Yahoo Lifestyle No ‘Flow’ Sequel Plans for Director Gints Zilbalodis, Despite Golden Globe Win: ‘I Don’t Want to Get Typecast’ as the ‘Cat Guy’
Latvian director Gints Zilbalodis made history on Sunday when his independent film “Flow” won the Golden Globe for best animated feature.
The dialogue-free film with a modest $3.7 million was going up against Hollywood heavyweights from Disney, Pixar and Netflix. Still, it topped them all for one of the biggest U.S. animation prizes during awards season.
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In the film, a catastrophic flood submerges everything in its path, including Cat’s home. There are no humans to be found anywhere, although their material legacy remains. Luckily for “Flow’s” feline protagonist, it finds refuge on a boat full of other displaced animals. Together, the group sets sail on the flood waters for a journey into the unknown.
Variety caught up with Zilbalodis during his “Flow” promotional tour to discuss the film’s modest origins, his first time working with a team, his all-inclusive filmmaking process and what it means that a Golden Globe-winning animated feature was made using free, open-source software.
He also shared an exclusive clip from the film, which can be seen at the top of this page.
How long were the development and production processes for “Flow”?
I started writing the film in 2019 after I finished “Away” and was traveling and promoting that film. Now, as I’m promoting “Flow,” I’m working on my next film. Hotel rooms provide a good atmosphere in which to write, as there are no distractions. As I was working on the script, it took a long time to get funding. First, we received financing in Latvia, and after that, several organizations in France provided further funding. But that took two years, so we didn’t start building a team for the film until 2021.
Up to that point, I was working alone on visual development and making the animatic. So we started building our Latvian team in 2021, but it was still just a few people who did everything except character animation. Once we had the concept art, story, visual development, rigging, texturing and music, the character animation and sound design started in Belgium and France. Once that process began, production was actually very quick. We originally planned it to take longer than it did, but some funding got delayed without the deadline changing, so production was very short. In total, it took about five years to make the film, which is pretty standard, if not quicker than normal.
Can you share anything about that next project? Will it be similar to “Flow” or something entirely different? Maybe a sequel?
There have been some discussions about other projects involving animals, but that’s something I kind of want to avoid. I don’t want to get typecast as the director who makes movies about cats, the cat guy. So, my other intention is not to do a sequel to “Flow.” The next film will be something original that’s very different in some ways.
You made your first feature, “Away,” on your own, but this time you had a team with you. How did you find the experience of leading a group of artists working in three different countries?
I’d always hoped to work with a team, but I didn’t feel like going through the traditional way that an animation director would usually start out, maybe first being a story artist or an animator and slowly, gradually rising up the ranks before getting an opportunity to direct. I don’t think this would be the right path for me because I’m not especially good at any one thing. I’m not specialized in one area, and I think in the industry, that’s often necessary for young artists. So, instead, I decided to do it my own way. I made my first feature film, “Away,” which was kind of my unofficial film school where I learned all these different things just by trying them out. By following that plan, when I actually got the opportunity to work with a team, I understood a bit about what everyone does, and I could better communicate with them.
Because of the budget, many of the animators were very young and straight out of school. The whole team was young, and mostly only the department heads had much experience. But it was kind of nice for me because I maybe felt less intimidated than I would have trying to tell veteran industry pros what to do. It also felt like an advantage because the young artists had great energy and worked like they had something to prove. This was a big project for all of us.
Although you shared the workload on this film, you were still involved in writing, set building, visual development, and you even composed the score, among numerous other roles. Why is it important for you to be so integrated in all these parts of production?
For me, it’s all part of one big process. I don’t tend to separate them, except when we have to list the tasks in the end credits of the film. When I design a scene, I build the 3D environment and explore it with a virtual camera. I’ve already placed the lights, and I move the camera around the space. On traditional productions, art direction, animation, lighting, they’re all different people. But I do all those jobs at the same time, and it’s really impossible to separate them because the way shadows and light are cast will influence where I put the camera, and I’m always adjusting.
Even the music. I need to have it early, and it needs to be integrated into the film. It’s not something I add at the end of the process. Instead, it needs to guide the process. I start writing the music when I start the script, when the clay hasn’t hardened yet and it’s still moldable and the music can influence how the story develops. For example, in the climactic scene with the cat and bird on the towers, I knew they would go up there, but I couldn’t figure out what would actually happen when they arrived. But once the piece of music I’d written while working on the script was playing, I suddenly had all these ideas. If I hadn’t written that music, the whole story would be different. If I’d scored the film afterward, the whole meaning and the fates of these characters would be different.
That’s also why it’s important for me to do these things myself. I’m not saying I can do any of them better than someone else, but for me, it’s all a part of a process of discovery. I don’t know what the film is going to be before I make it, so I can’t describe these things until I find them. Of course, in many of these cases, I’m really a co-writer or co-composer, where I may come up with the first drafts, but then I’ll bring on someone else to work with me. With the music, for example, we brought on another composer, Rihards Zaļupe, who is much more experienced than me and who could add more depth and layers to the piece. Matīss Kaža did the same with our screenplay.
This film is set in a fantasy world, but one that is very similar to our own. How much context did you want to provide the audience, and how much did you want to leave unexplained?
The important thing for us to do was to explain and define the relationship between the characters on this journey of overcoming obstacles. For me, the main focus was on telling the story from the cat’s point of view, and the cat doesn’t know where the humans went, where the flood is coming from or who built all these places. So, it was important for me not to answer those things to create a sense of immersion in a film told from the cat’s point of view. We tried to eliminate everything that wasn’t essential for the story. We didn’t want to waste any time on exposition, which, for me, is not interesting. So, the worldbuilding in this film was truly character-driven. I started with the journey and the characters’ emotions and then built the world around them.
It stands out that these animal protagonists not only don’t engage in exposition but they also aren’t anthropomorphized. They act like real animals and are beholden to the same limitations as real animals.
That was always the intention because I think they’re so interesting, funny and emotionally engaging. We didn’t need to change them, and by leaving them the way we know them in our world, it makes the stakes bigger. We feel more intensely what cat is going through than we would if it was a cat character that was basically just a human on two legs that looks like a cat and tells jokes. We wouldn’t care as much. For scale, it also makes everything seem bigger because it’s this small cat in a huge world. Our characters started as the archetypes of what we think a cat or a dog would be. The cat is grumpy, stubborn and does things its own way. The dog is friendly and cheerful. So we start with these archetypes, but then we can slowly break them down and have the characters act in surprising and unexpected ways. I think this makes for interesting characters, when there is a kind of contradiction in them.
One of the many milestones that this film has established is being the first animated feature made using the free, open-source software Blender to win a Golden Globe. Can you talk about the significance of these tools being available for all artists?
Yeah, it’s not just the tools, but all the resources that are available now. I learned just by watching YouTube videos. There are so many tutorials for Blender, even more than for the big traditional tools. There is no one way to make a film, and you can make very different types of films with Blender. It is a tool, but it’s really all about how it is used.
It’s wonderful to see people having access to this, where they might not have had this opportunity in the past. We’re gonna see people with different types of experiences and different stories to share. I think that when you do like a smaller independent film, you have more freedom to kind of push the boundaries in some ways. Having these free tools really helps.
That’s what I’m excited about: different types of stories being told, but also different techniques, different looks for the film and ways of expressing yourself and cinematic language in the way that films are edited and in the visuals. I think we can push a lot further in the independent field.
How important is it for filmmakers to stick with their films after they’ve debuted? To promote them and do the full awards season circuit?
Especially for smaller independent films, you really need to put in the effort to promote them because we don’t have big stars promoting them for us on Instagram and Facebook. We’re going to these red carpets, and we’re up against that whole system. It’s also really important to me that people see the film. [When I direct], I am making something for myself, a film that I would like to see, but I’m also interested in finding a connection with others. I want them to respond to something that I made. I also want to encourage and share my experience of working independently because I want more people to do this, so hopefully, we’ll see more films like this in the future.
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