Once too expensive and labor-intensive for anyone but Hollywood studios to produce, the animated feature is entering a new era. Independent filmmakers, with an assist from cheaper, more powerful digital tools, have begun using animation to tell their big-screen stories.
Robert Rodriguez's Sin City and Richard Linklater's animated Waking Life and the upcoming A Scanner Darkly were all built outside of Hollywood using prosumer technologies and inventive, handmade software.
And now with MirrorMask, two legends of the comics scene -- illustrator Dave McKean and writer Neil Gaiman (creators of Sandman) -- have constructed a blend of live action and animation. MirrorMask tells the story of a girl coming of age and coming to terms with an ailing mother, and it unfolds against McKean's baroque, spectacular dreamscapes. This DIY film was made using over-the-counter software, and though it looks handmade, it is as visually extravagant as most studio animation.
MirrorMask will be released in selected cities Sept. 30 and was produced by the Jim Henson Company, the mad geniuses behind Farscape, The Dark Crystal and, of course, The Muppets.
McKean spoke with Wired News about the convergence of art, computers and movies, and the expanding possibilities fueled by digital filmmaking tools.
Wired News: How did you move from making still images to making movies?
Dave McKean: I had a mini burnout. I had done 10 years of still imagery, comics and illustration and felt like I needed a change, a new challenge. That's why I ended up making some short films. They related quite a bit to the comics I was doing. I was able to transfer lessons from one to the other. It was quite an easy shift of gears. Then came MirrorMask, which was on an exponentially bigger scale, with an absurd amount of work to do. We did thousands of effects shots with a tiny crew -- 15 fresh-out-of-art-school animators.
WN: Where did the concept come from?
McKean: (The Henson Company) wanted a family fantasy film for a set amount of money -- $4 million. We then decided whether we could come up with a family-friendly film that was plausible for that amount of money. Neil had ideas, I had ideas, it seemed possible. I made my short films for no money at all.
WN: So you wrote it together? How did that work out?
McKean: We have different ways of writing -- opposite ways, really. Neil likes to start writing without planning anything. He just stares at his computer, brings characters onstage and writes for them.
I can't do that. I have to plan out the story so I know the whole thing is working and so I know that it adds up to something at the end. All of this relentless planning drove Neil crazy. In the end, we ended up splitting up. He wrote in the kitchen and I went to the top of the house. We'd meet for dinner and talk about what we had done.
WN: The film seems incredibly ambitious, with its combination of live action and animation, especially considering the small budget. I'm guessing this isn't the kind of project you could have done a few years ago.
McKean: Well, it would have taken a hell of a lot more money and time. What's possible hasn't changed much in the last five years but there's definitely potential for many more people to do it for a lot less money.
WN: And you used over-the-counter software. I'm not sure if everyone gets just how radical that is -- that some unknown filmmaker can buy a Mac and buy Maya and convert stuff from his imagination onto the screen without spending $100 million.
McKean: It feels like the start of a new medium -- it's as much of a jump as there was from silent to sound pictures, and it feels like a real evolutionary step. I think you'll get a whole new generation of people coming to film from other areas and from left field. Very different kinds of stories are going to be told in imaginative ways. The digital tools are the central part of that.
WN: When you set out to make a fantasy film, I'd guess you must have talked about what you didn't want to do. Like make a crappy fantasy film.
McKean: There is a lot of bad stuff out there. That's true for most genres -- horror or sci-fi films or fantasy films. They have a kind of built-in audience, people who will always go to a horror movie no matter what it is. So there is a lazy attitude to writing and a lot of clichés.
What I wanted from MirrorMask is to connect the fantasy to real human life. Films about fairies and hobbits mean absolutely nothing to me. I'll never meet a hobbit. It will never be an issue in my life. But a film about someone who needs to believe in fairies can be fascinating. What drives that person, what's the problem, what's happened in their brain to make them believe? That stuff is fascinating and wonderful. But a film about fairies couldn't be more uninteresting to me.
