What is the film about?

Two wrestlers approach each other to battle for male dominance, but soon the fight descends into something even more animalistic as hypermasculinity clashes with desire.

What influenced it?

As the film is very much about exploring ideas of masculinity and questioning human and animal behaviours, my inspiration was more based in conceptual theories than in visuals from watching other films. I was influenced by the writings of Judith Butler whose ideas of societal gender roles and definitions of male and female inspired me to look at toxic masculinity. So, quite a bit of the thought behind the film came from looking at macho culture and, in a broader sense, these displays of heterosexual masculinity and the desire to be the alpha, which I think have quite animalistic roots.

The title is even an allusion to male acts of dominance, which can be seen in the animal kingdom, as well as in humans. On the surface, you have the males competing amongst each other to try and attract a female mate, while beneath that the combat is one of the few times when they are allowed to be raw and emotionally intimate with another male. Moreover, within the confines of the fight, the males can encounter appetites and affections that heteronormative patriarchy would not normally encourage.

Therefore, the film is asking the questions of what happens when the fight is over, and what happens to the passions and intimacies that were experienced during the conflict?

When planning for the short, I researched and went through lots of footage taken from different types of wrestling matches for the fight scenes, and gay adult films for the sexually explicit scenes in the film.
And one of the things I found quite interesting was that neither video footage of wrestling nor pornography were particularly great references for an animated film as when looked at alone, they’re both very specific to their designated viewerships.

Mainstream pornography, for instance, is very literal in the way the shots are laid out because you want the viewer to be able to see exactly what’s happening with the intention to arouse and give sexual pleasure. Whereas with wrestling footage, the cameras are a bit further back from the action and when you do have moments where the viewer is closer, there is still a slight distance from the intimacy – the audience is there to watch someone win the fight and be entertained by the act of competition.

What was interesting was looking at footage from these two different areas and seeing where the difference and similarities are – for example, quite often some of the wrestling moves could also be seen to be positions in sex when taken out of context. So, it was taking these references, mixing them up, moving the camera around, and changing the compositions to push the limits between the two.

A little background information...

The film, supported by Channel 4’s Random Acts, came about as I wanted to create a film that was a commentary on hypermasculinity and aggression. Exploring how what begins as a display of strength and manliness can blur into sexualisation and homoeroticism – sometimes the very thing it is trying not to be. The film aimed to look at the fragility of the male ego and how the macho culture can sometimes come across as quite homophobic and animalistic, but from an outsider’s perspective, it can be seen as homoerotic.

I also want to see how a viewer can change the power dynamic of a fight and, to a lesser extent, how their perception can be manipulated. The film itself doesn’t actually contain an audience, which is often the case in organised wrestling, but instead, the viewer of the film takes this role and with it, control of the narrative. And I think this can become quite interesting as although the fight can be seen as a struggle for power between two wrestlers, the power instead belongs to the audience as their perception changes the very nature of the fight and the true emotions and relationship between the men.

I also really wanted to make a film that could push the boundaries between what can be seen as art and what can be seen as pornography, as well as how animation has the liberty to push film and art in a way that may not have been acceptable in live-action. One of the advantages of animation is that by nature it has been created: it’s not as literal as live-action and that’s why it can become very exciting when you do make something that is more explicit. You can create emotions within an audience that they wouldn’t normally expect from a short film but still make it visually interesting and stimulating and still, hopefully, quite beautiful.

How was the film made?

In terms of creating the short, I went down a very traditional 2D route where the animation was painted on physical paper and then scanned and composited digitally.

The backgrounds were painted separately from the characters with the factory interior painted with clean lines and white space. The white space reflects the cold and harsh masculine setting, while the yellow ochre colour hints at some emotional warmth and desire from the characters.

The wrestlers were painted on punched paper using gouache and animated using a lightbox. In the initial shots, where the movements are slower and the linework more refined, I first keyed the action in pencil and then went back over again using the paint. Yet, as the film progresses and the fight becomes quicker, I start to animate straight-ahead using just the paints and a thicker brush. This roughness allows the movements to become looser and to show the escalating energy of the fight – emphasising the power and the movement as the film goes on.

It was also important that the film would break down the boundaries of the hyper-masculine (the fight) and the erotic (the sex), so by having crude line work it allows the visuals to be obscure enough that the audience would not immediately discern between these two ideas. This ambiguity continuing until eventually, the camera pulls back and, hopefully, shocks the audience with the sexual imagery.

As the fight advanced I also wanted the shot to be a lot closer and tighter to show this growing intimacy and emotion and pull the audience into the film.

The sound was likewise a very important part of the short as it needed to carry the pacing while also adding to the increasing tension. Working with the composer, we were inspired a lot by percussion and rhythm especially that of taiko drums, etc. In my research, I found wrestling across different cultures tends to have some form of rhythm to carry the fight, be it with drum beats, chanting, or clapping, and so it was important to bring this into the film.

We also added some digital distortion to try and give it this otherworldly plane of existence where the drum beats grounded the fight to the physical world and the drone sounds and digital effects lifted it into the emotional and surreal setting. This came back to the idea of two very different worlds interacting and clashing with each other.