Nina Gantz is a Dutch Brighton-based Animation Director. She graduated from the National Film and Television School with her animated short film, “Edmond,” which received 38 awards including a BAFTA and the Sundance Award for Best Animated Short. Gantz currently works as a freelance director and directs commercials for the production company BlinkInk. Her latest short film, “Wander to Wonder,” premiered at the Venice Film Festival and is now showing at festivals around the world, having picked up several awards including Best Animated Short at SXSW. She finds inspiration in combining different techniques, such as stop-motion, puppetry and live action.
Ahead of the 37th European Film Awards, Tara Karajica talks to Nina Gantz about the short form, women in film and her short film “Wander to Wonder” that is nominated for European Short Film – Prix Vimeo. “Wander to Wonder” is the story of Mary, Billybud, and Fumbleton are three miniature actors who star in a kids’ TV series. After their creator dies, they are left alone in the studio. With their slowly decaying costumes and growing hunger, they continue to make increasingly strange episodes for their fans.
How did you get into filmmaking and what inspires you?
Nina Gantz: I went straight into animation, really. I went to the Art School in the Netherlands. I was always painting and drawing, and then I fell in love with photography, music and storytelling, and then in animation, it all came together for me. It was very natural for me to go into animation. I discovered all those beautiful Eastern European animations at the Art School like, for instance, the works of Jan Švankmajer and Michaela Pavlátová and all the all these amazing, beautifully dark and kind of absurd animations. I noticed that animation wasn’t just for kids, and those made me think: “Oh, the story that I have in my head, I can actually make an animation.” So, I got into animation that way. And, that really inspired me.
Can you talk about your short film, Wander to Wonder?
N.G.: I made a graduation film [Edmond] from the National Film and Television School in England. That was my Master’s Degree and that film did really well. I went to the European Film Awards and I received some money to make my new film from Canal+. I had already come up with ideas then. But, of course, over the eight years, it’s changed a lot. The inspiration for it came from the love that I have for films where you combine stop motion with live action, like the work of Ray Harryhausen in Jason and the Argonauts and Clash of the Titans and all those films I discovered eight years ago. I really wanted to work with that technique. The idea I had for it was about this TV show where miniature actors played TV show characters, because it brought this beautiful contrast between the innocent and the sweet and then the darkness behind it.
When you now look at all those old TV shows that you used to watch when you were young, there is a certain kind of creepiness to them sometimes, and a certain kind of weirdness to them, which really intrigued me. So, that’s where the idea came from. And then, over the eight years, while trying to get the film together, get the budget together – it was a co-production between four countries, because it was a very ambitious short film – I also changed as a filmmaker. I got interested in different parts of the film, and then at some point, I got way more intrigued by the human connection between the three characters and how they all deal very differently with grief. I went through something myself at the time when I did the last rewrite, and it fed into the story. I went through grief myself, and I saw how everyone reacts very differently to it, and that intrigued me. And then, by telling the story through the eyes of these three miniature humans, I think you can step away from it a little bit and you can also tell the story with a bit more humor and a bit more lightness, which I think is the perfect way to tell a heavy story. I think it’s those contrasts that are important.
In terms of the animation, most of it is stop motion. There is a little bit of live action. We used the 3D printing technique to have facial replacements for the small puppets. I knew that I wanted to work with dialogue in this film. And, that’s the first time I actually worked with dialogue. My previous films didn’t have dialogue in it, and I really wanted to see how I could get this subtle performance out of a puppet, which is really hard actually. Because I really wanted you to feel for them, we decided to use 3D printed faces for that, which was something I had never done before, but it gave us all these subtle expressions that I felt I needed for this film. So, that was a whole journey to try and find out how to make it, because they’re so small and even when they open their mouths, there’s little teeth in it and everything. These tiny faces needed to stand up to a huge screen. So, that was months and months of trying to figure out how to do it, and to get the print with the color in it so it wouldn’t jump every time you put a face on. You want this color to stay in the same place. So, every frame you put it on, you want all this color to stay where it is. We needed to find the printer that could do it, and we finally found one in Belgium, and that was a company that used to only really print factory parts, so they were not used to printing these tiny little faces with little teeth, so that was a long process.
We could have filmed real people and then made them smaller and put them in, but I felt it’s another layer of storytelling that you can use by using stop motion, because obviously you’re making a film about little puppets, but inside those puppets are also puppets, but so there’s another level of storytelling in that. And, I just love the quality of stop motion, because you can almost feel that someone has touched that puppet every single frame to make it come to life. So, there’s real beauty in it, and also a certain kind of nostalgia that I think fitted really well the story of the film.
How do you see the short form today?
N.G.: I really love short films because it gives you a way to try things out. It’s like you can be way more experimental with it to see what works and what doesn’t, but for this film, I felt it could have well been a feature film in the end, because throughout eight years of development, I got so many ideas that it was almost too much for a short film. So, for me, naturally, now I feel that my next step would be to make a feature film, just because the ideas that I have in my head require a longer form, but it doesn’t mean that I won’t make another short film. I do love the short form and the experiments that you can do with it. I think it’s another art form, because it’s such a different way of storytelling to make a story work in twelve minutes. I love that puzzle to make the viewer feel something in twelve minutes, and really feel like they’ve gone through an emotional arc. I really love the puzzle that you have to do for that to work. And, in this film, I wanted it to be a long timeline – it needed to feel like they were in that studio for a long time. And to do that in twelve minutes is quite tricky, but very nice when it works out. That’s the thing with short films. Actually, I’d rather make a short film that you have to watch a few times, than one where everything is clear the first time you watch it, because that’s the beauty of short films. You have the opportunity to watch them multiple times because they’re so short, and I want you to discover new things the second time.
What is your opinion on women in film today?
N.G.: Well, I can talk about my own journey, and I feel I am quite lucky, with the opportunities I got straight out of Film School. I got to work, and I never stopped working since. I feel like being a woman has never been in my way. I think it’s not been a negative experience for me, but I do know it’s not as easy to get opportunities for other women. I think it’s maybe different in animation as well. I think, in live action, it’s maybe a bit more competitive. I’ve been quite lucky to have a lot of work ever since I left Film School just because my first film did so well, and it really set me up. It gave me a push. I still have to start making my feature film, and I don’t know the effect that my being a woman will have on that, but for me, it hasn’t been something that’s been a negative experience.
Who is your favorite female filmmaker and your favorite film by a female filmmaker?
N.G.: I would just say Michaela Pavlátová because she inspired me to make like my first films.
What are your next projects?
N.G.: I’m working on two feature films at the moment – one family film and one for grown-ups, and they both have stop motion in it. One of them has a mix of stop motion and live action. So, let’s see how long it takes me to make this, but I hope it’s going to go quicker than eight years.
Photo credits: Courtesy of Nina Gantz.
