"The House of Wolves" directed by Cristóbal Léon: The Professional and Joaquín Cosiña I was influenced by the Froebel Museum's collection of fairy tales [Director's Interview Vol.342]

The important “improvisation”

Q: You have commented on the way you work: ``There is a complete lack of planning,'' but at what stage are the scripts written? Are there many parts that are left to the filming location?

Léon: The Professional: Maybe saying "absolute lack of planning" is a bit of an exaggeration (laughs). Because this film is made with a wide range of possibilities and places great importance on improvisation, I didn't write a regular script for this film. Instead, I decided on three important things.

One is to create a storyboard for each scene. It wasn't all that detailed, I made about 20 images for each scene. The second is to create 10 rules and make sure everyone follows them so that the movie doesn't stray too far (*10 rules 1: This is a painting made with a camera. 2: There are no puppets. 3) : Everything can change as a "sculpture" 4: There is no fading out 5: This film is shot in one long take 6: This film tries to be ordinary 7: Color is used symbolically 8 (The camera never stops between frames. 9. Maria is beautiful. 10. It's a workshop, not a movie set.) The third thing is the lines (narration) that Maria speaks in the movie. I made a movie centered around these three things. When the animation part was actually completed, there were cases where it would be better to prepare the lines and use them in a different scene than the one originally envisioned. We were able to improvise and respond flexibly in that area.

Q: Stop motion animation requires precise calculations and preparations, but I think proceeding without a plan is the exact opposite of the production method. Please let me know if there are any advantages or disadvantages of doing stop motion animation without a plan.

Cosigna: As with all animation, I think all creators respect the traditional way of making things, and of course we respect them as we approach production. In this process, I take advantage of the fact that history changes by chance in my work. However, making it this way takes a lot of time and creates economic problems. That's a disadvantage. The advantage is that the production process is fun. When a problem arises, the time you spend creating and figuring out how to solve it and thinking, ``Let's try this method'' becomes a fun time. I think that's an advantage.

“Wolf House” © Diluvio & Globo Rojo Films, 2018

Q: I thought it was a great idea to exhibit the production process at each museum. How was the experience of being able to see the production process?

Cosignha: There was a moment when we realized that we were artists when we showed our production process in museums and galleries. I think it was great that we were able to get a sense of ourselves growing more and more as artists rather than filmmakers. On the other hand, because of the open space, there were times when things got lost, and people around us could see us, causing us to lose concentration and not be able to proceed with our work. Also, there was a lot of money spent setting up the location and moving around. However, I think there were more positive aspects than negative aspects. For example, people who were passing by would improvise and participate, and I would be able to transform my work in a positive direction, and I would get a lot of inspiration. There were also people who offered to financially support the creation of the work.

Influenced by the collection of Froebel-kan fairy tales