Only a Child – Over 20 Animators Collaborate to Celebrate Environmental Youth Movement
Simone Giampaolo is no stranger to directing animation – since his award wining graduation film Espero? in 2013, he has carved out a successful career as a director and animator working at Blue Zoo, Aardman and Jellyfish Pictures, producing commercial work for clients including Cartoon Network, Disney, and LEGO, to name a few. However, last year saw him start production on what he considered his dream project; he even went so far as to describe it as “hands down, the most meaningful piece of animation I’ve ever had the privilege to work on”.
With the support of the Swiss TV and government, and after 12 months of hard work, Giampaolo has finally completed his latest short film – Only a Child – an omnibus film celebrating the environmental youth movement 30 years in the making.
Only a Child is a 6-minute animated documentary based on the original speech given by the young Canadian activist Severn-Cullis Suzuki at the United Nations Summit in 1992, who was only 12 years old at the time, leading some to consider her as the predecessor of Greta Thunberg.
Sequence by EISPRUNG Studio
With Severn’s permission and blessing, the film was produced by AMKA Films Productions as a collaboration of over 20 Swiss animation directors – all working remotely from their home studios – and supervised by Giampaolo from London. Each director used their own style and technique to bring a section of Severn’s speech to life; including sand animation, paint on glass, stop-motion, 2D and CGI.
Sequence by Justine Klaiber
You state that this was a dream project of yours. How did it come about? Were you proactive in making the project happen, or were you approached to direct from a production company?
Since my university years, I’ve always tried to inject positive moral messages into my films, in particular about nature and protecting the environment (one of my idols and favourite artists ever existed is in fact Frédéric Back, director of the powerful ‘The Man who Planted Trees’). I stumbled onto Severn Cullis-Suzuki’s speech around 2 years ago (before the climate strike movement became a global phenomenon) and I immediately felt the urge to adapt it into an animated film. I got in touch with Severn herself, who sounded very interested about this potential collaboration, and gave me the official permission and blessing to use her speech.
Following that, I contacted Amka Films, a production company based in the Italian side of Switzerland (where I’m from), and I pitched them the concept. Amka’s producers, Gabriella de Gara Bucciarelli and Tiziana Soundani (who passed away last month), also sounded enthusiastic about the proposal, and agreed to help me apply for fundings in order to make this project come true.
This isn’t a dream project only because of the theme and content though: since I started making animation, I always dreamed of crafting an ambitious film which could combine every animation technique in existence (stop-frame, CG, 2D, sand, paint on glass…), and I’m proud to say I managed to achieve this goal with Only a Child.
Sequence by Patrick Graf
Working with over 20 different directors is quite a tall order. How did you manage everyone’s time and roles; and can you tell us a little about the logistics and pipeline?
This was, hands down, the most challenging project I’ve ever supervised in my career (considering also it was all done in my spare time)!
I was lucky enough to find a group of artists and directors I could trust and who truly believed in this omnibus project and poured their hearts and souls into their animated segments. However, it is tricky indeed to handle multiple creative directors’ minds (with different visions and who work using different media), I’m not going to lie. With each director involved, I had to find a fine balance between allowing enough creative freedom and welcoming individual inputs and ideas, while maintaining enough control over the final product. In other words, I wanted everyone on board to contribute creatively to the film while respecting and serving the bigger picture. As the Swiss government and TV supported the project, most of the directors who took part in it are actually from Switzerland. When assembling OAC’s ‘dream team’, I tried my best to give enough weight and importance to each animation technique: artists were selected for their skills of course, but also for their unique visual style and the techniques they could make use of. No need to say that finding a digital 2D animator is way simpler than a sand or paint-on-glass artist!
Managing everyone’s time and setting individual calls for feedback sessions (alongside my daily job) was the most difficult part of the project. For many months I found myself having meetings for OAC at each and every lunch break, not mentioning during evenings/weekends! Luckily for me, I was assisted by a great line producer during this process, Ursula Ulmi. On the contrary, the pipeline was arguably the easiest part of the project, as (almost) every artist was in charge of designing, animating and completing her/his own animated segment without sharing files with other departments (there were a few exceptions though, in which multiple artists had to collaborate and work together in order to achieve a certain transition and/or a peculiar visual style).
Sequence by César Díaz Meléndez
Do you have any other plans to work with Severn-Cullis Suzuki again? Perhaps for a follow up film or a related theme?
When we met Severn in person last year, we spoke about other possibilities to work together again. Severn lives on the Pacific Westcoast archipelago of Haida Gwaii (home of the Haida Nation) where she studies the critically endangered dialects of the Haida language with elders. I believe it would be a true honour to breathe animated life into folklore legends/mythologies which were passed through generations via ancient idioms. However, nothing is set yet, let’s see what the future holds!
Sequence by Roman Kaelin
The full list of artists involved in the film were: Monica Santana & Julian Amacker (Walkingframes), Marjolaine Perreten, Andrea Schneider, Emilien Davaud, Barbara Brunner (Brunner & Meyer), Nino Christen, Patrick Graf, Imgart Walthert, Oswald Iten, Philip Hofmänner, Yves Gutjahr & Claudia Röthlin (Tiny Giant), Michaela Müller, Justine Kleiber (Team Tumult), Nina Christen (Team Tumult), Cyril Gfeller, Roman Kaelin, César Díaz Meléndez, Eisprung Studio, and Stéphan Nappez.
You can stay up to date with Only a Child film via social media, on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter