two accomplices can.

Both boys reply in unison when asked what the most difficult part of making their first film was: "The script!" Victor explains: "Getting the script together was the hardest, most painful of all the processes involved in making the film. It was our first professional script and obviously the company wanted to be sure about it since they were investing a lot of money in the project so they asked that we work with a professional screenwriter (Teresa Vilardell, ed). In the end it worked out fine but at the beginning it was hard for us. We had little experience and it was hard to work with a professional who had not been on the project from the beginning". Adrià adds: "It was difficult to explain some of the things that we took for granted to a stranger". Victor, the half of the duo more prone to superlatives, says, rolling his eyes: "It was traumatising!"

On the wondrous world that is hidden by nighttime that they created for Nocturna, the couple could talk for hours. Victor: "Also because our background is in art direction, the visual aspects of the film where an important part from the very start. We started straight away with sketching and doing paintings, things like that. Coming up with ideas for us was writing and painting at the same time. It was really a parallel process". Adrià: "Everything in our process is very visual, so when we found something cool on the drawing board we knew we had to include it in the film somehow.

One noteworthy aspect of the film's cast of characters is the absence of girls, something which crept in without anyone noticing, as Victor explains: "I think someone mentioned it after we’d been working on it for a couple of years and then we were like: ‘oh, that’s true!’ But it was not a conscious decision, it just kind of happened". Adrià counters: "There are some girls in the background!" before Victor adds: "The whole story evolved. In the beginning it was even more extreme, more like a fairy tale: there was no orphanage and the boy actually lived in a huge house by his own and was surrounded by an even more fantastic universe. But working with producers we softened it somewhat. I guess that we were just focussed on the boy and didn’t think much about the others characters, or girls, that much".

Nocturna would be hard to pin down in terms of visual style, as Maldonado and García have created a recognisable style that blends many different elements into a coherent and distinct whole. Victor explains: "In terms of references, we absorbed a little bit of everything -- and not specifically from the domain of animation but from all sorts of places. During preproduction, for example, we really got into 19th century photos of Paris and during production we were watching a lot of Billy Wilder movies".

On the difference between their hand-drawn 2D animation and the computer-generated 3D animation that now often pours into cinemas, especially from the US, Victor says: "It was clear from the start we wanted to make a 2D animation feature, not a 3D feature. There is just a little bit of 3D animation in our film. It was difficult for a while, because suddenly the company -- and in fact all the animation companies -- thought that 3D animation was the only thing that existed. It was hard for us to sell the idea that there would be a market for a 2D animated feature. But it was what we wanted to do". Adrià sees things in a more positive light: "Now things are changing a bit, because 3D movies are all starting to look the same somehow, so some people are going back to 2D for something different".

"The market place has changed: only six years ago, you would have had three animated movies opening each year, and now you have a couple of new ones every month," says Victor, before adding jokingly: "Animal movies. Talking animal movies! We need more talking animal movies!"