Speaking for nearly an hour at his master class, one of the key highlights of the Annecy Animation Festival this week, maestro filmmaker Guillermo del Toro kept his packed-to-the rafters audience enthralled – and in stitches – as he extolled the virtues of stop-motion animation and of embracing flaws.
Having just won a best animated feature film Oscar for his long-gestating stop-motion version of theclassic tale“Pinocchio” gave his talk even more heft.
“Stop-motion is, in my opinion, the most beautiful of all the forms of animation because it’s the most intimate, and is quite literally a connection between the animator and a physical model,” he said, adding: “It’s the closest thing to playing with your toys.”
“We are the weird motherfuckers in this room,” he told the stop-motion animation filmmakers in the audience. “Your family thinks you’re useless and that’s good,” he added, prompting a burst of laughter.
“All animators are weirdos, but stop-motion animators are the weirdest of them all; they’re in the violent lunatic asylum wing. Why? Because they are out executing an art form that is too slow, too painful, too old world,” he went on, declaring the art form his “religion.”
Saying that he tries to avoid digital sets and effects as much as possible, he declared: “I think that we need things that we know are made by humans to recover the human spirit. I love things that look handmade. I f—— hate perfection.”
At Annecy for a tribute to Mexican animation, Del Toro listed among his influences the first “King Kong” made, the works of Hayao Miyazaki and Ray Harryhausen” (“The 7thVoyage of Sinbad,” “Jason and the Argonauts”), among others.
While he prefers not to excessively use 3D animation and digital VFX effects in his live action work, he pointed out there was a need for all kinds of animation. “All I’m saying is, can we not have more flavors? Can we have a menu where we can order spicy or a little bit spicy, or where we can create and have the latitude that each person in this room needs; we’re alike and we’re all different.”
Reflecting on his career, Del Toro reminded his audience that he was 58 and in his 30-year career, up to 17 of those were inactive. Commenting that he was hoping to apply stop-motion on an adult fantasy drama he was developing, he said: “I have done 12 movies but I have written 44 screenplays so if you take this into account, the only advice I can give you is that your rate of productivity versus your efforts will remain frustratingly difficult, and frustratingly long. And you will always encounter assholes,” he concluded. “My entire career has been about not giving a f—. I’m going to continue trying to do it.”
Fahime Nafir contributed to this article
