What is the film about?

BusLine35A is an animated short film created by young director and animator Elena Felici, in collaboration with a team of students from the Animation Workshop of the VIA University College (Denmark). It was released to the public on November 25th, in occasion of the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. The short, which mixes 3D stop-motion animations with 2D animated sketches, recounts an episode of sexual harassment, yet not from the point of view of the victim or the harasser, but from that of the passive spectators, in this case the other passengers of a bus.

What influenced it?

The short film is heavily inspired by the story-telling approach of independent directors Roy Anderson and Don Hertzfeldt, as well as Wes Anderson.

It purposely uses a covertly ironic narrative and visual style, permeated by deliberate directness and comedy. The childish and simplistic tone of the narrator represents how instead of intervening in a situation of harassment, we tend to fabricate the most absurd and intricate mental excuses. The irony aims to create a dualism in the public: it brings them to laugh even though they are witnessing the reconstruction of a tragic situation, in the same way in which the protagonists of said situation try to lighten the severity of the harassment in order not to feel bound to act.

A little background information...

While I was doing research to enrich the story of BusLine35A, I circled back again and again to the idea that we aren’t as great as we think we are. I found myself focusing on themes revolving around the human condition: egoism and individualism. I personally experienced both perspectives shown in the short, that of the victim and of the spectator. The latter one bothered me the most, I felt as if I wasn´t in control of my own actions, and as such I decided to make the “bystander effect” the core concept of the short, hoping to encourage the viewers to reflect in a more introspective way on the complexities of episodes of sexual harassment.

The idea of implementing a satirical undertone comes from the same train of thoughts that led us approaching the story from three distinct points of view and to include a narrating voice. Our objective was to not only highlight the practical problem lying around the bystander effect, but also treat it from the psychological angle.

We focused on depicting the detachment and embarrassment felt by the passive spectators: there is a duality between the violence happening in the background and the comical inefficacy of those who witness it. The tone we chose aims to create that same contrast within the viewer, who doesn’t know whether to laugh or despair. In a similar way, the Narrator is the voice in our head making up justifications in order to avoid intervening.

How was the film made?

Technically, for the most part the short was made using the 3D Software Autodesk Maya and rendered in Arnold, while we used Substance Painter and scanned crayon textures for the texturing/shading.

The traditionally animated inserts were drawn in TV Paint.

Finally, we edited the short in Adobe Premiere and graded it in DaVinci Resolve.

Talking about style, in our character designs lies the contrast of our plot. The protagonists are ordinary people and are meant to amuse the viewer as well as bonding and interconnecting with them. We wanted to create a link between the bystanders in our short and the audience, making it realise it could be them sitting on the bus and acting pathetic, impotent and apathetic towards the backseat scenario.

Lastly, notice how the characters are shaped by the excuse they use to justify their inertia. For example, the old woman is round, rough and spotted exactly like her meatballs, on which she forcibly directs her thoughts to avoid confrontation.

The passengers of the bus are defined, geometrically and in thought, by the lie they tell themselves in order to not feel obliged to intervene in the horrific scene taking place behind them.