Who on Earth is handed a worse fate than toys and figurines? They are made to be controlled, with zero chance of gaining basic rights. Without a chance to speak unless a string is pulled or a button pushed, who will carry their voice for them? The answer is Italian director Marco Jemolo and his animating team, who through today’s Staff Pick Premiere, “Framed,” tell the story of a clay pawn in a human’s game.
Seamless stop motion animation, an ingenious script, and emotive voice acting deliver this noir tale, which stands as a metaphor for the crude awakening of a human being to the puppet strings of society. It’s a rollercoaster of emotions, fueled by a darkly relatable premise.
In honor of its exclusive premiere on Vimeo, we sat down with Marco to discuss what sparked the making of “Framed” and more. Read on for highlights from our conversation.
On inspiration:
“A short film shot in 1957 by Canadian director Norman McLaren, called “A Chairy Tale.” In that film, a chair refuses to comply with its role as a sheer object and keeps its owner from sitting. I think many stories that touched us rely on the concept of rebellion, not towards what surrounds us but towards our essence. A character that simply does not accept his or her given role in the world always makes a compelling story. Think Pinocchio, think Toy Story.
When I wrote “Framed,” I had no experience in animation. I just got a manual to see if I could get something out of it. When I saw pictures of lifeless clay puppets lying on small sets, the idea just struck me. Infusing it with a social subtext was merely the next step. In “Framed,” there’s a lot of who I was back then and what I felt.”
On challenges:
“We were four independent producers with no company behind us. Naturally, there was the ‘raising the money’ problem, the ‘finding the right people’ problem all down to the ‘lightbulb’ problem (we were using cinema lights which were not meant to stay on for that long, so they started exploding). It was excruciating and I hold all of it dear.
Probably the hardest part was coming up with a script that satisfied all of us. We wanted it to be deep and still snappy, universal but not vague. I can’t tell you whether we accomplished any of that, but the final script is what drew the backers to our crowdfunding and drew the people we wanted to work with. We overcame every bump after that.”
On craft:
“Literally everything you see on screen is handmade by the skillful hands of Linda Kelvink, our lead animator and puppet maker, and Valentina Menegatti, our set designer.
One thing most people don’t realize is that even in animation, physics matters. A lot of our planning involved the research of compromises between being surprising and being convincing. The structures and the characters we built had to be light and flexible enough to allow the action to happen. Eventually, we even had to give up some of our more extreme ideas.
The puppets were built over a steel Armatur. We covered them with a mixture of wood, Milliput, aluminum, foam rubber and an outer layer of plasticine. The sets were made with wood, polystyrene and metal. Then, Valentina painted them with a mix of acrylic colors and plaster in order to give them that grungy and three-dimensional feel. Watching the set coming alive was one of the best parts of the whole production.”
On artistic influences:
“I love Ettore Scola’s bitter-sweet way of depicting “smaller than life” characters. He managed to be sarcastic and tragic, fierce and goodhearted, grotesque and epic at the same time. No other director had more influence on me than him. I also think we all should learn how to write dialogue from him and his writers.
From Roman Polanski, I took the masterful way of portraying paranoia, personality crises, and nightmarish scenarios. He’s a deep explorer of the shadows of the human soul and he surely knows how to direct a camera or an actor in order to let all that darkness come out. He’s an exorcist, in a way.
I admire Gregory Crewdson and his ability to leave something unsaid and let the viewers figure out what his work means.
Naturally, all these artists have often worked in small closed spaces. They used their sets as characters. And that was a huge help while I was imagining ‘Framed.'”
On what’s next:
“I would like to expand the “Framed” universe and make it a feature film. We will probably be mixing live action and animated sequences. I want to further investigate the mutual relationship between individuals and society and the limits of conscience in such a vast digital world. We’ll see.”
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