Olivier Lescot’s short film, The Rift, is as intriguing in its style as it is in its story. It’s a personal project, funded by production company, Eddy, to show off a striking new kind of animation. Lescot took The Stable behind its scenes.
The Stable: Where did the idea come from?
Olivier Lescot: Initially, I felt like I wanted to do something very personal, and I was working with a comic book artist who was truly influencing me. I started to imagine an early morning atmosphere. A guy in a car. We don’t know where he comes from. We pick up the story as we go along. Something that happened before and will happen after; Thus, the concept was to make you understand the story during the action, connecting yourself with a feeling, an emotion. Imagine you are alone in a car in the middle of a snowy plain. You are being chased. We had to understand what’s happening in this chase, its tempo, you know, and we had to be in the middle of the action when it happened. I really wanted to create a whole universe from this situation, and with the briefcase. I wanted to tell an atmosphere, an ambiance, a tone.
My objective was also to do something technically experimental. The Rift is made up of only two layers of drawing. I absolutely wanted that concept to allow me to keep a certain freshness and a loose side in the drawing. That’s what makes me happy and I hope the viewer feels it. Because just as the cars flow in the snow, my animation had to be organic with this lost movement that I was looking for. My storyboard was an integral part of the animation, almost without reworking. I wanted to keep a frame rate that oscillates according to the movement, and that evolves with the needs of the scene. Sometimes we need to have this feeling that it vibrates, and sometimes to be more in a comic book feeling.
The Stable: The film craft is striking. How did you create the film?
Olivier Lescot: To build this sequence, I started with the character animation which is at the core of my process. Normally, in order to make camera movements in animation, we start with a 3D camera and we integrate the characters afterwards, but
this technique is often limiting; the movement loses energy and feels flat and scholarly.
It’s a very smooth and simple way to create stylish camera movements, even when you don’t have a big team on a project. For me, the goal is to make something vibrant, with life. I want the viewer to share the pleasure that we took in making this film.
The Stable: There must have been challenges with something so new
Olivier Lescot: The real challenge was to find the final rendering without distorting the rough side of the black and white. I wanted to keep this kind of rough detective movie feeling. Then, I was really inspired by the intro credits of Rise by the Wolf. So I found the texture of the grain and a colour in the image; it had to be yellow. That’s what made the film and we were happy with the light work it gave. At this moment, I truly appreciated the sun coming up and the feeling of time moving forward in the movie. Finally, the sound was the last tricky part. I imagined a soundtrack with some sound effects. Then we put some notes in the background to bring a mystical and dark side. I wanted to push forward the strange sensation of those guys in cars, going deeper and deeper into a forest. At the end, we found a specific sound signature with this violin reminiscent of eastern sounds. It was the last original touch I wanted to bring out of the film.
Olivier Lescot began drawing as a child. When he saw Porco Rosso and Ghost in the shell an idle pleasure became an ardent one. He went to the preparatory schools of Penninghen and Sevres before joining the Goblins to study animation and develop his own style. Characters are the most important elements for Olivier in his creations and are the base of his animation medium to create a kinetic energy. His goal is to make them as lively and expressive as possible in order to convey emotions to the viewer.
The advantage that advertising offers him, he says, is not having to be limited to a particular visual style. It’s the possibility to break new ground from project to project and to draw at the speed of thought.
His latest production, Let me love you, is the continuation of a collaboration with Breakbot that began in 2010 with his work on the Baby I’m Yours music video. This new project draws its inspiration from TV themed film of the ‘70s and focuses on a character crossing several colourful worlds in a retro graphic style.
Olivier has also co-directed a thrilling cinematic for the video game, The Division with Boddicker and has directed major advertising campaigns for the Canadian supermarket chain No Frills and the R.E.M Fragrance of Ariana Grande.
