DIRECTORS COMMENT:

 

(From an interwiew by Shorts Moviefest, Russia, 2006)

I wrote the script to En nattsaga 1 year after my mother died. I then needed to do something beautiful but not denial about my experience. What came out was this story about a family who tries to escape reallity using their imagination.

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. Because my mother never wanted to talk about her comming death, I was quite badly prepaired when she died and when a lot of things had to change.

Though, I understand a lot that kind of dealing with things. I allways hope myself that unpleasant things will 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.

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 children and by childrens books. I like the kind of storytelling for children that tells something difficult in a simple way without scaring anyone away.  

Death and suffering is not interesting in it self, I think, but how we handle it.

How did you manage psychologically?

The fact that I worked as a freelance at the time my mother died 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. Then I met Lars and things improved!

What were the toughest parts of work?

En nattsaga is my first animated film, so I had to learn A LOT to be able to direct it. Because of the huge amount of technic to coop with, we were forced not have face movements/mimic. So we could not make the characters look sad or happy, by their faceexpressions. We had to express that with bodymovements and music. Most difficult to animate in 3D is people walking in a natural way! Head and arm movements are much easier. It is much easier to make a fish or a robot move. The human body is much more complex in it's movements. Some things allso had to be cancelled from the script because we didn't know how to do them!

How was your film done technically?

The animation is made with key-frames. We filmed all movements before we started to animate, and studied all movements very carefully. But we did not use rotoscope or motion capture. The animations are all hand made.

How long did it take to make it?

14 months.