Award Winning Short SAUSAGE Sizzles With Anticipation For ‘British Sausage Week’
With the Academy preparing to announce its shortlist for Animated Short Film, SAUSAGE, one of this years Oscar hopefuls, is today celebrating it’s online release.
With a fine blend of adult and children’s humour, the film explores topical food ethics as it tells of the battle between two artisan market sellers and a slick new fast food vendor, a metaphor for the supermarket giants who threaten the future of local suppliers.
Keen to maximise the reach for this entertaining short, London based director Robert Grieves has chosen to release during ‘British Sausage Week‘ to tap into the consciousness of the wider public. Robert explains why he wants to look beyond the animation and film community:
As well as my aesthetic goals, with SAUSAGE I really wanted to learn how to entertain an audience, any maybe sneak a message in too. To create a toon that excites kids, but is also ram packed with innuendo and satire for the adults. Family audiences at festivals have responded so well, from Rio to Hiroshima , so with any luck this six mins of fun will work online too…
The entirely self funded and animated six minute film, Grieves’s first narrative creation, got off to a hot start earlier this year, picking up top awards in all three of its first UK festival appearances, with Best Short at PROMAX UK, and Best Animation at both The UK Film Festival and Foyle Film Festival. It was Foyle that secured SAUSAGE a coveted place on the Oscars consideration list and proved that independent films can indeed compete at top level.
Robert’s core reason for making this film is one that creatives everywhere can relate to. Grieves explains:
I felt disconnected to my work as it was looking too commercial, so a short film seemed the best way to regain control over both the aesthetic and content. It also gave me the platform to embrace narrative and characters to a depth that paying gigs never did. Looking at those characters in SAUSAGE, what’s now apparent is they go through the same struggle I was, one of disconnecting with their passion and then needing to find it again. Somehow this obvious reflection of life in art never occurred to me at the time.
The warmth and nostalgia of SAUSAGE reflects Roberts love for mid-century design – or ‘Cartoon Modern‘, to use the recently coined phrase.
The combination of its appealing retro design and highly topical issue caught the attention of the British Council and the film is now being shown in schools throughout the UK. Since Aug 2013, SAUSAGE has been enjoyed by critics and family audiences at film festivals in over 50 locations across the globe, including Brazil, Australia, Japan, USA, Russia and Kazakhstan.
Robert took some time out from the festival circuit to answer a few questions…
Sausage does have that blend of both adult and children’s humour, but where did the initial idea for this film come from?
The idea slowly formed over a few days of brainstorming as I wanted to make a short film and needed an original story. A script writer friend was visiting me in London, and I saw the opportunity to use him as a sounding board for some ideas I had. I soon realised I wanted a character driven story that centred around 3 main protagonists, and then I formed the setting of a market square. The plot came from exploring options within that basic set up, and once I had the film’s punchline the details fell around it. Some ideas arrived out of the blue, but the story of SAUSAGE was the result of a focussed search.
The ‘Cartoon Modern’ style is particularly popular in animation at the moment, especially in commercial work. What was your reason for choosing this style and were you influenced by your commercial work?
My interest in 50’s illustration started a while back, about 10 years before the book that defined the term ‘Cartoon Modern’ was published. When I was an Illustration student I discovered the style in original 50’s publications from record sleeves, posters to cook books, and it influenced my work heavily. After Uni I got absorbed into motion design for many years creating work that was driven by commercial trends, but before long I started to introduce my earlier passions for 50’s illustration into my work. Then the book ‘Cartoon Modern’ came out, and everything came together in a rush of inspiration.
I could go on forever about my passion for the ‘Cartoon Modern’ style, but apart from just loving the look, it was truly one of the most powerful revolutions in animation. It signified a brave new way of stripping back the design to its essential ingredients, allowing the audience to absorb the moving image like never before. I’m sure that’s why the 50’s modernist look is so popular today.
To watch some of the films that inspired Sausage you can visit this page of the Sausage blog.
Did you produce the film single handed, or did you have any help during production?
I created the design and animation by myself. And because this was the first time I’d developed a project with character design and animation to this depth, it was a very slow process.
But the area I couldn’t do alone was the story development. Once I came up with the basic story premise, I used the guidance from two experienced script writer friends to get the fundamentals working correctly. Also my knowledge of film grammar wasn’t sufficient to tell the story in the way I wanted as the plan was to avoid dialogue or voiceover, meaning that every shot has to perfectly explaining the story. This lead me to enlist the help of a brilliant storyboard artist I knew as he could apply his years of fine tuning animated series to my film.
I also found a brilliant team to create the sound design and music, as those are areas I have no skills. I did however sit in on all the audio sessions to guide where needed, so worth remembering how much time that involves…
Obviously you didn’t create the film with British Sausage Week in mind! Could you tell us a little about how this coincidence came about and your marketing strategy for the online release?
To be honest, the timing was luck. I’d wanted to release the film online for a while but there was a mix up as to whether I’d still be eligible for the Oscars if the film was online. Once I’d realised the Academy’s rules had changed I looked to release my film asap, and as I knew ‘British Sausage Week’ was coming up that gave me the perfect opportunity…
My strategy for releasing the film will be to let as many people know it is available as possible. As with making the actual film, I’ve sought out the best advice I can find and implementing it with all the energy I have. You only get one shot at these moments, so no half measures!
Has the success of Sausage encouraged you to produce another short film, and if so, what can we expect next from Robert Grieves?
This film took a few years to complete, largely because it was such a learning curve, but also because 7 minutes of character animation is a lot of work for one guy. It’s kind of difficult to justify doing that again without budget, so I’m not looking to immediately launch into another 7 minute film. I do however have a passion to create many more shorter animations. Pieces that are quicker to produce, require less watching time, and that I’ll be more inclined to just throw online.
I’ve also been asked to present some animation concepts to certain TV channels, but while working on SAUSAGE I’ve not had the time to develop new ideas. It sounds crazy not to have jumped on such opportunities, but the only way to get projects like SAUSAGE done is to stay as focused as possible. But now that it’s done, I am free to develop new ideas and go in for those presentations…
For more information and artwork on Sausage, you can visit sausagefilm.net