Senior Moments
The directors of the prize-winning short Peel discuss their process and inspirations.
The directors of the prize-winning short Peel discuss their process and inspirations.
Peel (Écorce), the hand-drawn short by Swiss-German illustrator and director Samuel Patthey and co-director Silvain Monney takes an unflinching look at the daily lives of the elderly residents of a retirement home. The short won the top prize at the Annecy Festival earlier this year. Patthey and Monney were kind enough to answer a few of our questions recently:
Can you tell us a little bit about the short’s inspirations and origins?
Samuel Patthey: My two grandmothers were both taken to retirement homes. It was when I was regularly visiting one of them that I discovered this microcosmos. Instantly, I felt I wanted to depict its inhabitants with their wrinkles, their distorted hands and their shaky, yet graceful gestures. The soft time perception, the calm and precise soundscape fascinated me. So, I asked Silvain to join me for this project, because we both love observing and trying to capture through drawing this sensitivity.
How were you able to capture all the details?
Patthey: We worked with traditional animation because we wanted to stay as close as possible to our initial observation drawings. It was essential for us to keep the authenticity of the drawings, their documentary aspect and obviously the feeling we had. Therefore, the technique used at the residency for the initial drawing had to be animated into a scene with the same tools. Another aspect is that we both love drawing on paper and experimenting with some techniques. For us, it was obvious that this movie had to be made on paper. Silvain Monney: For about a year, we went there every week, once or twice, to fill our sketchbooks with drawings and some notes. We tried to remain quite discreet, to be like a hidden camera. The idea was not to talk about the life before or residents stories: we really wanted to focus on the place and how it works. Of course, we made some contacts with some of the residents! After a few months, we began to scan everything, put the drawings on a wall and built the film in a very lively and intuitive way together, discussing and testing a lot. We start working on an animatic with our sketches and drew some new scenes for feelings we wanted to express. Samuel spent a lot of time on the sound as well; it is a very important part of our movie and it really helped us to go from drawings to a film.
Can you talk about the animation process and your visual style?
Patthey: The visual style was induced by the selected observational drawing for the movie. Silvain animated his drawings to a scene and I did the same for my selected drawings. Valentine Moser worked on some of my scenes because I had too many scenes to animate by myself. She was a great help with an incredible sensitivity for this project.
Monney: To produce the animation, we hired Valentine Moser for a few months. So we were three people animating everything on paper. At the end, I made most of the compositing and post production, as Samuel continued animating (he had more scenes than me). The rest of the film we did all by ourselves, except for the sound. We worked together with Florian Pittet, who also works in Fribourg. The sounds were recorded at the same place where we did the drawings. The visual style is directly related to the sketchbooks and the techniques we used in it.
Now that you’ve won the top prize at Annecy, what are you working on next?
Patthey: I am currently developing my next short animated movie. It’s an autobiographical fiction with the working title Sans Voix. It depicts the daily life of a young raver who has to deal with a big change in his life.
Monney: For me, I wanted to take a break from earning a living with drawing. It took [a lot of my] energy and I wanted something else. So at the moment I am an apprentice gardener. I still love to draw but I wanted to do something closer to nature and less in my head. But, of course, I am still drawing and I have some comics and videogame projects.
What do you hope audiences will take away from Peel?
Patthey: My biggest wish is that our short can induce a reflection about our society and how we get old and die. Dying is the most certain thing in life. Shouldn’t we think and talk more about death and therefore about life? Monney: We didn’t want to be political or too critical of retirement homes. However, I would be really happy if our film can open the discussion about the place of the elderly in society. And, of course, I am really happy when the audience is moved by what they see. ◆
For more info, visit dokmobile.ch/en/ecorce.