Staff Pick Premiere: "O Black Hole!" by Renee Zhan |
Have you ever thought about how a black hole is born? It's this week's Staff Pick Premiere, "O Black Hole!" by Renee Zhan is an epically massive and core-belief shifting musical that personifies one of the most mysterious creatures in our world through color, clay, and song. The question of the origin of a black hole -and its end-of-life -- are created by Zhan in a world filled with imagination and creativity.
In an attempt to protect and keep the beauty surrounding her, a beautiful young Eve-like woman decides to consume every single thing she likes. Gobbling quickly and chaotically, the speed and chaos that she creates creates a swirling black hole through which nothing can escape. The worm eats planets, seasons as well as humans and moons as a way of giving them infinite life. When she awakes inside the cavernous black hole, a character known as the "Singularity" encounters beings who need her help. They beg her to ascend over the hole and convince the creator of it to let the prisoners live in the way they are meant to or the entire world would cease to exist.
"O The Black Hole!" is a fable about not letting go of what you love overly. Its vivid claymation and paintings create a variety of illustrations about the importance of embracing the temporary and accepting the inevitability of death.
There's so much to this film craft and story-wise; and we were fortunate enough to meet with its animator and director, Renee Zhan, to break down every question we had about it. Read on for her answers:
Inspiring:
"A lot of my films start by capturing one or two persistent images in my head. A few years ago I was drawing this woman using the dark charcoal mark where her face should be. I spent hours interrogating this image and trying to figure out what she might be. Then, it became to me that she was nothing but a black hole.
This film is one about a woman concerned about the passing of time that she takes all of her loved ones and everything inside herself to keep them safe forever.
She sucks in the entire universe until eventually, she's just dancing in circles alone.
Black hole moves around in counterclockwise circles since she's Against Time And then when Singularity saves the various people living in this black hole begin to dance clockwise again in the normal cycles in the Universe. They restart."
Utilizing 3D and 2D techniques:
"I've always been a lover of mixed-media films and I enjoy using visceral effects as well as traditional media. I felt that the tale of the black hole really was a good fit for these two different mediums: 2D as well as 3D.
The outside of the black hole, in which time is normal, is rendered in 2D by drawing with pencil or charcoal, watercolors and oil paint, as it's fleeting and ephemeral. And the inside of the black hole, everything it has taken in and created permanent, is 3D and hard.
As Singularity travels across the black hole, all the way to the top, those walls in the holes begin gradually turning more liquid, as if the grasp of the black hole is more loose in the top. I wanted all mediums to flow into each the other and smoothly transition from 2D to 3D and back to 2D.
I find it essential that I leave space to think and have fun when I make films, and to work the details out as we go along. Creating the inside of a black hole was extremely appealing since no one is aware of what it looks like. Production designer Richard Henley and I had the opportunity to be totally creative. This was an opportunity to design a visually distinctive and interesting world. We decided it would be the form of dark, twisted caves, reminiscent of liquids which had solidified after the time had been frozen. ."
On her original vision against. final cut:
"When we began the film I didn't know what the film would look like. I'd never done any stop-motion or created something of this magnitude.
In some ways, I was disappointed to not see it appear exactly what I had in mind. My impression was that my animation wasn't quite good enough and it was too rough and dirty. Strange because I love to observe this type of roughness and imperfection in stop-motion films, but in my own I felt so annoyed about it.
In other ways I was also awed the work we came up with. The music by Harry Brokensha and epic sound design by Ed Rousseau were beyond what I had ever dreamed of.
Lore Lixenberg's amazing voice as Black Hole and Emmy the Great's pure tone as Singularity added many things to the music.
It's a fact that I'm extremely proud of the work we've all done in the group."
The themes of mythology and humanity within her work:
"I'm fascinated by the myths about the origin of the world. They ask existential questions of humans and try to answer them with big and exciting stories of diving birds, eggs or nature spirits. Mythology usually includes epic tales of heroic events and adventure and quests. My opinion is that it's simply part of the human desire to understand the meaning of the world around us.
It's possible that on a smaller level that's what I try to do through my films. Through my work, I'm always examining my own anxieties and fears, as well as obsessions. In 'O Black Hole! I thought of the film as a contemporary myth of creation. I wanted to create an film that had some personal questions about philosophy, paired with an entertaining adventure of a movie as well as a wacky operatic soundtrack ."
The challenges encountered during the creation of the film:
"This was easily the most challenging film I've ever made. The creation of a stop-motion/2D musical with a main character with stupid long curly hair (that kept melting midway through!) made on a short deadline led to some very difficult months. It's easy to go on about the struggles. We crammed a lot into the time of a short film. It's true that I am grateful to have had the opportunity to produce an amazing film and work with the most amazing group of people. I hope I'll get more chances similar to this one in the near future and continue to make films with my friends !"
On the lesson of 'O Black Hole!':
"The closing lines of the film are "O black hole, please don't lament, we're just dreams the universe has dreamt. ...' The central theme of the film is the beauty in transience. A woman who is a black hole takes all the universe around her because she's afraid of change. It teaches it that the process of change creates new life and significance to the present.
I guess the film attempts to convey the idea that everything changes and die and new things come and flourish, and that's wonderful and acceptable. So I do hope that this is the message that the viewer receives. To be honest, I'm still struggling to persuade my self !"
Her tips (or absence of it) for aspiring filmmakers:
"Maybe you should listen to your parents, and then become engineers instead. No, I'm kidding! Just kidding! I'm not certain, but I'm feeling like I'm an aspirant filmmaker. Therefore, I can need some help and ."
The next step:
"I'm working on a live-action/animation hybrid horror-comedy short film with BBC Films. The story is about a Chinese-born British violinist called Fei whose world turns upside down when she meets the arrival of a talented violinist called Mei.
And I'm also developing an idea for a feature film animated about a cult that worships the birds!"