HOW DO WE DO IT?
Would you like to know what is the magic of our films? How are they made? How is it possible that the Playmobil clicks move by themselves? The answer is simpler than it seems, and can be said in just one word: stop motion .
WHAT IS STOP-MOTION?
Also know as frame-by-frame animation , is one of the oldest techniques in the history of cinema. Its origins go back to the French filmmaker and illusionist Georges Méliès , who used it for the first time in 1896. Since then it has been linked to the creation of special effects when digital computer animation did not yet exist. The lost World (1925), King Kong (1933) or starwars (1977) are some of the productions for which this technique was used.
These special effects we could say "primitives" were the ones that inspired the director Tim Burton to use stop-motion for his animated films , as an alternative technique to traditional animation , that is, cartoons. Stop-motion continues to occupy a place in today's cinema, no longer as a special effect, but as an animation technique through films by production companies such as Aardman or Laika.
There are two main types of stop-motion animation. One of them uses models of clay or moldable paste to create and animate the characters; and another, the one we use, articulated rigid figures , in our case the Playmobil clicks .
los dibujos animados. El stop-motion sigue ocupando un lugar en el cine actual, ya no como efecto especial, sino como técnica de animación a través de películas de productoras como Aardman o Laika.
Hay dos grandes tipos de animación stop-motion. Uno de ellos utiliza modelos de plastilina o pasta moldeable para crear y animar los personajes; y otro, el que usamos nosotros, figuras rígidas articulables, en nuestro caso los clicks de Playmobil.
THE PROCESS OF CREATING AN ESA STUDIOS FILM
Each of our feature films or medium films (40 minutes or more) has about a year of work behind it. In the case of short films (5-10 minutes) the production process is shorter, it can take one or two months , depending on the film itself. But how is this process? Like cinema films, it is divided into three phases: pre-production , production and post-production .
My work as director and writer of ESA STUDIOS begins in pre-production . The first task is to decide on which Playmobil theme the future movie will be: pirates, Romans, Vikings, knights... there are plenty to choose from! Once the theme has been chosen, it is time to examine the sets and the figures it contains, which ones could be used to tell a story , and which ones could not; and what story could be told with them. In a matter of weeks (or months, depending on the movie), that story becomes a script , detailing all the places, characters, situations, and dialogue that will happen in the movie. It is the written transmission of it.
Once we have finished the script we can move on to the production phase. It's time to gather the clicks (if we don't already have them) protagonists of the story, and start making the animation using the stop-motion technique, frame by frame . For a feature film like the last dragon more than 7,000 or 8,000 photographs may be necessary. Each of them will correspond to a frame of the film.
Parallel to the shooting with the Playmobil figures, the recording of the dubbing is made , with the actors and actresses who are in charge of giving voice to each of the characters in the film. It is the phase in which more people are needed, throughout the history of our small, great production company, more than 40 different dubbing actors have passed.
And finally, once we have the animation and the dubbing, the last phase can begin: post-production , where everything we have recorded is assembled and edited , giving shape to the film . And voila! We already have our new production ready for its premiere .
Y finalmente, una vez que ya tenemos la animación y el doblaje, puede empezar la última fase: la post-producción, donde se monta y se edita todo lo que hemos grabado, dando forma a la película. ¡Y voilà! Ya tenemos nuestra nueva producción lista para su estreno.