Short Film ‘Astra’ Wraps Up Shooting in Wroclaw, Poland
Skwigly
75 days, a team of 15 people and challenging work on three plans at the same time. All this to create a dozen or so minutes long animation. The shooting of the film “Astra” by Michał Łubiński, created in the stop-motion animation technique, has finished at the Audiovisual Technology Center in Wroclaw. Now it’s time for editing and a tedious process of sound and image post production. The premiere is planned for mid 2022.
The new film by Michał Łubiński is a universal story about sisterly love, great adventures and the inevitable difficulties of life. The main character of the animation is 6-year-old Astra, who tries to stop her sister from taking part in a dangerous mission. However, when Anna needs help, the little girl will go into space on her own without hesitation. The film is made in the stop motion technique. The work on the sets in Wrocław has just finished.
Film set usually means large constructions or virtual scenography, but this time everything was in miniature – says Robert Banasiak, Director of the CeTA Audiovisual Technology Center in Wrocław, producer of the film. – We met Michał Łubiński and his project “Astra” in 2018 in Łódź during the ANIMARKT Stop Motion Forum. We were happy to decide to make this film in our studio because we also want to be present in the area of the production of animated films – he adds.
Before the puppets appeared on the sets, many weeks of preparation were needed.
First, I made drawings of figures, then 3D models, based on which elements of the head and some body fragments were printed in 3D technology. – says Michał Łubiński.
Creating puppets is, above all, precise manual work, in which talent and experience count. Animation puppets for the film “Astra” were created by a team from Łódź: Piotr Knabe, Dariusz Kalita, Agnieszka Mikołajczyk and Agnieszka Smolarek, Beata Jarmuż-Socha and Anna Szcześniak.
Łódź is famous in the world for its excellent specialists who create animation puppets – says Katarzyna Gromadzka from MOMAKIN, the film’s executive producer. – The “Astra” project gathered six recognized authors with great experience in the production of Wes Anderson’s “Isle of Dogs” and Suzie Templeton’s Oscar-winning “Peter and the Wolf” – she explains.
The story of the film takes place on many sets, starting from Astra’s tiny room, through corridors of the science center, to a ship in outer space. The range of the scale is large, which was quite a challenge for the set and props team led by Jacek Spychalski from the CeTA Animation Studio and for puppetmakers.
Astra’s hands, which are about 1 cm long, turned out to be a difficulty when working on a scale of 1: 6. We animated her tiny fingers, built on thin wires, so we had as many as seven pairs of interchangeable hands for the character – explains Michał Łubiński, director of “Astra” – We also used a very attractive and original technique of ink in water to reproduce the cosmos. To obtain the effect of slow motion, the movement of mixing fluids was recorded with higher frames per second rate. I couldn’t do it all at home, animating on my own. The possibility of using CeTA facilities guaranteed us the world standard of production and working conditions – emphasizes the director.
Michał Łubiński is an architect whose passion is animation, which he devotes to every free moment. His first film, “Bed Side Story”, was noticed at film festivals such as the Warsaw International Film Festival and the Zubroffka Short Film Festival and won two awards.
“Astra” was co-financed by the Polish Film Institute and the Ministry of Culture, National Heritage and Sport. In recent weeks, the institutions supporting the project have been joined by EC1 Łódź – City of Culture as part of the Łódź Film Fund.