Robert Morgan blurs lines between stop-motion and horror in new film
The director and writer of ‘Stopmotion’ spoke to The Panther about his inspiration for the film, the eerie art form of stop-motion animation and why he believes it naturally lends itself to the horror genre. Photos courtesy of IFC Films
Robert Morgan has spent his life perfecting the meticulous medium of stop-motion art. Alone in a dark room, Morgan performs strange rituals over inanimate puppets in order to bring them to life. Inch by inch. Frame by frame. Year by year. The director described the process as becoming more and more like a horror film.
“The process itself feels a bit occult. It’s the way the characters move. It has this slightly uncanny jerkiness to it, which is very different from a sort of smooth (computer-generated imagery) thing. The quality of the movement itself feels uncanny to me. Horror and stop motion are very natural bedfellows.”
On Feb. 14, The Panther spoke with Morgan about his inspiration for the film, the eerie art form of stop motion and why he believes the medium naturally lends itself to the horror genre. Morgan’s past work has always fallen into the horror genre, and his newest film, “Stopmotion,” is no exception.
Despite Morgan believing horror and stop-motion to be the perfect pairing, he rarely sees the two come together.
“I’m always surprised when people don’t use stop motion for horror because, to me, that’s its natural form,” Morgan said.
“Stopmotion” follows Ella Blake (Aisling Franciosi), a stop-motion animator who, after losing her mother, embarks upon the creation of a new puppet film. Alone in the world, struggling to control her demons, her new project becomes a battleground for her sanity. The characters in Blake’s film take on a life of their own, and her powerful imagination begins to destroy her and anyone who comes in the way of her magnum opus.
As a kid, Morgan was an avid painter and artist but had always wanted to get into filmmaking. He didn’t know how, but he felt like it was a natural progression to get into stop-motion — a true extension of his artistic endeavors.
He could make content with little money and no actors. He could build backdrops, sculptures and puppets. Everything needed to experiment with making films was right at his fingertips.
“I could just do it on a desktop. I didn’t need loads of money, I didn’t need loads of sets, I didn’t need actors. I could just grab an old VHS camera I used in those days, and I just shot a student film in my parent’s garage.”
Morgan has created a dozen stop-motion films over his career, but he feels like everything has led to his most recent project. As a stop-motion animator himself, Morgan had never seen a film with a main character who had that career, which inspired the film’s foundation. The director recalled making “Bobby Yeah” back in 2011 — a semi-improvised, stop-motion film by Morgan who explained that he was making parts of the story up as he went along. The art took control of him along the way.
“I had this sensation that, as I was working on it, the film took on a life of its own. It reached a point where I was no longer dictating to it what I wanted it to be. It was telling me what it wanted to be. It’s probably quite a common creative experience, but it was quite a weird experience and could very easily slip into something nightmarish.”
Morgan’s previous films are all stop-motion shorts, but this time around, he was able to work with real actors and mix mediums.
“Stopmotion” splits its time evenly between live-action acting scenes and animation. The actual process of making the film was similarly divided into two parts. The first half of the process consisted of filming everything where live-action and animation existed in the same frame. The second half occurred after shooting, in the editing process, where Morgan animated all of the actual ‘stop-motion’ scenes.
Ella Blake is an archetypal character — the tortured artist who goes mad. There was a short list of actors who Morgan knew could carry an entire film on their shoulders, and Franciosi was one of them. After working with real actors instead of puppets, Morgan was pleasantly surprised by the collaboration process.
“(Franciosi) is a great actor, and working with somebody like that and seeing what they bring to the table that I hadn’t thought of is much more exciting than trying to dictate her like I would a puppet. To me, it is just a pleasure. The joy of it is just being surprised by your own film and seeing what other people bring to it.”
Morgan previously worked on stop-motion shorts that didn’t really feature any actors. ‘Stopmotion’ is the first film he has made with real actors. Pictured: Aisling Franciosi (left) and Caoilinn Springall
Another star member of the cast was Caoilinn Springall, playing Little Girl, who previously starred in “Midnight Sky.” Morgan spoke to The Panther about how her crucial role could have easily gone wrong.
“They say never work with children or animals, you know,” Morgan said. “It's always a little bit of an unknown. I wanted someone who was quite infectious and enthusiastic and sweet but could also go a little bit serious and cold when she wanted to. [Springall] had all of those qualities.”
Morgan has more ideas for films ratting around his head, but will plead the fifth about what’s to come.
“I'm working on developing a couple of things so we will see, but it’s too early to say right now,” Morgan said. “I do have some plans but I don't want to say because I don't want to jinx it. I've done that before where I said, ‘I'm doing this thing next’ and then it never happened. So I'm going to keep tight-lipped about it.”
“Stopmotion” releases in theaters on Feb. 23. Check out the trailer for the film here.