Preparation - Stop Motion: Passion, Process and Performance - page 187

This is not about ego but about having a unity. An intimate collaboration could achieve this.
It amuses me to see the i lms from the 1930s credit 'Décor by … , as if the design was no more
than decoration. Often in those i lms it was just background, but not always. This seems to
undervalue the contribution of the design.
I admire the many great long-standing director/designer partnerships that exist in i lm
and theatre, where they have a symbiotic understanding of each other's craft. The perfect
partnership must be that the direction inspires the design, and the designs inspire the
direction, a two-way open collaboration. I have only designed one show, the musical Jekyll and
Hyde , for another director, and as it happened, it was a huge success, with the design became
instrumental and complementing how the show was staged. The director had asked for lots of
levels, but I gave him a huge drum that revolved from inside to outside, from black to white,
from chaos to order, from wide opens spaces to dark claustrophobia. The director came up with
ideas that I had not thought of, but I did want to get in there and push the potential of the set
and the conventions and colours I had set up. It is hard not to be a director the whole time,
but this was a good collaboration. I would not enjoy, either in theatre or in animation, working
with a design that was predetermined as that would so dictate how the direction and the
storytelling was to happen, allowing no room for evolving.
This probably makes me sound awkward to work with, and maybe I am, but it's about making
sure that every element i ts into a larger scheme and it all ties together, all working to tell
the same story. Making sure that all the elements have resonances for the whole production
takes no extra ef ort. That is the role of the director. He has to pull all these dif erent elements
together to give life and meaning to the i lm, and in small-scale animation it is too easy to be
all things. Perhaps that's what gives stop motion one of its unique qualities. When a i lm works,
such as The Sandman , all the elements complement each other, through having such a small
unit where the personal vision can still be maintained. It must be hard on huge productions
not to have the vision distilled through sheer numbers. It is essential to communicate and
share ideas.