INTERVIEW
[InC-terview] 'My Life As A Zucchini' Puppet Maker Gregory Beaussart
By InCinemas / 20 May 2017 (Saturday)
Often dismissed as movies for children, animations rarely get the credit they deserve in terms of the immense skills and effort put into the production process. Stop motion, in particular, is an incredibly meticulous craft. The sheer amount of talent, time and patience that goes into making the puppets come to life on screen is nothing short of awe-inspiring.
Ahead of the 6th French Animation Film Festival in Singapore, InCinemas had a chance to speak with head puppet maker Gregory Beaussart, the man behind the simple yet stunning puppets in the Oscar-nominated critically acclaimed stop-motion film ’My Life As A Zucchini’. He told us about some of the challenges in creating the characters for this film.
“It was a long process,” he said, “that began long before the shooting. The first step was graphic research led by [director Claude Barras]. Then we ran a couple of tests on how to best reproduce the character designs on a large scale. The actual production of the puppets lasted for ten months, involving ten people. In the end, we were able to produce 54 puppets in total.”
The work did not stop there for Beaussart and his team. He shared, “Once the shooting started, half of the team were sent to the film studio for maintenance, repair as well as small alterations that needed to be done on the puppets.”
Because filming a stop motion is such a time-consuming and costly process, time was of the essence for the entire film crew. Additional time spent in the studio could mean significant financial loss. As such, Beaussart’s priority in creating the puppets was, unsurprisingly, efficiency.
He told us, “[the most challenging part of the process] was to create functional puppets that were easy to use, so the animators could work faster and more efficiently.”
Beaussart gave us a pleasant surprise by bringing out the actual puppets of the three main characters Zucchini, Camille and Simon ("Simon is my favourite," he told us.). The puppets were moulded from clay, with their individual parts, including eyebrows and lips, detachable to vary their facial expressions. The heads were printed in 3D.
Beaussart credited the main design of the characters to director Claude Barras, who wanted the puppets to have a big head and big eyes. When asked why the characters had such unusually long arms, he said, half joking, half serious, “so they could scratch their head!”
Making an animation, especially a stop motion, is an arduous journey, but nothing beats the joy of seeing the film finally getting to the audience. Beaussart shared with us, “we never really expected that [the movie] would be so popular. We are very happy that so many people get to see it, and that the message behind the movie gets delivered to a wide audience. That’s the most satisfying part.”
‘My Life As A Zucchini’ is one of the six films to be screened at the French Animation Film Festival (19 - 21 May 2017).
Find out more about the festival and its programme here.