Silsoe Mouse and their Little Red

Monday, September 17, 2012

Little Red is the debut animated short film from directing duo Silsoe Mouse of Upstart Films. They joined forces with The Mill's Henry Foreman and Bob Wolf for the animation, then Aubrey Woodiwiss for the grade, to create this visually striking piece.

Before Little Red hits the festivals, I caught up with Silsoe Mouse who revealed the thought, skill and challenges that went into the film.

The full-length film will premier on our Vimeo Channel on Friday, so be sure to head over and be one of the first people to view and more importantly, share, this fairytale film.

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Tell us about Little Red…
Little Red is our first full animation project. It is based on the classic Little Red Riding Hood tale and is not that different from the original story. Let's just say that nowadays, the wolves are a little bit more organized than they used to be.

How did the team come together?
We shot the plates of the forest first and added basic silhouettes in after effects so that we had the frame compositions and mood ready. We approached The Mill with a rough assembly of the film and they liked it enough to get involved. The Mill enhanced the animation and added their own magic and took the overall look to the next level.

How did you approach the project?
Regarding both the animation and the storytelling, we wanted to be as efficient and minimal as possible. Classic fairy tales like this play on the imagination - if you tell the story to a child you tend to work with the basic framework and embellish the details yourself. We felt that silhouettes are minimal enough to allow this space for the audience to get involved and so were the perfect way of re-telling this classic story.

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What inspired the film?
We had shot the back plates for the forest for another project but they didn't really work for the feel of that piece. We loved the look so much that we didn't want those shots to go to waste and so were looking for a story set in a forest which could work with simple animation. The rest came about very organically from there.

Talk us through the skills and technology used to create this visually stunning animation style?
We built the forest using a glue gun and lots of twigs! It wasn't very big so we used macro lenses to increase the scale and the very narrow depth of field these lenses can give served to enhance the characters' movement within the frame. The rest was computer generated.

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Fairytale's have been a real trend across cinema (Snow White and The Huntsman, Mirror Mirror), & television (Grimm, Once Upon a Time) this year. How difficult is it to bring a unique slant to such a beloved story?
It's not just fairy tales that present this problem. Genre is so strong in cinema and there is so much content out there that you are always trying to 'put a spin' on any story you tell. Because we were doing this film for ourselves initially we didn't have to spell out exactly where we were going with it but could trust the process to bring us to a place that was more interesting.

What are the next steps for the film?
The film has been entered in several film festivals. We are looking at opportunities to exhibit the film to generate awareness for Silsoe Mouse and all the production team. We know that most people will probably see it on a computer screen but hope that we will get a chance to show it on a cinema screen where the size of the picture and surround sound make it so much more immersive.