“We knew the degree of absolute precision and control over what we were doing was going to be very, very high”
Wes Anderson’s new stop-motion movie, Isle of Dogs, consists of 130,000 still photographs. Each frame was created, with diligence, by a team of 670, many of whom worked with Anderson on Fantastic Mr Fox. Once again, Isle of Dogs went like this: production took place in 3 Mills Studios in London, while Anderson worked remotely, via email, from his home in Paris. So even though Anderson puts a lot of himself in his films – Mr Fox’s suit is stitched from the same material as the director’s trademark corduroy attire – it’s the crew whose literal fingerprints are on display.
For instance, the animal testing facility – one of many sets showing right now at a free exhibition at The Store, 180 The Strand – is a particular favourite of the cinematographer, Tristan Oliver. He explained to me at length about the visual references (a picture book called North Brother Island he sent to Wes; the neo-brutalist design of St Peter’s Seminary in Scotland), overcoming the restraints of tracking and scaling, finessing the intricate design, and the joy of lighting it up. That it appears on screen for barely a few seconds confirms that Isle of Dogs was, indeed, a Labrador of love.
Here, we speak to some of the key members behind Isle of Dogs: Mark Waring, animation director; Angela Kiely, head of puppet painting; Tobias Fouracre, animation supervisor; and Tristan Oliver, director of photography.
WES ANDERSON RECORDED VIDEOS OF HIMSELF PLAYING THE ANIMALS
Tristan Oliver (director of photography): An awful lot of the performances actually came from Wes, who would film himself acting out the dogs. He’s quite strict about copying the nuances of his own facial expressions.
Tobias Fouracre (animation supervisor): When Wes gave us a video, he’d mime to the the dialogue of the actor. Not every single shot. Some shots, he’d say, “Do what you want to do, and then I’ll comment on it.” The animator would do a block, as it’s called, which is a rushed rehearsal, and he would discuss it with the animator.
IT CAN SOMETIMES TAKE A WEEK TO PRODUCE HALF A SECOND OF FOOTAGE
Tristan Oliver: We’ve got 40 to 50 sets up on a typical day. Some of those sets will be churning stuff out, some will be stuck because of an issue. The only thing that’s kind of solid is that in 18 months, we normally shoot a 90-minute movie. In one week, we might turn out three minutes. The next week, half a second.
Mark Waring (animation director): The whole production took a couple of years from start to finish. But everything overlaps in there. A shot might take six months, but there’s lots of other things happening at the same time. It’s just incredible, the amount of work. Wes appreciates that.
WES ANDERSON MICRO-MANAGED THE LONDON TEAM FROM HIS PARIS HOME
Tobias Fouracre: He was on email all day, every day. So it was full-time. He was in front of his computer constantly.
Tristan Oliver: Wes has a significantly different directing style from other directors. I think what all of us who had worked on Fantastic Mr Fox took into Isle of Dogswas an absolute understanding of what the process was going to be like. I think on Fox, it was… surprising (laughs) and frustrating on occasions. But we all absolutely knew where we were from day one on Isle of Dogs. We knew the degree of absolute precision and control over what we were doing was going to be very, very high. In a way, it was a more relaxed environment because of that.
EVERY GRETA GERWIG PUPPET HAD 321 HAND-PAINTED FRECKLES
Angela Kiely (head of puppet painting): I was the one painting those freckles. We did some paint tests and showed (Gerwig’s) character of Tracy to Wes. He looked at them and said, “More freckles.” We did another pass. “More freckles.” There were 321 freckles altogether. They’re three different specific colours of russet, orangey brown, and then a tan colour. It’s nerve-wracking when someone says “lots of freckles” because you’re thinking, “How are we going to duplicate that?” One face is fine, but if you’re having a thousand faces, that’s suddenly a bit of a nightmare.
INFLUENCES RANGED FROM KUROSAWA TO KUBRICK
Mark Waring: The cartoon clouds for the fights were in the script. The idea was to do something like Tex Avery or Road Runner. It was going back to childhood things like Rankin-Bass. Peanuts was always a reference. In the animated series, it’s Pig-Pen with the clouds of dust.
Tobias Fouracre: Wes created a list of Japanese films. Most of the Kurosawa films, a couple of Ozu films. Kubrick was another director (for Yoko Ono’s white lab).
Mark Waring: A big mixture of stuff (like Akira and Miyazaki). Kurosawa’s style of filmmaking was referenced, the way the characters have that stoic, very composed, considered acting style. Mayor Kobayashi is a specific reference to Toshiro Mifune.
Angela Kiely: The suit for Mayor Kobayashi had to look like a really 1950s Italian gangster scene. It took several months to get the right tailoring, and the right look, until he was happy with it.
Tristan Oliver: What you have to be aware of, in terms of the process of working with Wes, is that it’s entirely driven by Wes. I can’t say I directly referenced film X, Y or Z at any point in the movie, because it’s very much driven by Wes. We are, as creatives, there to facilitate that vision, rather than add to it.
THE PUPPETS WOULD REGULARLY BREAK IN UPSETTING WAYS
Angela Kiely: Oh my goodness, we’d have daily maintenance. Things like a neck might rip, or a wire might pop through the fur. It’s not real fur – it’s wool – but bits of fur might come off and need patching. It was shot over a couple of years, so it’s inevitable that the puppets, with time, would tear.
THE ABSENCE OF SHADOWS CAN BE CREATIVELY LIMITING
Tristan Oliver: Wes didn’t want any shadows in the exteriors. He just wanted a completely flat, white light, which, from a working point of view, can be quite repetitive, and it doesn’t really allow you to stretch your creative muscles (laughs). But that’s just what he wants. It’s limiting from a creative point of view, because stop-frame animation comes from a background of children’s television, where everything was lit very, very flat, and looked very dull. A lot of us have spent the last 20 years trying to pull it into a more cinematic environment. And going back to flat light feels like a retrograde step. But, within the context of the film, it’s appropriate.
THE SALIVATING SUSHI SCENE TOOK SIX MONTHS TO PREPARE
Mark Waring: The sushi sequence was specifically based on one of Wes’s favourite sushi chefs from Paris. He had his hands photographed, and we sculpted his hands to look exactly the same. We spent six months, from start to finish, researching it and developing it. Wes wanted it to be recognisable for sushi chefs to look at it and understand how it was made. The way you hold the knife, the way you cut, the techniques – all of that had to be factored in.
Plus he wanted to make a brand new sushi technique that had never been done before in the history of sushi-making. But we did it. We had to build all the things as well. If you’re cutting fish, you’ve got to make sure that, in stop-frame, you can cut it. You can’t cut a metal armature. You have to work out: “OK, we need a joint here, and this needs to be a replacement bit.”
Tristan Oliver: All animated movies have difficult shots in them, and they always have shots that take a long time. But that’s the money shot, if you like. It’s worth spending time on those shots if they’re going to have a big visual impact.
EACH PUPPET HAD A REPLACEMENT FACE FOR EACH EXPRESSION
Angela Kiely: There’s often a mixture of techniques within each film. On Frankenweenie with Tim Burton, a lot of the puppets were silicon skins, so they would have the mechanics in the faces, and you’d use the same skin. Whereas on Isle of Dogs they were replacement faces. So for each expression, you’d have thousands of different faces, and thousands of different tiny parts for each subtle angry or nuanced expression.
WES ANDERSON WOULD ASK FOR IMPOSSIBLE SHOTS
Tristan Oliver: The main disjunction between the live-action and animated world for Wes is that he cannot get the depth of field he wants, because we’re working in a macro environment. If he takes a close-up in live-action, he knows that everything from a character’s nose to the hills in the distance, will be in focus. Whereas if we took a close-up of one of these dogs, the eyes will be in focus, but the end of the nose won’t be. He’s often frustrated by the inability of us to get the depth of field that he wants. But it’s actually just beyond the physics of the lenses we have.
Mark Waring: Wes isn’t going to suddenly say, “Nah, don’t worry about it.” Because of the team he’s got involved, he knows he can ask a question, and people will go, “Alright, we’ll get on it, and make it happen. We’ll come back to you in a couple of months.”
Tristan Oliver: Wes will always ask, if he wants something, and he will want more than just you saying you can’t do it as an answer. So we quite often have to set stuff up in order to show him what the limitations are in terms of the physics.
FARAWAY SHOTS ARE ACHIEVED WITH MINIATURE-SIZED PUPPETS
Angela Kiely: There were five different scales of Atari. On some of the bigger sets, we couldn’t keep him at the regular size because it’d look disproportionate, or we’d have absolutely giant sets to keep it in proportion. So for long shots, we’d have really tiny, 15mm-sized puppets. Then for close-ups, we’d have larger scale puppets.
SOMETIMES AN OLD-SCHOOL DOG DOESN’T WANT TO LEARN NEW TRICKS
Tristan Oliver: Wes doesn’t like smooth animation. We’ve reverted to a style of animation that is more handmade, if you will, compared to what Laika’s producing, which is super-smooth, almost fluid. A lot of the choppiness is achieved by animating on “twos” rather than “ones”. Instead of 24 discrete poses per second, we’re taking 12. It gives more crispness and crunch.
Tobias Fouracre: Wes wants everything to be done for real, in camera, with as little digital effects as possible. In fact, none, in many cases. A different director would have filled this film with digital trickery that an audience wouldn’t even notice.
THE SILENT WOLF IN FANTASTIC MR FOX IS BASED ON BILL MURRAY
Tobias Fouracre: I did a shot in Fox of the wolf on the hill, doing a salute. After the wolf’s done that, it cuts back to Mr Fox, and then back to the wolf, and he runs back into the woods. I was given a funny little video clip of Bill Murray running in a field, away from the camera, which was quite amusing.
ANIMATION IS STILL UNDERAPPRECIATED IN THE INDUSTRY
Tristan Oliver: You’d be surprised. I wouldn’t even get a job on a low-budget live-action movie. People are so narrow in their view of things. It’s extraordinary. I shot the live-action for Loving Vincent, but the reason I got the job was because I did animation. That film was going to be eventually taken away and painted over and turned into an animated movie. But I shot a 90-minute live-action movie in 48 days, because I do animation. It’s a very bizarre thought process.
It’s the Cinderella of the film business. People aren’t taken very seriously. The only award you can be up for is Best Animated Film, or maybe Best Song. But you’re never going to be nominated for Best Cinematography or Best Editing. Everything’s under this blanket of animation. The actual craft of all the people who work on these films is never considered.
People, in their minds, just think, “Wes Anderson made this movie on his own.” I’ve never been invited to the Oscars. Six features, and at least five shorts (of mine have been nominated). And the only time I’ve been to the ceremony was when my girlfriend was nominated for another movie
THEY DON’T GET TO TAKE A PUPPET HOME
Angela Kiely: No, I wish! That would be amazing to have the best puppet collection in the world. Sadly, not. They take 16 weeks, each puppet, to make. They’re far too precious for us to be able to keep them.
IT WAS A SHOCK TO SEE THE FINAL FILM
Angela Kiely: Although you’ve seen it for two years, you see it in little fragments. So you see the same second of a shot over and over again, but not in its entirety. I was really surprised by the pacing and how fast it was, and how it flowed so well. And really how beautiful it looks. You always worry: “Are the costumes going to look great at that scale? Are you going to see the handmade-ness of it?” When we saw the film, we were all really blown away.
Tristan Oliver: I saw it for the first time at the premiere. It’s very full-on. It was so busy. I got to the end of it, and couldn’t remember whether everything we shot was in there, but I’m sure it was. I couldn’t describe to you how I felt. I was sat next to Mark Waring, and we both looked at each other, and just… (exhales in shock). Didn’t even say words. It was so overwhelming. It was like being punched in the face (laughs).
Isle of Dogs opens in UK cinemas on March 30