Jason Sondhi
It’s been over a year since we stopped getting in touch with filmmakers on a regular basis, and one of the things we got back from you readers before our redesign, was that you wanted that sad state of affairs to end.
So it will. Today is a not so brief conversation with Max Winston: talented animator, Sundance award winner, all-around funny guy. It’s been a bit of a while since the Sundance 10/10 fest which featured Winston’s I Live in the Woods wound down, but we decided to get in touch with some of our favorite directors a while back.
You made “I Live in the Woods” at CalArts right? Are you still there? Has it been a good experience?
I made I Live in the Woods during my last year at CalArts, and it was an awesome experience. I learned very much there and met some amazing people.
I Live in the Woods has received a lot of acclaim, winning Toronto, plus the special mention at Sundance. Did you know going into making the film that you had something special on your hands? Is there a time during filmmaking you realized it? Basically, did you know it was the shit, or has the reaction youve gotten been a surprise?
It’s hard for me to call my own work “the shit”, but I was thinking going into it that I wanted to make a film that would be sort of… relentlessly excitable. I had no idea while making the film that it would end up getting into these big festivals, there’s no way to know until you hear back from them, really. I also really wanted to make a film that was unlike films I have seen before, and I feel that I accomplished this, so I’m glad that other people are recognizing it as well.
I know its unhealthy to dwell on it, but no artist is ever truly happy with the finished product are they? Is there something about the film that still rubs you the wrong way?
There’s very minute details in the film that I would like to change, but in the end I don’t really care. It is what it is, and it’s get’s the point across. You can obsess on something forever but in the end, it probably won’t be much better than if you said “ok” when it was good enough to make sense. Stop Motion inherently has unavoidable accidents from the nature of the process, but that’s part of what appeals to me about it. Life’s not perfect, and neither is film. And if it is, it’s probably boring!
In the review we link to the cool time-lapse you put up, and you’ve mentioned on your blog the big boost you got from a Princess Grace grant, but what are we talking about in terms of time and money to get I Live in the Woods done?
I spent about 8 months working on the film, while trying to finish my other school work as well. I worked at any possible moment I could, I knew I had to because of the ambitious scale of the film. In terms of money, let’s just say it was enough to make the film, ha. I would have made the film with or without the grant, but having an actual budget for my film for the first time really motivated me to make something bigger than I previously had.
Andrew, the guy I run the site with, and myself have both seen a pretty decent amount of clay and puppet stop-motion. Generally we find that people do amazing things with the manipulating the objects themselves, but by and large leave the camera static, or do very basic movements with it. Thats why we love the opening of the film, shot outdoors, where you employ some great techniques with the camera to create a kinetic feel. Describe a little bit your inspiration and working method for this scene.
One of the main ideas behind the film was to give people the sensation of being outdoors and enjoying the madness of nature. That’s why it was important to me to shoot the actual stop motion outdoors, and not fake it or composite the woodsman onto background footage of the forest. I didn’t want perfection, I wanted to convey a feeling. That was one thing I was very unsure would work, until I actually took the puppet outside, put him in front of the camera, and used my “top secret” rig to blast him through the forest.
Last year I wrote a review of Templeton’s Dog, where I remarked that the last 5 years seems to have brought about a revival of sorts to stop-motion. What about the form attracts you, and who do you admire?
I also feel that stopmotion is having some sort of a comeback. Something that I am attracted to in stop motion is how it is in this weird area between animation and live action. You’re animating everything, but shooting it all with a camera with real lighting. Just the possibility that you can take any object around you, modify if (or not), and make it do whatever you want really excites me. Some of my favorite stop motion filmmakers are Mike Jittlov, Henry Selick, and PES.
Not a huge market for stop-motion out there. I’m reminded of the cautionary tale of Mark Osborne with More. Is this something that worries you?
More was nominated for an academy award and Mark Osborne just directed Kung Fu Panda, so… I’m not that worried. I’ve heard that if you do what you love, good things will come from it. I’m following that idea and so far it’s working out.
You posted your time-lapse to Vimeo, which seems to have established a nice following with the more artistically inclined. What lead you to Vimeo, and what can these kind outlets really offer filmmakers?
Vimeo is cool because you can post HD resoultion videos, and there’s not tons of crap on it like there is on youtube. There’s no videos that pretend to be porn and then actually only have 3 frames of a girl in her bra spliced between 3 minutes of a blue screen with an ABBA song playing during it. What a rip – off!
Any online film picks for the reader at home?
Sally Cruikshank’s “Face like a Frog” is amazing. It’s not new, but it sure is grand. Also PES’ “Western Spaghetti”
Sundance is the biggy domestically. What was it like to get the phone call that you got in? Who did you tell first?
It was great and surprising! I told my parents first because I was home for the holidays.
As far as being part of the online 10/10 festival, how did that go down? Who were you approached by, and what essentially was the pitch?
The Sundance programming team selected 10 shorts from the festival to make as a free itunes download for the duration of the festival. The pitch was: “Want to have your film on itunes as a free download for tons of folks to see?” Of course I said yes, although there was no money involved in it, I just want people to see the film.
I haven’t yet seen it migrate to Youtube but that of course was a risk in making the film free. Was putting your film out in the public-domain disconcerting to you? and have you been satisfied with how it was handled?
Note to internet: If you put my film on youtube, you die. So far it’s only been a good experience, I just hope it doesn’t end up on a dollar – store DVD of animation distributed by some Bolivian company.
Have you got much of a response from having the film online? Either in terms of professional opportunities from those who might have not been at Sundance to see it, or simply in outpouring from fans themselves?
I have met people who watched it on itunes and were really into it, so that’s been great. It’s gained fans, and apparently some enemies. I actually loved reading the reviews people wrote on the itunes page for the film. Some rave reviews and some bizarre hateful ones. My favorite described the film as “Worse than Hollywood.” That was great, I mean, what does that mean?
I’m over in Seattle, where we have SIFF, the nation’s *ahem* largest film festival, but not one which there is much of a film market for buyers like Sundance. Did you participate in the pony show? Was there any interest in i Live in the Woods by distributors? Specfically, since the the 10/10 series is sponsored by them, will we see I Live in the Woods via Shorts International’s itunes store again?
It’s possible that I may distribute it with shorts international, but I am also talking with some other distributors from Canada who would put it on TV in Canada, Japan, and Europe. That sounds more exciting than the internet to me. I’d love to see I Live in the Woods dubbed in Japanese. I don’t know of this pony show you speak of though.
Did opportunities for any future projects materialize during your time at Sundance?
Yes… I’ve been talking with an artist management company about getting me attached as a director to certain projects. We’ll see what happens. Really looking forward to making more of my own ideas, though.
Your classmate Dominic Bisignano is credited in your film, and of course was part of the festival too. Did he show up as well? and what kind of craziness did you get up to?
He was at Sundance also, with his hilarious film From Burger it Came and his wife. We got into all kinds of shenanigans, like shoving our heads in the snow for 8 hours like some sort of human ostrich.
Aside from Dominic’s film what was your favorite out of the Sundance online series?
I really enjoyed “The Yes Men save the world”, “Paper Hearts”, and the short “2 birds”. “Treevenge” was pretty brain – blasting as well.
What can we expect next for the I Live in the Woods? More festivals? Going online? And if more festivals, does that necessarily prevent it from going online?
More festivals for sure, it just got into the Annecy Animation festival, Ann Arbor, and much more. Maybe online in the future, but I’d rather have people see it on a bigger screen if possible. It seems like it may have a long festival life, so… that may mean a very delayed online possibility.
You’ve posted some of your films online via your website. What does online offer a filmmaker? What is the downside, or what does it need to improve?
It’s pretty amazing that anyone in the world can see my films, just by having this website that costs next to nothing to maintain. Except for in China, where supposedly they have their own internet. The only downside I can see is that kids will now be raised thinking that youtube is the way to watch films, which usually has a garbled image of how the film should be seen. Watching films is an exhilarating experience which I feel just cannot be experienced by looking at your computer. But then again, I’ve seen some amazing films online that I would not have been able to see otherwise. So it’s a trade – off, I guess.
What is next for Max Winston?
I’m gonna go eat a peanut butter – banana – honey sandwhich! Then hopefully get funding for my next film idea. There’s lots of possibilities in the works that I’m looking forward to. Right now I’m happy working in the stop motion animation industry in LA making puppets at a company called Screen Novelties and animating on Robot Chicken.