Why did you switch from adult-oriented films to a kids movie?I'm a filmmaker and a father, so in a way it felt weird not to relate to own kids. I wanted to do a comedy animation feature for my daughter who is six, and made Apple & the Worm, targeting 5-9 years-old. I also realised that there's not so much to laugh about in European cinema. What I want to do is enjoyable films with serious issues.
Tell us about The Apple and the Worm. What's the storyline?The film basically explores what it means for different people to live very close together. So I used the metaphor of an apple and a worm. On the surface, both have a very simple goal in life: the apple wants to be the shiniest, perfect apple. The worm wants to live in peace with the apple to become a beautiful butterfly. The problem is that this will ruin the life of the apple and the apple is kept out of the ‘apple world' because of the worm.
The questions I ask through this story are how do you enjoy life by trying to get the best of it all the time? If you set too many goals, perhaps life is not so enjoyable. I also say that it's OK to have a goal in life but how do you live that life without hurting other people?
How long did you spend on the writing and character development?
The whole story was written for a kids play, then I decided to make a feature film out of it. The writing in itself didn't take long, but in the process of making it, I did some re-writing and side story development. When I do an animation film, it's a very organic process.
Why did you decide to use 2D and not 3D for the film?
After Princess, we realised we could do a very high quality 2D animation on a rather low budget. Plus as an illustrator, I really wanted to have that drawing feeling to the characters. So with my animation director Mads Juul, we tried to do a 2D movie that had a 3D feeling. There is the Pixar standard and everyone else wants to follow it with a similar glossy feeling. With The Apple and the Worm, we wanted to take 2D back to the roots of animation, to the old Disney movies.
What do you think of European animation vs US animation?
I don't think the way we make movies is so different from the way they do it in the US. If you take Pixar who make the greatest animation films of all, they believe in director-driven films. Then they have a creative team to support the director in his vision. They also have an enormous amount of money to work on the development process, storyboarding, cinematics etc. They can work with each scene in detail even before starting to animate. We can't afford this because we need to keep our money for the animation process to make sure we have the same quality - animation and composite-wise throughout the whole film.
The Apple and the Worm was made entirely in Denmark...How was that possible on a financial standpoint?
Major animation films in Europe usually have big teams working on different stages of the animation often in different territories. They have big budgets and a large part of those budgets go towards traval and administrative costs, something not visible on the screen. My idea was that if we could make The Apple and the Worm for a budget of around €2.4m, then we could produce it only from Denmark or Scandinavia. That would allow me to concentrate on the quality of the film itself, and save us time and money by working with creative people next to me. The future for animation in Denmark is to keep it native or Scandinavian where we have both creativity and quality.
How was the budget for The Apple and the Worm put together?
We produced it at our company Copenhagen Bombay with Garage Film in Sweden, co-financing from Nordisk Film (that owns one third of our company), the Danish and Swedish film Institutes, DR TV, SVT, Nordisk Film & TV Fond and Eurimages.
What other projects do you have?
Right now we're doing a big satirical animation series for adults; The Pandas based on our comic strip Wulffmorgenthaler. The DKK26m (€3.5m) project made for DR TV consists of two seasons of 8 x 22' episodes. I'm also writing my next feature film. It will be a kind of fantasy action kids movie. It's about a girl who wants to save the world from climate change and at the same time has to deal with the loss of her grand dad. I'm hoping to go into production in the summer 2010.