Neil Burns Directs Canada’s First Stop-Motion Animated Feature Film
Posted September 13, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Imagine working all day shooting a film and ending up with eight seconds of footage.
That’s about the pace you can expect to move at when you’re working in stop-motion animation, which makes Neil Burns’s creation Edison & Leo all the more remarkable.
With a running time of 79 minutes, Edison & Leo is Canada’s first stop-motion animated feature-length film. It took director Burns, ten animators, and the rest of the cast and crew 10 months to shoot it, a huge undertaking he admits.
“It was the first one anyone had tried to do,” the Canadian director tells CityNews.ca in an interview during the Toronto International Film Festival, where Edison & Leo was premiering.
“From an artistic point of view animation is such an un-dynamic process. You have to record the voices months before you shoot the action, and you’re trying to avoid doing any re-shoots because it just takes so long. So it’s a big challenge to take this un-dynamic process and end up with a film that feels like it flows and isn’t stilted.”
Longtime Guy Maddin screenwriting collaborator George Toles wrote the noirish story, about a self-serving inventor, Edison, whose latest discovery threatens to hurt those closest to him, including his own son, Leo. The voice cast features Powers Boothe, Gregory Smith, and Carly Pope.
This is no Wallace & Gromit – the subject matter in Edison & Leo is targeted squarely at an older audience. Working with Toles on the story was one of the highlights for Burns.
“I’m a huge fan of George Toles,” he remarks. “Most of what you get to work on in stop-motion is kids’ shows. This was so out there and so different I jumped at the chance to work on it.”
It’s a painstaking process, stop-motion animation, but Burns hopes to make more feature-length films in future.
“People often think it takes a lot of patience to do it. I guess on some level that’s true, but it’s not like you’re ever waiting around for something to happen,” Burns explains. “Something’s always going on. I think it’s more of an adjustment for the producers who come from live action where a month-long shoot is a long shoot – I think getting used to the pace of how fast things get done can be a little nerve-wracking.”
Edison & Leo is part of the Canada First! programme at the Toronto International Film Festival.
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