Producing Animation: Charlotte Bavasso
Since it dropped last month on Netflix, Nexus Studios‘ animated anthology feature The House has fast become on of the streaming platform’s most warmly-embraced original animated offerings, with an enormously positive critical response (the film is rated 97% on Rotten Tomatoes at the time of writing) and an enthusiastic fanbase enchanted by the compelling, often-unsettling universe crafted by some of contemporary stop-motion’s most noteworthy talents. The film alternately tells the story of an ambitious couple beguiled by a mysterious architect, a developer consumed by a real estate investment project and a group of housemates whose living situation is shaken by the arrival of a freespirited stranger, all of which taking place in and around the same house structure, despite taking place in notably different timelines and universes.
Following our recent review and interview with the project’s directors Emma De Swaef, Marc James Roels, Niki Lindroth von Bahr and Paloma Baeza, Skwigly were privileged to learn more about the inception and development of The House from Nexus Studios co-founder, CEO and Producer Charlotte Bavasso. Having been involved with the studio since its beginnings, Charlotte has played a pivotal role across much of its reputed output, including such projects as This Way Up (dir. Smith & Foulkes), Chipotle: Back to the Start (dir. Johnny Kelly), JazzDuck (dir. Tom Jobbins/Mark Perrett), To Build a Fire (dir. FX Goby) and Wednesday with Goddard (dir. Nicolas Ménard, co-director of The House‘s title sequence) to name a few – as well as actively participating in industry mentoring schemes and Women in Animation. Charlotte spoke with Skwigly about the early years of Nexus, the challenging production circumstances of The House and its subsequent reception as well as what the future may hold.
You’ve been part of Nexus since the very beginning, right?
I actually co-founded Nexus with Chris O’Reilly, who is the other named producer on The House. This was a long time ago, probably 20 odd years ago. We shared a love for animation, obviously, but also talent, so what we set out to do at the time was give platforms for talent. Animation in the late 90s in the UK – and elsewhere – was very much confined to either children’s TV or anime, effectively, but there wasn’t really anything that was outside of these remits. So we started in advertising back then, working for brands, because it was an area where high craft and animation that was more for adults. That’s kind of how we started – now at Nexus we still have a really strong division doing that, working with brands, and in addition to that we also have the technology side, so we work on all sorts of different formats from VR and AR, which we really find interesting, that sort of nexus – literally – between technology and craft. So for us it’s never technology for the sake of technology, but that sort of marriage with high-end craft and talent is always super attractive to us. And because we’re talent-led, the directors at Nexus are the people really leading the projects and the inception of the ideas, which means that we work in all sorts of different techniques – so 2D, 3D, stop-motion, live action, mixed media. When we set out to start working in film and episodic, longer-form a few years back, it naturally evolved into being exactly that; on the long-form slate that we have The House, which is completely stop-motion, but we’re also developing a 2D series and we’ve got a film in development that’s CG with 2D textures. We’ve got another one that’s, again, stop-motion, but a series, so it’s just whatever the idea commands for the technique, not vice-versa. So the original content team now is growing, which is brilliant, and as much as we’re also working with different talent and different techniques, we also work with very different formats. You know, The House was an anthology, but now we’ve got also TV series, adult shows, family shows, features and all sorts. The diversity of it all is attractive to us.
When you first started it up, then, did you have much by way of an animation background yourself or an interest in animation, specifically?
I had a huge interest in animation, but I haven’t studied it or anything like that. I studied law and literature, so clearly different things. Chris was also at Oxford doing English Lit so nothing to do with animation, and I guess we started the animation division, working for a company that was doing live-action, and it very quickly grew. As you know, animation requires very different things in-studio that live-action doesn’t, so we branched out and set up our own thing at that point. Chris had lived in Japan for quite a while, so we started working with Japanese animators, like the Ghost in the Shell and Akira crew, all of these amazing people. And so we brought this talent effectively to the animation industry here in the UK, and worked on a few projects with them. Then we started working with Smith & Foulkes who were coming out of the Royal College, and it grew from there.
I remember, back when I was studying, This Way Up being probably the Nexus project that really kind of grabbed my attention. Was that a major project to sort of thrust Nexus forward or were there like other projects before that were kind of crucial to your reputation?
It was a big moment, This Way Up, because we’d done short films, and we’d worked on series, we did about three series of Monkey Dust where we did tonnes of different sketches for it. So we’d done things in the past, but I think This Way Up was really a deliberate way for us – and Smith & Foulkes – to tell a story. We really worked on the narrative, we sort of elevated the look, and of course it just went on to a really crazy festival run and was nominated for an Oscar, so at that point we really started to talk to all the key people in entertainment, I guess. Then right at the beginning, it must have been 2004, we worked with Spielberg on Catch Me If You Can. I don’t know if you remember the titles for that, they were in a Saul Bass kind of style, 2D. So we worked with Kuntzel + Deygas on that. Then we worked with Paramount on Lemony Snicket, we did an animated sequence. So we’ve always done these things. but about four or five years ago we decided that it was time for us to seriously get into film and episodic a bit more systematically. So we’ve got a really good team with development producers, one who’s really focused on the writing side, because we felt that that’s naturally something that we didn’t have enough knowledge of. So yeah, just making sure that one’s doing writing, the other one’s more focused on talent. Then that team started developing a few things including The House, which we started thinking about three years ago, and it just got released so that was quite a quick turnaround.
When it comes to developing an original project, what would you say is the general approach with Nexus?
It’s combination of things. It could be that a creator comes to us and says, “I’ve got this idea, would you be interested in taking it on and developing it with me?” It can be directors that we already work with at Nexus on the branded content side that come with an idea, and then we develop it with them. But we also really actively look for books and graphic novels and things out there ourselves, so that we all originate these ideas – The House was one of them. So there’s no one way that projects come into development with us. We’re open to different ways of working.
So when it comes to getting a project like The House going, and I gather from talking to the directors that you were the main driving force behind that, did you come into it with a sense of what the story concept might be? Or was it more just the idea of it being something long-form and collaborative?
Probably the latter in the sense that we’d worked Nikki and Marc and Emma for quite a long time, so we knew them really well as people. Then Paloma, we’ve been developing a stop-motion series based on her short Poles Apart, so we’ve been working with her for about a year, trying to flesh out what that longer form could be. What I could see was that they not only shared that passion for stop-motion but, more importantly, they had exactly the same way of approaching quite serious, important subjects, all with that sort of caustic humour, that sort of cynical approach sometimes. Literally my starting point was I just wanted to see what would come from a room with these guys. And I shared quite a lot of the literary references that we talked about in the first brainstorm meeting, so that was my hope, obviously, but it went even more organically than I thought it would, it was incredible. So from that brainstorm, which was going in all sorts of directions with all the references that we talked about, we started to narrow it down. There were big areas that they were interested in, we talked about how humans approach the question of spirituality in different ways. So from that base, they went away and thought about a story that they felt could potentially fit all the criteria that we had narrowed it down to, and came back with ideas.
From the very start, even though I wanted them to have complete freedom in telling the stories in their style, what was really important for me was to constantly keep an eye on the anthology, so it wouldn’t be just three shorts. I think that comes across, you and other reviewers have obviously picked up on it, so what was really great for me to see when it got released was the understanding that they’re not narratively linked, they’re completely different styles, yet there is some sort of an arc. It looks like it just happened, but actually every single aspect of the production was really thought through. That was really my role, to try and keep that in mind throughout. So we did that with various means – obviously, the writing to start with, I’d say, it always had to be one writer who also has the House character in his head throughout, even though he’s going to write three completely different stories with three different sets of directors, the collaboration is going to be different between one team to the other, but when we started talking about the project Enda (Walsh) totally got it straight away. Gustavo (Santaolalla), for the music, one composer throughout, which is tricky, right? Because each director had completely different ideas on how the soundscape for the film would work, but somehow we all eventually rallied into around Gustavo, again, was one of the talents that completely got that overarching thing I was trying to achieve. Then it went down to the production team, so the line producer, Angela (Poschet) working across all three, our production manager, we had DOPs that were doing at least two (they couldn’t do all three, because they were running pretty much in parallel) and they were constantly talking to each other, down to the animators and crew. So the hope at the end was that, even though they were each adding ingredients, the way I see it is that each film is incredibly solid and amazing, but the sum of all three for me is even greater, I guess.
The House directors (L-R): Emma De Swaef, Marc James Roels (Chapter 1), Paloma Baeza (Chapter 3) and Niki Lindroth von Bahr (Chapter 2). Image courtesy of Nexus Studios
On that note, then was it always kind of envisioned as an anthology feature? Or was it any point at going to be separate episodes?
I always envisaged it as an anthology feature. I think there was discussions at Netflix in terms of what’s best for the audience, but definitely, from a conceptual point of view, I always saw that because, again, I felt the sum of it would be a really interesting thing to watch.
And then once they came aboard, did Netflix have any creative involvement?
They came on board quite early. We effectively had an outline for each of the stories but hadn’t written the scripts yet, so they gave us the greenlight early, which was fantastic. We were very lucky to work with them – they’re all incredibly creative, but at the same time left us a lot of freedom. They’d review everything, we’d send all the updates, but very rarely did we have anything other than suggestions. We didn’t get huge sets of notes or anything, it was always a conversation and yeah, it was good. They were incredibly collaborative, which was one of the elements that was just made it all such a pleasure to work on as well.
Charlotte Bavasso (image courtesy of Nexus Studios)
Were other platforms or distribution options considered or approached beforehand? Or was it always developed with Netflix in mind?
It wasn’t so much that it was developed with them in mind, but they were definitely the first people we showed it to, and they took it straight away. So we never showed it to anyone else. And I think they were perfect. It just felt right. I think at the time they were really pioneering new adult animation as far as we saw it, so it made sense.
Is there potentially scope for a theatrical run? It’s probably been complicated with the general world situation but every once in a while with a Netflix project they will pop it in cinemas for a bit…
I doubt that’s the intention, usually they might do a two-week window in theatres, and then it goes on Netflix, but at the moment I don’t think that’s on the cards. But it will be entered in awards, obviously, so that would be an opportunity to see it on the big screen.
I wonder, as far as you being at the helm of a project like this, how does your role break down? Does what’s required of you change quite a bit as the production goes on?
It was a perfect team from a production point of view. So I was kind of a creative producer, I was also the link with Netflix, on that front. And then Angela was doing all the line production, so really organising the shoot and finding the right team. She’s worked on incredible stop-motion projects before, so she had a lot more knowledge of long-form stop-motion than I do. It was a really good tandem, in that respect. The other person to mention as far as making sure there was that glue between the three chapters is our production designer, Alexandra Walker. She built a house that has exactly the same proportions between the three stories; the decoration is completely different, there’s no objects that are the same, but you’ve got to be in that house and know you’ve been there before. And that’s purely created by the volumes and the staircase that was there, the cupola, all these elements to get a sense that, even though you can’t quite pinpoint why that is, you’ve been in that house before. She was a really big element in making sure that was also tying those stories together. So my role was creative from start to finish all the creative calls with the directors, Netflix, all the heads of departments, I was heavily involved with the music, writing, all of that. It’s been fantastic.
When it comes to the non-animation creative talent, like Enda and Gustavo, were you the one to source them out?
Yes, I’m quite keen on that. Gustavo has worked with animation, Enda hadn’t but it never felt like it was an issue. Whenever we find a writer who’s actually writing gags in, it never quite works for the directors, so we were keen to have a real-life story that, reading the script, could have been shot in live-action. But giving that animated twist is really what it was all about. That was part of the initial brief to the writer, we say “Look, forget that it’s animated. Write a story that could be shot in live-action”. And then for us it’s that weird contrast between these stories, and how they are actually being told, by tiny little fluffy puppets. I think that’s really part of the caustic humour that comes out of the film.
I think of all the projects that we’ve put a focus on in recent memory, this one has definitely received the most social media enthusiasm in response to stuff that we’ve been putting up. I feel like that’s a good sign that people are really into these more conceptually adventurous approaches to adult animation.
I couldn’t agree more. I was so surprised. I thought this project would be a lot more Marmite than it is, some people would hate it, some people would love it. And we are generally very surprised – and Netflix are over the moon, obviously. We’ve got fan art with the hashtag #TheHouse, we’ve got people drawing these characters, doing new edits of the film, cutting trailers, cutting visuals over the lyrics of Jarvis Cocker and Gustavo’s end credits song. It’s fantastic, I love it – and 96% [now 97%] fresh certified on Rotten Tomatoes is quite incredible. I think it’s going to do a lot of good for the animation industry. For me, that’s the biggest success with this, obviously what we’ve managed to achieve, but also to have given directors who, although within the animation industry have had incredible results and prizes, to give them access to such a broader audience that Netflix offers is, for me, incredible. And also to give them a bit more production values and for them to be able to work with a team, some of the best in the industry in that respect. It’s just so good. That’s why I do my job.
Should it come along, would you be receptive to the idea of doing projects in a similar vein?
Oh, definitely. We’re already developing some that are. It’s got all the ingredients that we love here at Nexus, the top talent across the board, the directors, the music, the cast that we managed to get was incredible. That level of craft is just incredible, and whether it’s stop motion, or CG or 2D, it’s exactly the same thing that we’re after.
So looking back through your filmography, are there any projects that were especially like notable, as far as presenting unique challenges or strengthening your own processes? Or maybe just being particularly gratifying to work on (I would assume that The House would probably be among them)?
I guess you learn something different on each project. Also, because we’re involved in so many different formats, I loved working with Google Spotlight Stories – we did this homage film on Méliès, that was incredible, working with new technology but trying to put craft with technology, as I said before, all the questions from a story point of how you tell a story in VR is naturally entirely different than you how you tell a narrative, continuous story; how do you actually make sure that people look in the right direction to not miss a critical story point? So I think each of the projects we work on have very different, key aspects that I love. We’ve just finished a concert film for Disney Plus, a Billie Eilish concept where she was performing her new album effectively, but couldn’t do it on stage. So we created this animated character that looks like her and she’s interacting with it – that’s, again, completely different, but it’s so fascinating at the same time. So yeah, as long as the ingredients I mentioned earlier are there, that’s really what motivates us.
I saw that you’re involved in organisations like Women in Animation and various mentoring schemes, and I’d be interested in some of the more important and appealing aspects of that work to you.
We’re doing a lot of efforts on that front. I mean, obviously, I’m a woman and I’ve got children, and I’ve gone through that whole conundrum of how to reconcile everything. I’ve always been really present for young women or students who are coming to me and saying “How do you do it? Because I’m struggling”. So I’ve always mentored in that respect, and Women in Animation has been absolutely incredible, they’ve got a really strong mentoring programme. And one of the silver linings to COVID is that they’ve made it international as well. So a couple of years ago I mentored ten women coming from all places, and it really makes a difference when you’re younger and starting out in a profession. And the whole of Nexus is teaming up with schools; the school diversity debate is really interesting, because our industry is not diverse enough. We all know that. We’re trying to think about ways of making sure that it evolves, and I think it has, quite rapidly, in the last couple of years, but it’s never enough. I think it’s ultimately a question of access, so we want to work really early with schools and young people and mentor them, show them that these professions are perfectly adequate, that we have role models within the companies that they can aspire to be. Sadiq Khan came to the studio because Film London have just won a funding scheme with the mayor, it’s a really interesting thing they’re doing that’s all about training people back into into work, showing people that actually their skills are transferable to the animation or film industry in general. But also making sure that we’re giving access early to young learners, internships, mentorships, all of these things. So we’re doing a lot along those lines. Every person working at Nexus is given a number of hours that they dedicate to diversity and equality and inclusion. And we’ve identified a number of partners – Women in Animation, the London Screen Academy, the Hackney 100 scheme – that they can choose who they prefer getting involved with. We’re just trying to make this a continued effort, because a little burst last summer that most people have done is just not going to make a difference. So yeah, I’m super passionate about this other stuff, and I love mentoring.
The House is out now on Netflix. For more on the work of Nexus Studios visit nexusstudios.com