Interviews

Short and Sweet in 3D

By Dana Bach

Sunday, December 2, 2007

British born, artist-filmmaker, Andrew McPhillips showcased ‘Blood Will Tell’ at the Hamptons Film Festival back in October of this year. The 3D sci-fi horror short set in 16th century Holland and to the music of Icelandic band Sigur Ross caught the eye of everyone in the audience. Dana Bach follows up with the artist in this month’s Q&A.

The talented CG artist known for his work in such renowned sci-fi flicks (‘Minority Report’ and ‘AI’) created a mesmerizing 6 minute film setting up the stage for 3D works to come. The dark mood of the film and ‘tin type’ technique is by far one of the best animated short films out there. In a nutshell, ‘Blood Will Tell’ is the story of a mysterious visitor who is hopelessly sick, attempts to hide from death in a dark, mosquito infested well. But the darkness can’t hide him, or the surrounding villages for very long.

Here’s what Andrew McPhillips had to say about his film:

DB:Have you any plans to expand this film into a full feature?
AM: Not yet. Although several people have asked me the same question. I have always thought of this short as kind of a window of something in time. As if there is a much bigger story and I just chose to frame this little bit of it. Hopefully you got some of that when you saw it.

That said, I feel it could easily be expanded to a feature. Either as a prequel or more about what happens to the mill/village/children once the mosquitoes arrive. I have a few stories in my mind around that.

DB: The music for your film really stood out from the rest because it was so integrated with the image on screen. How did you decided to use Sigur Ros and did you always hear that sort of music/sound for the film while it was in production?
AM: I am a big Sigur Ros fan and listen to a lot of music as I work. As I cut the early tests together at PDI/Dreamworks I used to always use temp music by Sigur Ros. The challenge was not having their wonderful music overpower the images. ‘Blood will tell’ could have very easily become a pop video which wasn’t my intention.

In the end, once the band and management had seen a rough cut and come on board with the project, I worked with the sound effects and music in Pro Tools to blend everything together.
I would then go and re-edit the images to go with the soundtrack
again. It was a very organic process of going between soundtrack and images. Much of the sound FX were live recorded in Maine.

DB: What is the intent of the film? Where was the destination you sought to send your audience?
AM: As I said, I wanted people to feel that this was part of something much bigger. I like films that end with a beginning. Mood wise I wanted the film to slip between being disturbing or eerie and then beautiful. I think it is a sad film, in many ways.

DB: Where do you think your work would best be viewed by a wider audience?
AM: I am putting it on “the festival circuit” as they say. Given the scale of the images (2:35 HDCAM), the low light levels, the tiny details in the visuals and the dynamic range in the soundtrack I feel the film would not be well served on-line (as technology is currently). I do not own the music in the film so any final decision on what we do with it eventually has to be a joint thing.

DB: What kind of impact, if any, has the work you’ve done on children’s movies affected your own style? Have they imposed any perspective on you that you may not have considered in
your work before?
AM: Animated features cost a lot of money to make and need
to reach the widest audience possible to make a return. ‘Blood Will Tell’ was very much a reaction to the films I have worked on professionally in that it didn’t have to make any money to be successful. In many ways I didn’t care if thousands of people saw it, so long as some of those who did, really enjoyed it. I think musicians understand this way of thinking. It was more about being as creative as I could with the tools I had around me.