Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2020 – The Orchid and the Bee (VR)
Nature is wondrous and clever. As Darwin taught us, those who improvise most effectively prevail. There are species who under threat revert to earlier forms, others who cultivate parasitic relationships with neighbouring beings, while the most inventive ones transform their bodies to mimic and seduce unsuspecting companions. The Orchid and the Bee is an expressionistic VR ode to life’s struggle for existence, explored through a chain of genetic love affairs.
Interview with Director/Animator Frances Adair McKenzie
Watch The Orchid and the Bee (VR) here:
Congratulations! Why did you make your film?
The Orchid and the Bee is a virtual reality experience about nature’s potential for transformation and the collaborative “love affairs” that exist between different species. There are species who under threat revert to earlier forms, others who cultivate parasitic relationships with neighbouring beings, and some who transform their bodies to mimic and seduce unsuspecting companions.
With this project I wanted to depict environmental concerns through an optimistic lens, emphasizing relationships, collaboration, disintegration and growth as a continual natural process.
It is also very much inspired by Darwin’s curiosity. I happened to be reading On the Origin of Species during the development phase of this project and was stirred by his writing’s inquisitiveness and its palpable curiosity. I wanted in turn to create a world that invoked this rich feeling of discovery and slowly unveiled its mysteries to the viewer.
Imagine I’m a member of the audience. Why should I watch this film?
I think you should watch this film because it is an unexpected and alien experience. The materiality of the film is very seductive; it has the warmth of real pigments and practical lighting, allowing the audience to connect with the narrative in an intuitive and physical way. I think it uses VR to its utmost potential, placing the viewer at the centre of a spiralling stereoscopic stop-motion narrative that grows and unfurls as it passes in front of their eyes. It’s magical.
For any of your readers who may not be familiar with stereoscopy, it is a means of creating three-dimensionality through the capture of an offset image for each of the viewer’s eyes. This recreates the way we see objects as 3D in real life. We had a set-up for The Orchid and the Bee that captured each stop-motion frame twice via a camera mounted on an automated slider. This allows you to bring real material and real light into a VR world.
How do personal and universal themes work in your film?
The piece deals with the universal theme of (WO)man’s relationship to nature and integrates ideas surrounding evolution, transformation, companionship and love. My personal perspective is present as the openness with which all of these terms are defined. The real-life story of the orchid and the bee is what I would define as a love story; two species that have co-evolved for thousands of years, influencing each other’s genetic makeup so that the orchid flower becomes a mirror of the bee. Its inner lip evolves to resemble a bee’s abdomen and it wafts pheromones to attract the male bee. I find this incredibly romantic.
How have the script and film evolved over the course of their development?
One of the things about working with the National Film Board is that you often have a long period of pre-production. I spent approximately two years irking out the ideas and visual concepts of the piece. Initially, it was going to be a traditional narrative film about life in a factory farm, but as my engagement with the piece evolved, I felt this direction was too dark and oppressive. To figure out where this initial concept could go, I began researching bioethics, genetics and evolution. The project then shifted towards relationships and nature’s tactics for survival, allowing the narrative to become more fluid and intriguing.
It was only after doing a series of animation tests that my producer, Jelena Popović, had the eureka idea of developing the project for virtual reality. We had been talking a lot about genetics and I had been doing short tests with practical lighting and a rotating plexiglass set. Suddenly we realized that the project would be so much more meaningful if the viewer was actually seated at the centre, with a strand of coiling narratives—referencing a chain of DNA—wrapping around them. Of course, this added a tremendous amount of technical development to the project, but for me, this process of experimenting with forms is what’s most exciting.
What type of feedback have you received so far?
The feedback has been amazing, but the best reactions I get are from kids. A colleague sent me a video of his kids watching the piece and they kept taking the headset off and gawking at him in disbelief.
Has the feedback surprised or challenged your point of view?
I think people are often looking for a traditional narrative, and personally, I am more interested in experimental approaches and narrativity that gives space for the viewer to wonder at its meaning and to perhaps be haunted or challenged. I believe in a mythic sort of narrativity. Therefore my point of view is often challenged but usually unchanged.
What are you looking to achieve by having your film more visible on www.wearemovingstories.com?
The project is at the very beginning of its festival career. Annecy will be its world premiere. Right now, I hope as many people as possible can see it. I want the premiere in Annecy to be a lever for other festival selections.
Who do you need to come on board (producers, sales agents, buyers, distributors, film festival directors, journalists) to amplify this film’s message?
The NFB team takes care of the distribution of my projects and the festival submissions. A whole team is behind me for the distribution of the project.
What type of impact and/or reception would you like this film to have?
Obviously, I want The Orchid and the Bee to bring joy to whoever watches it, and I would like it to be received well and recognized as an eloquent piece of animation that explores and pushes the potential of immersive technology.
I also have a longer-term vision of getting this piece into the school system. We have been working with the Education department at the National Film Board to develop an accompanying course pack. I believe The Orchid and the Bee wonderfully merges art, science and technology and will be an asset to teachers, helping them to address the space where subjects like art and biology can mix. It will be an exciting classroom-conversation starter and the science that it references is fascinating. I would love for it to be that first piece that a teenager sees that they can’t place, and that challenges them to question media and narrative and perhaps propels them to make their own art. I think it has that kind of potential.
What’s a key question that will help spark a debate or begin a conversation about this film?
What is sexual mimicry?
Would you like to add anything else?
No. Thank you for the interview.
What other projects are the key creatives developing or working on now?
I am an artist as well as an animator, so now that this project is done, I am mainly in my studio working on sculpture and figuring out a new animation project using stereoscopy and a multi-plane glass set to layer collaged vintage film loops. Visit my website, francesadair.com, if you’d like to see more of my work.
Interview: June 2020
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
The Orchid and the Bee (VR)
Nature is wondrous and clever. As Darwin taught us, those who improvise most effectively prevail. There are species who under threat revert to earlier forms, others who cultivate parasitic relationships with neighbouring beings, while the most inventive ones transform their bodies to mimic and seduce unsuspecting companions. The Orchid and the Bee is an expressionistic VR ode to life’s struggle for existence, explored through a chain of genetic love affairs.
Length: 5:00
Director: Frances Adair Mckenzie
Producer: Jelena Popović
Writer: Frances Adair Mckenzie
About the writer, director and producer:
FRANCES ADAIR MCKENZIE is an interdisciplinary artist who has exhibited in Canada and Europe. Her work negotiates speculative investigations into concepts of materiality, staging and form, always in deference to process as the hands-on manipulation of real materials and objects, most often through the interface of digital technology and sculpture. Frances’s augmented reality book, Glossed Over & Tucked Up, was published in 2016 by Montreal’s Anteism Press. Her association with the Nation Film Board of Canada began with the 10th edition of Hothouse, when she created the surrealist animated short A Little Craving. Her most recent NFB project, The Orchid and the Bee, is a VR stop-motion animation that speaks to the interconnectedness of all living things. Frances lives and works in Montreal.
Producer at the NFB Animation Studio since January 2014, JELENA POPOVIĆ 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
Key cast: Frances Adair McKenzie, Brandon Blommaert, Fred Casia, Elise Simard (Design + Animation) Eloi Champagne (Technical Director) Dany Boivin, Frances Adair Mckenzie (Set Fabrication)
Looking for: journalists, film festival directors
Facebook: NFB
Twitter: @thenfb
Instagram: @onf_nfb
Website: mediaspace.nfb.ca/epk/the-orchid-and-the-bee
Other: Vimeo
Made in association with: Produced by the National Film Board of Canada © 2020
Where can I watch it next and in the coming month? The Online 2020 Annecy International Animation Film Festival / France - June 15 to 30