A Cautionary Tail looks set to be one of the success stories of Flickerfest this year. The short film centres on a little girl born with a tail that expresses her emotions. It's a source of fun while she's a child, but as she grows into an adult, it becomes a problem, stopping her from fitting in the way she wants to.
The animation has been embraced every step of the way so far, ensnaring the talents of Cate Blanchett, David Wenham, and Barry Otto and earning massive support through Kickstarter. Now it's making its worldwide premiere at Flickerfest on January 14, screening in the Best of Australian competition program.
We sat down with director and animator Simon Rippingale to talk about loss, growing up, and why he had to grow a trayful of grass in his studio.
Where did the story of A Cautionary Tail come from?
I was writing a script with Erica [Harrison, writer of A Cautionary Tail], and she was hit by a car one night. She was on a little scooter, and it really cleaned her up, put her in hospital. And she was pretty close to losing her leg … which freaked her out because she's a crazy runner, runs everyday, kilometres.
She wrote this poem as a way of sort of dealing with this concept of loss. She's really inspired by Roald Dahl's Revolting Rhymes, that sort of dark, rhyming verse thing. So it was kind of like a puzzle for her to work on. The way she writes, they're like puzzles. Like, each stanza's got exactly this number of beats, and how do you tell the story. And it's like other people do sudokus or whatever.
That's a beautiful thing from quite a horrible beginning. And then she came to you with the project?
She was very keen for it to be a kid's book, and I was keen for it to be a short film. And we fought about that for a little while. And I won. But now it's going to be a book, too.
The story also deals with that conflict between conforming to society and just being yourself, something it seems both adults and kids could relate to.
It's for both, I think, It's aimed at kids, that sort of pre-teen age bracket … But it's also aimed at adults because the biggest theme of the story is dealing with loss and growing up, the transition from childhood to adulthood. Everybody relates to that. Everybody's chopped their tail off, in a way. We all had to get jobs and pay bills and most of us have to, you know, be normal.
The animation is incredible. Tell us about your techniques.
Everything you see in the film is made of miniatures. There were 21 miniature sets built, at my art studio out in Summer Hill … I built all the miniature sets with a team of set builders, some of them are professional props makers from the film industry, a couple of them are graduate students from Enmore Design School, who are doing miniatures there.
We shot the miniatures without characters in them and edited the film without the characters on the screen, which is a bit tricky … Then we went into the character design process. All the characters are generated in 3D and animated in Maya. And then a compositing team put it all together.
It looks like a lot of detail went into the miniatures — a lot of hands, a lot of hours.
It was a massive job, about three months of intensive work. But it was really fun, I loved it … All the organic things you see in the film like grass and leaves and trees are all real. They're real bark, and the grass I grew in a big tray. The sets were plopped on the grass and filmed like that.
What are some of your animation inspirations?
Well I love Pixar, for story. They really have raised the bar with storytelling, and the art of storytelling, and the importance of story – prioritising story over other things. And I think other studios have jumped to that tune and now everyone else is catching up to that idea.
Also Miyazaki. I love Miyazaki, the Studio Ghibli films. How they've stuck to their style, that 2D, the sort of strangeness of that Japanese style of storytelling, which doesn't quite make sense to us and is a bit different, the narratives are a bit odd. And that's really nice for us, growing up in the West. It's a bit of a window into another way of thinking.
And also Tim Burton, that stop-motion, and others.
There's an undercurrent of handmadiness that's almost making a resurgence, in your work and elsewhere.
Yeah, absolutely, there's been a real resurgence of handmade, stop-motion films, because 3D is so prevalent. It's like vinyl; it's not going to go away.
You seem to have had a lot of success with Kickstarter. How was that experience?
Kickstarter is an amazing medium and we had a great Kickstarter campaign. It was quite unexpected. We were really surprised at the support from all around the world … The cool thing about it is that you sort of develop your fan base and distribution and marketing when you're at the fundraising stage. So producers love it — you're developing the market while you're raising funds.
And that's why you see some big names using Kickstarter?
Yeah, there are some big names using Kickstarter, like Charlie Kaufman and Phil Tippett, who are both doing big things, raising money by going outside the studio system, saving them having to sort of justify their ideas on market potential. With crowdsourced funding you don't have to justify to somebody else; you just put it out there and gauge interest yourself.
You also held an exhibition at the same time. How did that go?
Yeah, we did an exhibition at the Paramount building in Surry Hills, where Heckler Studios have their offices now. Heckler did all the post on A Cautionary Tale and they worked with us and also headspace to do an exhibition and fundraiser. We exhibited some of the miniature sets and prints from the film, we projected some of the work-in-progress animation, and we all got drunk.
So real life and the internet came together. Did you see a corresponding bump in the Kickstarter campaign?
Yeah, definitely at that time. And we had laptops set up on the night.
For the drunk people to contribute.
Yeah, so drunk people could get their credit cards out…
You certainly got some major celebs involved in this project. Cate Blanchett, David Wenham, and Barry Otto voice the film. How did you get them on board?
That was simple — we just sent the project to their agents. We didn't really have an 'in', or know anyone. I think they just responded to the writing. The story is really strong. The poem is beautiful. It's going to come out on iTunes next year at some point and as an e-book. So yeah, the poem itself is sort of what started this whole project off. Everyone responds really strongly to it. The actors who came on board were obviously right at the top of our list. We weren't expecting them to say yes, but they said yes. We were very lucky.
And now you're about to have our official premiere at Flickerfest. What's it like to be in the festival?
It's great. They've been really lovely and supportive of the film. And it's just very exciting to be showing the film, after so much work. It's a local festival, a great festival.
Do you personally find you get something out of the festival experience, versus, say, just finding and watching stuff on the internet?
I like checking things out on YouTube, but I also like the cinema experience. I like a big roomful of people and the lights go down, the curtains. It's a bit of a ritual. And it's an experience you share with people. I don't think that's going to go away.
And film is still a very relevant medium, even if TV has taken a bit of the wind out of its sails. Those HBO series are just spectacular. But still, the film format is very strong, it's not going away any time soon.
And your category is Academy® Accredited, which means if you win, you could be up for an Oscar. That must be exciting?
Yes. I'm writing the speech…
Who would you thank?
My mum.
From here.
More about "A Cautionary Tail"
