Once an audience feels that you trust them like you trust a friend, they do become your friends.
I guess for major film industry players a film is a money making devise, so using formulas assures them that their investment will have returns. A lot of big studio films are created by formulas and committees, stripping away any individuality or personality from the work so that they could appeal to most everyone on there planet but to no one in particular.
I guess I'm interested in the behind-the-surface feelings of the human condition, in my own way. I was always struck by the gap - at least in the books I was reading - between what people tell stories about and what I actually feel. I started thinking about a gap between fantasy and reality.
The ability to understand and deliver comedy and tragedy is extremely rare in one composer.
Storyboards are kind of inflexible, once you finish making them you have to stick to them. Since animation takes such a long time you become a slave to a storyboard that was created four years ago while as an artist and storyteller you change, you have new ideas.
There can be no formula in arts. Formulas are for factory mass productions. There are no discoveries in already discovered formulas.
I have decided that I want animation to be taken seriously; that is the goal of my life. I believe that animation is a very important medium to tell stories, not just for kids but for adults.
The book that influenced me most is Sherlock Holmes, which teaches you the way to deal with reality: to deduct. It teaches you to put together the signs. For example, I look at a person and I see their coat, their jacket, their handwriting, their iPhone, and I am able to deduct some details about who they are, what they wear, and what they do. For many years I was fascinated with Sherlock Holmes. The series trained me to look at the world through these sharp, unforgiving eyes.
I animated everything traditionally, on paper. I love how the texture of paper looks (it also matches textures of papier-mâché) and I love the tactile process.
I do love improvisation, I love when I find an object in my studio or kitchen (look, a tea sample's tiny glass jar!) and instantly incorporate it in a project. It makes me feel creative on an every day basis.
With my personal work I prefer not to work from storyboards because being a director, producer and animator in one person I don't have to communicate my idea to anyone else, I can keep the feeling of the story, the story arc and structure in my head.
Even if you have a gift, it's nearly impossible to become a good actor in just a few weeks of training.
By using formula in filmmaking we are admitting that film is not art.
I define art as a work created by a human that has a unique point of view and discovers something that was not there before.
I would never jump under a subway car because that would delay all the people behind me. How inconsiderate!
In my opinion, animation is best when it communicates without words, because it is the perfect medium through which to make shortcuts to meaning. When actors are not talking, just acting out, it looks kind of weird. But in animation, mime is constant, and you accept it.
Like every normal person, I hate my voice. And I am not the only one who hates my voice. The voiceover gets a lot of strong reactions. A lot of people love it, and a few people truly hate it and pronounce the films are unwatchable because of my Latvian accent. But it also has a certain level of theatricality, and everything is important for a manic character.
What inspires me is when I see something and I say, "I can do that too!"
Nobody wants to see the truth. Everybody wants to have the fantasy. When I look back at the books I was reading in my childhood were selling some sort of fantasy as well. Most stories are not going to tell the deep suffering of every day. No book prepared me for the suffering I would experience in life because the word "suffering" does not even describe what the suffering is. No story is going to tell you that, and no words can tell you that.
I try not to think of myself as a woman filmmaker. I don't look for women influences. I have noticed in the past few years that there is a certain ceiling that a woman filmmaker can reach. I don't believe that it's sexism per se, but there are certain expectations in the industry about what films should be, how they should be made, what stories they should tell, and it's a habit, it's a tradition.
When industry people see something different they don't know what to do with it, so filmmakers who make films about women, they kind of fall through the cracks. If a woman filmmaker makes film about war, like [Kathryn] Bigelow, they say "Okay, this is a war film, it has ninety percent men in it, we know what to do with it." But then she still gets attacked for not doing it properly. [...] But even though it bothers me I don't want to dwell on the sex and gender thing.
The fantastical images in my works are descriptive in a different way - a metaphorical way - that removes you from reality. Then, this visually removed point of view allows you to deal with a very heavy subject.
Animation remove you from a visual reality - if it was live action, you wouldn't be able to see through the person's mind. But animation takes a step away. It creates a very stylized landscape, but at the same time it is the form that is best able to address the reality of being alive and being in pain.
When I do only images, people don't connect with the images because the images are too weird to understand. But when I explain the weird images with straight words, then all of a sudden there is a tension between the two that the audience wants to see.
I always knew that I wanted to be a writer. I think I was six or seven when I learned how to read, and I still remember it.
