Nine Questions For Animation Filmmakers

When interviewing directors, I like to talk practice.

A while ago, I was figuratively leafing through the fine Substack of cinema expert Duncan Carson when I happened on a sharply argued post. It was about the suffering art of the film Q&A.

Carson believes that director Q&As are, by and large, duller than they should be. Venues don’t value them enough, and underpaid moderators are missing opportunities to get interviewees to open up. Among his proposals for change, this jumped out at me:

What the moderator can do with this Gordian knot is stick to very simple, practical questions about how the film was made. This is, after all, how filmmakers have to deal with the end product. Not in the world of theory – though it may have begun with these thoughts – but in the realities of making it happen in practical terms. Films, unlike novels, are made in hundreds of different ways, and so asking simple questions about how it was delivered are enlightening and show a lot more about the conceptual underpinning than a thousand densely packed theoretical questions that can almost only be answered with a single word.

This rings true. I’ve seen moderators supply an esoteric interpretation of the film in question, which reveals more about their preoccupations than the work itself, then just expect the filmmaker to comment on their analysis. In truth, I’ve done it myself. This approach quickly becomes alienating, and the answer can turn out to be shorter than the question.

Obviously, rich discussions of a film’s themes or narrative happen all the time. Many directors are happy, or even eager, to talk about these aspects. Prior research may tell you that they’re inclined to talk in theoretical terms, in which case, go for it—as long as you don’t lose the audience. Others can be reticent about these things: they may feel their films should speak for themselves. But I have yet to see a filmmaker clam up when asked about how they work.¹

Carson proposes five questions that can be used to fuel a Q&A about a fiction film:

• What was the starting point for this film?

• Did the script change much from original conception to what we’ve just watched?

• How did you arrive at the decision to work with [actor’s name]?

• What was the editing process like for the film?

• How have audiences reacted to it so far?

These are sound suggestions, and they got me thinking about equivalents for animation filmmakers. I’ve jotted a few down below. Obviously, they aren’t all suitable for every situation. And they are meant as conversation starters—ideally, they should be followed up with more specific questions that bounce off the last answer. As Carson notes, mechanically reciting a bunch of pre-prepared questions is another way to make things stilted.

What follows is just a few ideas: an outline of an approach to interviewing that I think works well (and which I haven’t always lived up to myself). I’d love to hear other suggestions—from both interviewers and filmmakers—in the comments section below.

Your film is experimental. How did you present it to funders?

Makers of independent animation tend to depend on a range of financial backers, whether public or private. To secure funding, they will generally have to present a script or treatment along with visual materials that indicate the style they’re heading toward. Summarising a project at such an early stage is a tricky task. The less classically narrative the film, the harder this can be, and the apter this question becomes. It can reveal a lot about how the director sees their film and how it may have evolved since its inception, as well as about the relationship between artists and funders.

When did you first encounter [inspiration for film]? How did it make you feel?

In the brackets can go: a work the film has adapted; the music it uses; a place or artwork that gave the initial spark of inspiration for the project; etc. As long as this question makes sense, I prefer it to the vaguer “How did the idea for this film come about?” It provides a shortcut to talking about the director’s emotional attachment to their material. I once asked Andreas Hykade about the devotional paintings in the shrine at Altötting which feature in his eponymous film. His answers were fascinating.

Devotional paintings in Hykade’s Altötting (2020).

How did you approach the writing/storyboarding?

Different filmmakers have different ways of developing a project, of marrying words and images at this tender stage. On projects with small teams, the whole production process may have been idiosyncratic: perhaps the directors were animating, editing and rewriting all at once. Talking about this can reveal much about how they devise and tell stories, and how they collaborate with others.

How did you go about visually adapting this graphic novel?

A fair few animated films are based on an existing visual work, usually a comic or graphic novel. Or perhaps they reference one (I’m thinking of Lizzy Hobbs’s I’m OK, a homage to Oskar Kokoschka, which nods to his paintings—watch the film below). The interplay between the style of the original work and that of the film is interesting. Did they have to simplify the character designs to make them easier to animate? How did they strike a balance between preserving the nature of the original and imposing their own vision?

Why did you choose to work with this technique?

One for directors whose choice of technique (CGI, hand-drawn, stop motion, etc) varies from project to project. A variant, for directors who also work in live action: why animation? What did you find surprising/difficult/liberating about working in animation?

What sorts of directions did you give your animators?

It bears repeating, as this is a common misunderstanding: just because someone directed an animated film doesn’t mean they animated on it. Often, especially on features, they didn’t. Sometimes, they wouldn’t even know how to (Wes Anderson, for example, is not an animator). But they will have had close contact with the animation team or at least an animation director/supervisor, giving directions and feedback, not unlike how a live-action director communicates with actors. This relationship is crucial, so it’s worth discussing. The question can be narrowed to a scene with particularly striking animation. Some directors may give the animators considerable freedom to infuse their shots with their own style (Masaaki Yuasa is a good example—see the trailer for his film Mind Game below). In these cases, you could ask: why?

What references were used for the design/animation of this character?

A window onto the (sometimes unexpected) places artists and animators go for inspiration, and the ways they have changed and expanded on their references. A related question: was this character already designed when the voice actor was cast?

There were multiple directors on this film. How did you divide responsibilities?

It isn’t uncommon for animated films to have more than one director. Sometimes, their specialisms will be fairly clear: one may have a background in story, the other in some aspect of animation production. Other times, less so. Even in the former cases, the question often draws out unexpected answers.

Who are your main influences?

A cliché, but it works: you’ll always gets a reply. Better to ask this, I think, than to try to deduce their inspirations: “This scene reminded me of the Hubleys’ films—were they on your mind?” The answer may just be: “No.” (If you know from research that they admire the Hubleys, it’s a different story.)

1. Some of the most engaging interviews I’ve heard are done by filmmakers, who are better acquainted than anyone with the processes they’re discussing. An example in short-form animation is the podcast Under the Onion Skin, hosted by director and artist Giulia Martinelli.