Maja Lindstrom. "A night's story"
Lars Norden and Maja Lindstrom
The background of the script
I started to write the script to En nattsaga in early 2003. It was 1 year after my mother died in cancer. The main thing that I wanted to describe in the film was the feeling of unreal and of beeing unprepaired, when someone close to you dies.
I also wanted to describe how childish adults can act in that situation. In my case, my mother never wanted to talk about her comming death, so we joined her in a wery childish way, kind of playing a game pretending that it was not true, and was therefore badly prepaired when she died and when a lot of things had to change.
Unfortunatly because of that I never said goodbye to her. Though, I understand a lot that kind of dealing with things. I am much like that myself too, I allways hope unpleasant things to go away if I close my eyes and go to sleep!
I wanted En nattsaga to be a ”saga” for adults. Like ”a hug” to people that feel unprotected and scared. (maybe it is a hug to my mother, that was probably very scared even if not showing it)
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En Nattsaga - is my first animated film, so I had to learn A LOT to be able to direct it.
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storyboards fragment
The theme of cancer/family collapse/child tragedy is not being pushed or forced. It goes on in a very human, very delicate way. What are your principles?
I am inspired by my sisters children and by childrens books. I like that kind of old storytelling for children that tells something difficult in a delicate way without scaring anyone away.
Personaly I don't like too heavy films with absolutly no light. I think, eaven in a very hard situation, it is with our humor and fantasy (even if the fantasy is childish!) that we survive.
I wanted the story to have some kind of hope or happy ending in it. Death and suffering is not interesting in it self, I think, but how we handle it. I allso wanted the audience to remain seated and not to make them push the story away, like I myself used to do.
How did you manage psychologically?
It was quite hard to work with this theme actually. The fact that I worked as a freelance at the time my mother died allso made my personal situation very instable. I think, maybe I made the film to make a bad ending in my real life into something positive.
The most pleasant parts of the film was to write the script, handle the camera, deciding on the lightening and to cut the pictures together.
What were the toughest parts of work?
Because of the huge amount of technic to coop with, (that was the toughest part of the work) we were forced to not have face-movements/mimic. So we could not make the characters look sad or happy, by their face-expressions. We had to express that with bodymovements and music.
storyboards fragment and films still
How was your film done technically?
The animation is made with key-frames. We filmed all movements before we started to animate, but not using rotoscoping, as you asked about. The animation is all made by hand by Lars and with help from another guy called Karl Sanden.
En nattsaga is my first animated film, so I had to learn A LOT to be able to direct it.
Fact is that I was at first going to shoot it on film when I met Lars Norden, that is allso my boyfriend.
After some month I decided it was, if anything, going to be an animated film. Lars was a little bit shocked, with respect of who much work animated film requires. (but he had nothing better to do!)
How long did you make it?
It took us 14 month to make the film. (including the organizingprocess) Several month were used to construct the sceen and the characters and to organize all technical things. Lars build 3 computers himself that we worked on (PC).
Most hard movements to animate in 3D is people walking! Head and arm-movements are much easier. It is allso quite difficult to make a human person move in a natural way. There is much easier to make a fish or a robot move, in a stiff way. The human body is much more complex in it's movements.
Sometimes a sceen in the film took us month to do, other things took much less and some things had to be cancelled from the script because we didn't know how to do them!
storyboards fragments and sceenes 3D-modeling
What about financing and organizing the process?
En nattsaga was supported by the Swedish Film Instiute.
The only thing I know about that school is that they allows extremly few student a year. A lot of young people just do like I used to do, they borrow equipment and go out to make a film , without asking the permission from anybody. (I myself have never studied film.)
How traditional is the Swedish filmmaking school?
I don't think Swedish schools are so traditional.. I think there is much concentration in swedish shools in general on personal development. We allso have public shools with high quality and a system allowing all students to borrow money for living while they study. That makes people cool and willing (they can afford) to experiment.
Regarding your work with Lars Norden (animation) and Oysten Vesaas (music), how was it working together?
Lars is extremely technical and can usually solve any problem! As we have different roles in the production, we work very well together,and never fight about how to do things.
He is much stimulated by finding new solutions to make things work and I am more oriented on how it looks. We now work together (all three of us)with a new animated film on 18 min. Me and Lars is since spring 2005 part of the animation company Alphaville in Stockholm. (www.alphaville.se )
Lars is allso keen on technical inventions and would like, in the future, not to animate but to work with those kind of things.
Oystein lives in Oslo in Norway. He runs his own studio there called Lydkjokkenet/the soundkitchen, producing radiotheater (for children) for NRK and CD-productions etc. His work with the radio theatre ”A stranger in the house” recived "prix nordica 2004" and was selected as the best norveigian radioprogramme 2003.
What is the fate of the film?
The film has participated in A LOT of festivals world wide!
Is was bought by swedish television and finnish television.
Me and Lars is in a week going to Tokyo, to meet our distributor there that screened en nattsaga in their cinema.
Japan is a very interesting country for animation. They have both the skill and good storytelling. In Sweden animation is almost not exsisting.
The travel is done with founds from the Swedish Institute. The swedish institute allso want us to go to Tanzania and teach 3D at a shool there later this spring. We will see about that.
How does it feel after having made a film like that? After having received appraise?
Honestly,the filmprice itself didn't make me extremely happy. I also like to be my own judge and not to be led astray by a price. People telling me they really liked the film makes me more happy!!
What are your plans? What are you working at right now?
Unfortunatly, it doesn't seem ever to be easy economically to make films.
I now think I must consider if filmmaking is the best way for me to express my self in the future.
My plans is to make the film we are working on right now and then, hopefully, move on and try to write. Maybe it will be favorable that people know about my film, to publish a book!
I want to continue to tell stories on how to survive.
© Shortы' 2006