Tim Reckart’s ‘Head Over Heels’ now online!
Timothy Reckart has this week launched his hugely successful NFTS graduation film Head Over Heels online. The film, which premiered three years ago at the 2012 Cannes Film Festival, went on to receive an Annie Award for Best Student Film, the 2013 Cartoon d’Or for Best European Short and an Oscar-nomination for Best Short Animation. Taking an ingenious approach to stop-motion puppetry and set design, the story of Head Over Heels takes place in a house whose married inhabitants have drifted apart to the extent that one lives on the other’s ceiling.
It’s been three years since we finished Head Over Heels, and it’s gone through a few different lives: first, it was a festival film, then it was an Oscar nominee, playing in mainstream cinemas with the other nominees, and after that it lived in a sort of purgatory, hidden behind a paywall on iTunes and Amazon. But now it’s online for the public, which I think is the afterlife I’ve always wanted for this film.
In the aftermath of the film’s enormous success, which includes over thirty award wins, Tim has gone on to work on such exciting projects as Doug TenNapel’s Armikrog and Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa, and is presently developing a series with BBC Worldwide while also attached to direct a feature film with Sony Pictures Animation. He was also recently included in Variety’s 10 Animators to Watch earlier this month, alongside some of the industry’s major players.
©2012 Tim Reckart/NFTS
In the two years since Head Over Heels was nominated for an Oscar, I’ve moved from New York to Hollywood, where I am actually making a living in the film industry, much to the relief of my parents. And I finally got married, which is a good next step after making a film on the subject, I think!
Going the extra mile to accompany the film’s staff-picked Vimeo debut, Reckart has put together a website that collects together special features including director’s commentary, an audio documentary on the making of the soundtrack, and Heels Over Head, an alternate version of the film flipped upside-down!
I wanted to include special features on the Head Over Heels website because many of the people who saw the film in cinemas approached us, hoping to buy a DVD. Making DVDs would have been too much for me to handle, but I thought it would be fun to create an “online DVD”; Everything that the DVD would have had, if I had ever made it. The film, special features, the trailer…I hope it gives our old supporters something new to enjoy, as well as introducing Head Over Heels to those who haven’t seen it yet.
You can visit Timothy Reckart online at timreckart.com
To see the film and check out the exclusive extras visit headoverheels.tv
To learn more about how the film was made you can have a read of our 2013 interview with Tim Reckart here.