KinoSonic: Stopmotion - Robert Morgan

Introduction

Stopmotion is a film directed by Robert Morgan, which my family and I saw at the KinoSonic festival of sound + image at Farnham Maltings.

I also attended a live Q&A with Robert Morgan after the film screening. 

Robert Morgan is a British animator and filmmaker, best known for his two short films The Cat with Hands (2001) and the BAFTA nominated Bobby Yeah (2011).

Morgan studied at The Surrey Institute of Art and Design in Farnham, near where we saw the film and began his career 1997.

If the title doesn’t give it away, Stopmotion combines live action and traditional stop motion animation to tell the story of Ella, a stop motion animator, who’s animation comes to life and eventually consumes her.

I’d never heard of Robert Morgan or his work before, but my dad found out the film was on and thought I would enjoy it due to my interest in horror. 

  I have actually done some stop motion animation in the past, I made a (very!) short film with modelling clay in an art class when I was about 10 and have experimented a little with Lego stop motion slightly more recently. I think that this may have given me a slight understanding of the sheer level of work that would go into animating a production like this.

 I didn’t really know anything about the film beforehand, either, I hadn’t seen the trailer or read a description of it, so I was pretty much going in blind. Stopmotion is rated an 18, so I was a little nervous that it would be overly graphic and there were definitely some stomach churning points, but the film combined gore with psychological horror so as to not feel too extreme.

A brief synopsis of the plot

Ella lives under the thumb of her domineering mother, an acclaimed stop motion animator. Her only purpose in life is to serve as her arthritic mother’s hands and finish her final film before she dies.

 Her mother suffers a stroke mid production and becomes comatose, leaving Ella alone and lacking creative direction. Without her mother’s control she finds it impossible to finish a film that’s not hers and embarks on making her own, guided by a mysterious girl who relays the plot to her, bit by bit.

  Ella’s film is set over three nights and as she begins to animate, her own life starts to take the form of her film, each night breaking further away from reality and sinking into depravity. All of this culminates on the third night with a gory finale where Ella kills her boyfriend and his sister and wraps up with an ambiguous ending.

Venue

The screening was at Farnham Maltings, a creative arts centre which I’ve been to several times before.

 It’s an older building with a really nice atmosphere and welcoming staff and my dad especially enjoyed the cafe! 

The cinema was fairly small and not that busy at all. A lot of the people there were art students from Farnham, which meant that we got a bit more of an introduction to the event than you would at a normal cinema. It was really nice that you could tell that the people working there were very enthusiastic about the events being held there.

  We did find the chairs weren’t that comfortable as there wasn’t much padding on them and due to the Maltings being on the smaller side it got pretty packed at the interval between the film and the Q&A.

The film

  I wasn’t sure at all what to expect of Stopmotion and I feel like the plot was pretty much exactly what you’d imagine if someone described a horror film about a stop motion animator - the lines blurring between animation and reality. The concept of the three nights was much like a children’s fairytale, which, while it fitted with the narrative of the young girl directing the story, made it a little predictable.

  That’s not to say I thought Stopmotion was uninventive, the animation was fantastic and added a whole new dimension to the film and I found the ending especially interesting. 

  The way a lot was left up to your own interpretation, including the conclusion and the girl’s role in the film - was she real, a malicious entity or just a figment of Ella’s fractured mind? - made the film more engaging. During the Q&A Morgan talked about how in the editing stage of production they ended up cutting more explanatory scenes out of the film as they found they detracted from the storytelling, which I definitely agree with. 

  The actual stop motion animation in the film was fascinating to watch; at first it was watching the process of stop motion animation as Ella made her mother’s film and then it evolved into the animation coming to life and interacting with Ella. I found it added another layer to the film and almost provided ‘texture’, with the clash of live action and animated sequences and the different materials used for the animation.

  I thought the psychological horror aspect of the film was done quite well, with Ella’s actor portraying her break from reality convincingly and the use of lighting and foley really helped to disconcert and disorientate while also showing Ella’s own instability. I wouldn’t say I found the film especially scary, it certainly won’t keep me up at night and I did feel a certain degree of disconnect as it’s not exactly a scenario I could find myself in. I also feel that Stopmotion could have done more with the use of gore. Whilst meat and flesh featured heavily as Ella began to search for a way to make her puppets more real, I would have found it more interesting if it had been shown more in the animation as all the bloody scenes were live action. However, these were still enough to make you uncomfortable and I must admit I had to close my eyes at points!

  The last thing I’d like to mention is the amazing foley work Stopmotion employed. I found it to be incredibly effective and added a vast amount to all of the more gruesome scenes. 

  Overall, I think Stopmotion is an interesting and artistic horror film and that what it may lack in concept, plot and budget is made up for by the novelty of the animation and foley. I do think the environment contributed to my enjoyment of the film -  I probably would’ve felt a little underwhelmed without the subsequent Q&A, as it provided a lot of insight into the ideas and work behind the film.

The Q&A

  After Stopmotion concluded there was an interval of about half an hour before a 60 minute long Q&A with director Robert Morgan.

To be honest, at first I was a little reluctant to attend the Q&A as I was quite tired after the film, but as the tickets were already booked we went ahead and I’m definitely glad we did. 

  I found it really fascinating to hear about the process of making Stopmotion, Morgan talked about all the work behind the scenes and the organisation of the film, as well as the actual animation, his inspiration and work like the editing and foley. He was being interviewed by a woman from Farnham University of Creative Arts and I did find some of her questions quite repetitive so I would have preferred if it had been opened up to audience questions sooner as there were a lot more interesting things being asked. 

  Morgan talked a little about how he drew inspiration from a lot of horror films from the 80s and 90s and also his experience watching Fiend Without a Face (a 1958 film where evil killer brains begin strangling people with their spinal cords) and how the moving brains were made with stop motion animation. I’d never realised this, but before cgi was so prevalent a lot of special effects were created with stop motion animation, which I think I actually would prefer to the computer generated stuff as it feels more real.

  I was really interested in the foley used in Stopmotion and was very pleased when it came up. Morgan talked about how really slight details with the sound added to the experience of watching the film. These included things like the mysterious girl making no noise when she moved, aside from when she was interacting with an object, which I thought definitely helped to make you wonder if she was real or not; another small but very interesting detail with the foley was that they made the metal armature inside the stop motion animation puppets squeak when they moved. In reality this doesn’t happen and Morgan said that he wouldn’t have thought of it himself, but it was suggested to him by the sound designer. The squeaking really helped to create this slightly disconcerting atmosphere, especially when the puppets moved of their own accord. In what I think was an amazing continuation of this it would sometimes squeak when real humans moved, showing just how consumed by her work Ella was as she started to become unable to distinguish animation from reality. 

  Another topic that came up in the Q&A that I found interesting was the costume design. Overall it was fairly limited in the film, apart from these gowns that they had the characters wear while animating. In real life most stop motion animators would just wear a dark colour so they don’t reflect light, but Ella and her mother wore these long, slightly surgical and very ceremonial robes that created an almost religious feel to the process of the stop motion animation. I think this was really pertinent to one of the main themes within the film -  artists' dedication to their art and when this becomes too obsessive and overwhelming. Ella applied herself to her animation with an almost religious fervour and it ended up costing her everything.

Conclusion

I had a good time learning all about the film and work that went into it and it did reignite a little of my interest in stop motion animation. I doubt I’ll go on to try any animation myself again as it’s just too time intensive for me to be able to do at the moment, but I think that only increases the respect I have for the medium and the artists who use it.

   I don’t think I’d watch Stopmotion again and I also don’t think I’d recommend it to anyone I know, due to it being rather niche and probably a tiny bit boring if you aren’t so interested in the actual art within the film as it’s definitely not your typical horror movie.

I’m still glad I went to the event, though, as I think it definitely gave me some more perspective into the world of filmmaking and I’m still mulling over the ending of the film a few days later, which I think is a good sign!