Shroomstudio, United Nations and Sir David Attenborough
Christos Hatjoullis is founder and director of Shroomstudio alongside his brother Alexander. Shroom is an independent creative industry based in London Fields with a range of digital production facilities. Established in 2001, Shroomstudio celebrated it’s 10th Anniversary on the 21st February 2011. It comprises of a specialist team of in-house and freelance project animators, with clients including the BBC, Channel 4, the United Nations and WWF.
Recently Christos and his team produced a short animated film, ‘Branching out for a Green Economy’ for the UN to launch the ‘Year of the Forest 2011’ campaign. Skwigly speaks to Christos about the film and what’s in the pipeline now…
What is the ‘Branching out for a Green Economy’ all about?
The film explores the idea of forests as living service providers with an enormous value inherent in the goods and services they provide. From fresh water which is often consumed in large cities, to food, pharmaceutical products, timber for building and paper, the list is endless. 60 million indigenous peoples depend on living forests for their livelihoods. A further 600 million rely on the services living forests provide.
How did you get involved in the ‘Branching Out for a Green Economy’?
We were first introduced to Natasha Serlin of the Bespoke Film Company through a mutual friend. Natasha was working on a film for Google and was keen to include animation. Since then we have worked with Natasha on a couple of animated projects for the UN and R.E.D.D programme. The UN wanted to commission a fully animated film to launch ‘Year of the Forest 2011’ campaign. They realised that animation has the power to cross cultures in a more fluid way than traditional film, as the project is destined to be translated into 25 languages.
A series of public service announcements, which are also animated, will form a second tier to the project and are aimed at drawing viewers towards the main film. They will be in a multitude of languages, featuring rotoscoped and video announcements by super model Gisele Bundchen, filmstar, Don Cheadle and actress Li Bing Bing
What are the aims of the project?
The film was first shown in Nairobi, Kenya at a specially convened conference to over 150 environment ministers. The wider project aims at encouraging environmental ministers and other decision makers to maximise protection and therefore ensure the ongoing services forests provide. Forests are under threat from plantation farming and timber logging all over the world. On top of that, biodiversity is being obliterated, which can decimate services. Forests are huge living stores of carbon and in this regard, they are one of the simplest and most effective ways of mitigating climate change through CO2 emissions.
Can you tell me what software and techniques you used to make the film and a wee bit about how you came up with the concept?
The project’s look evolved from the previous UN work which was more diagrammatic and simpler. There was less focus on statistics and more on the story, as having Sir David Attenborough narrating lends weight to the project, especially considering the stature of the audience. Animation also allows it to be aimed at a younger audience too. It’s their future and it’s important they understand how to manage the future’s resources.
Lightwave was used to build the landscape and ‘tree generator’, a plug in for Lightwave, was deployed to design and build the various forest trees. After Effects compositing brings the two styles together and a rotoscoped style using graphics tablets and Art Rage/Photoshop gives the film a crafted feel.
Is this as deep as the rabbit hole goes, or are you more involved in the project?
We’ve worked with The U.N and Natasha in previous projects on similar subjects. We’ve also worked with WWF, The Green Party and companies like E.on with a focus on environment energy and sustainability. This enabled us to put our best skills together to give a living feel to the film.
The campaign ‘Year of the Forest 2011’ also includes World Environment Day so there are also some viral animations which we have developed alongside the celebrity features using the same style. We initially designed a style guide for the UN which included breaking out the artwork and typography into a pack which they could re-use. The campaign’s leaflets, posters, book covers and pamphlets all have the same branded look which helps to ensure maximum audience penetration when launching a global product.
We also carefully designed the sound for the film, which is an in-house speciality. As a music producer I have a sensitive ear for sound design and I always prefer to design it myself. Sound is very important for animation so we were pleased to not have to leave the sound to external forces, which can sometimes lead to the wrong feeling. We were looking to achieve a naturalistic feel and again we were able to add our experience to make the film as authentic as we could achieve. We did have a bit of help to finish the sound in a nice suite up town with a talented dubbing mixer called Andy.
Did you get to meet Sir David Attenborough?
My brother Alex, who was the lead artist on this project, met Sir David at the voice over sessions. We are all big fans of Sir David and he is one of Alex’s greatest heroes. Alex is a member of the British Cactus and Succulent Society so I suggested he take one as a personal gift. Alex said he was just as nice in reality as he is impressive as a broadcaster. He told him not to over water the cactus and Sir David actually signed a copy of our storyboards for posterity!
What’s next on the horizon?
We are keen to see how the project expands this year, it has been procured for national broadcast in China and Kenya, and is currently in negotiation for broadcast in South and North America. I’m hoping it may open the door to a long held project ambition, to make an animated film about the plight of the oceans; overfishing, pollution, habitat loss and of course climate change. And just maybe… a Green Award!
We’ll be working on some commercial projects next. We have a long history of involvement with Ferrari and Ducati for F1 & MotoGP. We can’t discuss the details yet but artistry and fluidity are the key.
In the meantime we are finishing a short film commissioned by the BBC about an ex-crack cocaine user and dealer. It’s a project we took to them, and it allows us to experiment with technique, free from the constraints of a brief! Several drugs outreach organisations have expressed an interest in using the film in their own drug reduction programs.