Ottawa International Animation Festival 2018 - Caterpillarplasty
Fusing elements of Kafka and Kubrick, Caterpillarplasty is a prescient, grotesque sci-fi satire that lifts plastic surgery to another level. A powerful and sardonic take on a social obsession with beauty that’s spiralled out of control.
Interview with Director David Barlow-Krelina
Watch Caterpillarplasty here:
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
Thank you! I wanted to do a satirical take on a culture obsessed with perfection. I made the connection between physical beauty and spiritual enlightenment and imagined an institution that offered quick-fix treatments to attain a new kind of personal mastery. Through advanced medical procedures, customers can sign up, go under the knife and become better versions of themselves. I wanted to imagine where we might be headed with advances in technology and shifting ideals.
Combine that with my love for the craft of 3D animation: I like designing characters and stylizing the human face and body in unusual ways, and I’ve always wanted to build a universe from my character designs.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
Be reborn. Become the embodiment of perfection. Beauty is
The film tries to sell you this glamorous dream and then juxtaposes it with the meat and flesh of what it’s like to undergo the transformation for yourself. It’s an intense trip and I hope people enjoy the ride! The film fits into the genres of horror, science fiction, comedy and, of course, animation, although it’s a unique blend of all of the above.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
A lot of my films start with something personal and open up to something more universal. I have always been a very visual person and have tended to be quite inspired by design, nature, images from dreams. I’ve been driven to re-create these images in my work. Chasing inspiration is sort of like chasing a rainbow. You feel like you can reach out and grab it, but as you move closer, it slips away and the process starts over. We all seek perfection in our own ways, and the film deals with these themes in a more universal way.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
The filmmaking process was quite organic, and despite working with a defined script and storyboard at the beginning, I made a lot of changes as things came together in the animation and rendering process. For example, the idea of making the environments fully white was not something I decided until late in production. Initially, I was planning on having darker, more colourful backgrounds, but then I realized that having a lot of bright white made the flesh tones really pop out. It felt right given the cold and clinical nature of certain medical facilities and clean rooms.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
The film is just beginning its life at festivals. It played at the International Short Film Festival Oberhausen in May 2018. This was my first time watching it with an audience who knew nothing about the film, and also my first time doing a Q&A. I noticed that certain shots seem to make people laugh, and the caterpillar scene tends to be where the tension is at its highest. Sometimes people turn away or even shield their eyes! I appreciated one comment describing the style of the film as “beautifully grotesque.” “Beauty” and “grotesqueness” seem to be contradictory to one another, but perhaps for some things both can exist simultaneously.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
There hasn’t been anything overly challenging about the feedback, but one thing that has been striking to me is that once you release a film into the world, these things take on a life of their own! As a creator, I’ve often been a bit of a perfectionist, focused on getting things just right, hoping that people react to certain shots or aiming at a given audience response, but as soon as the film goes out there you really have to surrender to the process. You often hear people saying that these projects take on a life of their own, and they really do! There’s an element of that which is both exciting and terrifying. Ultimately, I’m happy if the work is seen by people.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
I hope that it gets attention from communities outside the typical animation circles. The film brings together a strange mix of subject matter—insects, plastic surgery, beauty, technology, spirituality, psychedelia, etc.—so I hope that it works its way into each of these different niche communities.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
At this moment, I’m just happy for people to see the film. The National Film Board of Canada has been very supportive in its release. To have it shown in a few festivals and to witness its journey is exciting for me.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
Overall, I hope that the film has an uplifting quality to it. It deals with themes that are maybe a bit heavy, but I hope that it explores them in a playful kind of way. I hope it can be both entertaining and thought-provoking at the same time.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
How will aesthetic beauty change with advances in technology?
Interview: September 2018
We Are Moving Stories embraces new voices in drama, documentary, animation, TV, web series, music video, women's films, LGBTQIA+, POC, First Nations, scifi, supernatural, horror, world cinema. If you have just made a film - we'd love to hear from you. Or if you know a filmmaker - can you recommend us? More info: Carmela
Caterpillarplasty
Fusing elements of Kafka and Kubrick, Caterpillarplasty is a prescient, grotesque sci-fi satire that lifts plastic surgery to another level. A powerful and sardonic take on a social obsession with beauty that’s spiralled out of control.
Length: 5min
Who is being interviewed for this article?
Director: David Barlow-Krelina
About the writer, director and producer:
Born in 1988 in Ottawa, DAVID BARLOW-KRELINA graduated from Concordia University in film animation and computation arts. His first independent film Bless You (2013) was an online hit and screened at the OIAF, The Animation Show of Shows etc. Mixing classical animation and modern CGI to tell experimental narratives, David’s joy of animating is in the ability to create glimpses into new and unusual universes that function by their own unique logic.
Producer at the NFB Animation Studio since January 2014, JELENA POPOVIC forged her skills as production manager and associate producer on conventional, interactive and hybrid documentary and animation films. She directed and co-wrote the documentary The Knights of Orlando (2007) and edited Patrick Doyon’s Oscar-nominated short Sunday, as well as three editions of NFB’s acclaimed Hothouse program. She co-produced with Marcy Page Theodore Ushev’s Blood Manifesto (Prix Créativité, FNC 2015), Sheldon Cohen’s My Heart Attack, (Best Animated Short, Cleveland Int’l Fest) and Munro Ferguson’s Minotaur VR. With Maral Mohammadian, she co-produced Naked Island, a series of public service alerts by some of the top Canadian animators exposing the dark underbelly of modern times. Her latest releases are Hedgehog’s Home, a stop-motion fable about cherishing one’s home directed by Eva Cvijanović and co-produced by Vanja Andrijević (Bonobostudio, Croatia), which won over 30 prizes including Special Mention at Berlinale and Prix Jeune public in Annecy, and Manivald, a gender-ambiguous tale about the boomerang generation by Chintis Lundgren, a coproduction with Estonia and Croatia selected at Sundance, SXSW, Annecy and awarded at OIAF, LIAF, NYSFF, Aspen, Denver, Manchester etc.
NFB:
Facebook: NFB.ca
Twitter: thenfb
Instagram: onf_nfb
David Barlow-Krelina:
Website: http://davidbk.com/
Instagram: @davidbarlowkrelina
Twitter: @bkdavid
Facebook: BKDavid
Where can I watch it next and in the coming month?
The film is playing at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, September 26–30, and the Vancouver International Film Festival, September 27–October 12.