By Alexandra Bowman
Georgetown University student Bowman interviewed the
Icelandic cartoonist Gísli
Darri Halldórsson as his short movie Yes-People is nominated for an Academy Award (it's online at the New Yorker's site). They spoke via Zoom for the Hilltop Show on April 12, 2021 (and the video will be
appearing there soon) and the edited transcript follows the press release background information (so we
don’t have to rephrase all of the information on Halldórsson’s career.)
Gísli Darri
Halldórsson’s animated short film YES-PEOPLE shares a story about an eclectic
mix of people finding a way to cope with life’s daily struggles. After
premiering at the Minimalen Short Film Festival in Norway, the film went on to
win numerous awards and has just been Oscar® Nominated for the 93rd Academy
Awards® in the Animated Short Film category. Icelandic Animator and storyteller
Gísli Darri Halldórsson graduated with a BA (hons) from the Irish School of
Animation (Dublin). He has been a professional animator since 2007. Notable
films he worked on include the Oscar nominated short GRANNY O’GRIMM’S SLEEPING
BEAUTY, the Oscar nominated short THE ROOM ON THE BROOM and Bafta award winning
TV-series THE AMAZING WORLD OF GUMBALL.
Gísli has
also worked in live-action doing storyboards for Nordic noir series TRAPPED
(Series 1) and Icelandic feature films such as VULTURES and I REMEMBER YOU. His
narrative music videos such as WHATEVER by Leaves, received a nomination for
best music video at the EDDA Awards (The Icelandic Film & TV Academy) and
THE GREAT UNREST by Mugison received best music video of the year at the
Icelandic Music Awards.
Just some of
the accolades YES-PEOPLE has received include the Best European Short Film at
the Wierd International Animation Film Festival in Spain, the Children's Choice
Award Nordic Youth Category at Nordisk Panorama in Sweden, the Best
Nordic-Baltic Short Film at the Frederikstad Animation Festival in Norway, the
Audience Award at Uppsala Short Film Festival in Sweden and many more.
YES-PEOPLE
was written and directed by Gísli Darri Halldórsson produced by Arnar
Gunnarsson as well as Halldórsson for the production companies CAOZ and
Hólamói. Just some of Gunnarsson’s work includes the animated TV Series’
TREASURE TREKKERS, TALKING TOM AND FRIENDS, ELISA: RESCUE TEAM ADVENTURES, the
animated feature LEGENDS OF VALHALLA and more. International sales are being
handled by Magnetfilm. The film was supported by the Icelandic Film Centre.
Alexandra Bowman: I am sitting down today with filmmaker Gísli
Darri Halldórsson, the director of the animated short film, Yes-People which has just been nominated
for best animated short film at the Oscars, the 93rd Academy awards. Thank you
so much for sitting down with me. I'm so excited to hear from you about how
this film was made.
Gísli Darri Halldórsson: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Alexandra Bowman: How
did you develop the concept for this film - in which the idea is that people
use one word, a minimum amount of communication to go about their daily lives,
and express a whole range of emotions and feelings and situations to each
other?
Gísli Darri Halldórsson: So a long time ago I was talking to my Irish friends and I
was explaining to them this concept of the Icelandic “Yes” which is “Já,” and
how it's ridiculous how often it’s used in Icelandic everyday speech to the
point where our neighbors and Faroe islands call us the Yes people. They were
just laughing at it, and it just got me thinking about a film with only one
word. And then I started thinking about the semi-silent film format, which is
I'm sure it has been done before, but I really wanted to pursue that. Animation
is a performance that has a lot of gestures, and you control over every single
pixel, so you can really be pretty polished with the performance. At the same
time, I was also obsessed with routines and habits and I was sort of terrified
about living my life in a loop and not growing at all. I kind of married those
two ideas together. I thought it would help to have characters who are living
their life in a loop and they can only say one word as well. So it was a
marriage of the two ideas. I feel like the yes thing is like butter and the
habit routine thing is like the bread underneath.
Alexandra Bowman: Did you start making this before or
after March 20,20? When did you start making it?
Gísli Darri Halldórsson: The seed, the conversation with
my friends was in 2012. So yeah, in2013 I started writing and designing the
thing, but yeah, there was like a five-year period of just finding tiny pockets
of time between freelance jobs to work on it. I got a production grant from the
Icelandic film center and worked on it until the end of 2019. Yeah. So it was
completely a coincidence that it kind of fits with the COVID situation. I think
it has another level maybe that was not
planned.
Alexandra Bowman: It's interesting to hear you talk about
it in terms of the loop, because for me, at least living at home has really
showed me the little habits and ruts that I tend to get into. The pandemic emphasized
all the little things in life that you might not notice when you're kind of
stuck in your own world. What have you
been doing over the last year and how has it helped your creative process?
Gísli Darri Halldórsson: I was following the film and it
did really well in film festivals. It’s gone into a lot of lovely festivals,
but I didn't manage to see it at all with an audience except in Iceland, which
was a lovely experience. And yeah, that's a lot of work. I think there's
probably more work doing the online … the COVID festival work. I don't know. It
seems like it seems like more work somehow. But, I was working also offsite for
a London based animation studio called Blue Zoo on show called Paddington …
Alexandra Bowman: Paddington! Are you serious? Oh, I'm a
big fan. Big fan. Big. I have a plush Paddington right here…
Gísli Darri Halldórsson: It’s a lovely show from Nickelodeon.
They're doing a really good job. Now I'm on another show, but I guess that's, that's
been the benefit for me in the COVID situation. Remote work has been more for
me, because I live in Iceland and there's not a lot of animation work on offer.
I was kind of living my life in a bubble, like in the COVID situation, because
I was working a lot from home before, even as early as 2009. So maybe that's
why I started thinking about this because there was a lot of just being in the
house, working.
Alexandra Bowman: Because you have been doing this longer
than any of us, you gave us a preview of what it would look like. How do you
typically look for inspiration for your work? What gives you the creative
spark?
Gísli Darri Halldórsson: I feel like inspiration just
happens. Something comes in front of me and I go, “Wow.” I think for this film,
it was a very long time project. You know, if you have an inspiration to do a
film, you can you can lose momentum. And I think a lot of films end up that
way; it becomes a chore. I think there's a lot of unfinished films and books
and all that, but I think what helped me is obsession. Finding an obsession and
an inspiration, because there you have a natural tendency of the brain to go
somewhere and it seems unresolved. So far that's my wisdom.
Alexandra Bowman: Because you're already thinking about
something so much. You probably dwell on it a lot and explore it and think
about the nooks and crannies and the ideas. So it would be easy to go and make
a whole movie about it. What did you consider while designing the characters in
this film? Because they have that kind of beautiful rubber-hose stylized look,
but they're also in a hyper realistically-rendered world. And I always think
that juxtaposition is really interesting.
Gísli Darri Halldórsson: So actually, the world is
photographs. It's animated against photographs, but I know what you mean. It
looks almost unreal because I took [out] all the color and I recolored them,
which makes them slightly less like photographs. And there are some props in
there that are 3D, but the reason I chose that style is that I wanted to have
that feeling of… there's something about
those sort of caricatures that for me, they're like interpretations of a spirit
as well. It’s almost like the spirit version of a person. And I just wanted to
have that sort of characters that seem to have a lot of potential and they're
stuck in this real world. So that was the idea - to emphasize their stuckness.
They don't quite sit in their world.
Alexandra Bowman: Right, you want stylistic contrast between
the people and then the world that they're living in? What did the process look
like as you developed the characters from like beginning to end? Does it start
with a sketch maybe?
Gísli Darri Halldórsson: Some of the characters that are
based on people that I know. And I think a few of them have realized this, but
they're not completely the character, sometimes it's just the look and the
person[ality] might come from someone else. I tried to avoid arbitrary
designing. I tried to have something as an anchor. So for instance, the bitter
alcoholic lady, she has a huge hairstyle. I started off from, “Oh yeah, I want
this person to be kind of like living in a dark cloud so big that, you know,
nobody can approach her really, unless she has her hair in her curlers.” Then
there was the music teacher who was based on a bird, like this idea of somebody
who likes to sing naturally. Those sort of just little things. There was always
one idea, just as a starting point.
Alexandra Bowman: How many drafts do you usually go
through for one character?
Gísli Darri Halldórsson: I can't say. Some were really
easy. The music teacher was really quick and really hit and there was one
character, the old man, he was too similar to the fat person in the film. I
didn't want people to go like, “Oh, who's this guy?” I also tried to make them
a different color or different from each other, so you just immediately know,
so I had to redesign him quite a bit. And so I can't really say how long it
takes; it's such a hard thing to measure that nebulous five-year period where I
was just working. Sometimes I was working for nine months and I couldn't do
anything on the film, and then I'd get like a month to work on it, so it was
hard to say.
Alexandra Bowman: My vantage point as a 21-year-old, currently
taking some animation classes, might be hard for people like myself who are used
to the social media model of “you produce something, you post it, you produce
something, you post it” kind of like feeding the beast, feeding the algorithm. Do
you have to fight that in yourself? I finished a little short film a while
back, but it was tough for me to work on something for that several month-long
period of time.
Gísli Darri Halldórsson: Absolutely. It is tough. I'd say
I came from the blog generation, so I was posting drawings and stuff on my
blog, and there was no “likes” or stuff like that. It wasn't as addictive in
terms of, “Oh, how are people liking this one?” Right. But still you check the
weekly hits and stuff, so I definitely know exactly what you're talking about.
I really thought, “I really enjoy doing this blog. It's great for my visual
development and my thinking, but I'd really like to do a long-term [piece]. All
the work that's gone into this blog could have been a film as well.” I think
really the key was finding the inspiration in the obsession. I just remember
thinking, “I know it's going to take a long time to make the film. I really
need to find something or work with something that I know is going to have the
oil to last.” And it was hard. It was a hard film to finish, but I think the
key for me was I always had a sense of meaning, because I was working on
something that was quite close to me and something that I was concerned with,
and interested in.
Alexandra Bowman: What would be your words of advice to a
college student or recent graduate who has always been interested in
filmmaking, but hasn't quite gotten the boost to go make their own film? What
would you say to them to help get them off the couch and into their little
studio?
Gísli Darri Halldórsson: First of all, I would say not
everybody needs to make a film. I think it's also finding your voice. What do
you really want to do? I think a lot of artists, really talented artists, they
think about their ideal self and think, “Oh, I should do a film,” but try
first, listen to your real self. What do you really want? It's really hard,
because our environment is constantly telling us what we should do. There's so
many little systems that are tricking us and seducing us into this. But a part
of, you know, the subject matter of the film is talking about what do you do
with your every day? It's like looking at a huge painting that's either
beautiful or sad or horrific, but if you go zoom in on a tiny square, it's
completely meaningless and it's ugly, or it's dull and it doesn't have any
meaning. But if you know the big picture, it is actually a really important
part of that picture obviously, and that's how I think I view habits and
routines. T might be helpful for younger people or anybody actually, who wants
to do something over a long period. I read a book, I I'm sorry, I can't
remember the name, but it was some reporter or journalist who had gathered all
these habits and routines of politicians and scientists and artists. It was
just like a little book like that. And it was super interesting to see their
day-to-day life. It was really dull, but the work that these people produced! It
was all the big artists such as Picasso and all these people had some really
funny routines. Gertrude Stein apparently liked to go every morning with her
girlfriends to the countryside to sit in front of a cow and write.
Alexandra Bowman: (laughing) They're serene. They are
inspirational. I aspire to that level of peace.
Gísli Darri Halldórsson: I know it's cliché, but if you
write for 10 minutes every day for a week, suddenly in a week, you're so
invigorated and your day has meaning. If you do that in a year, suddenly the
year doesn't seem like a blur anymore. I think it's like the first thing people
should think about. Figure out what they want to say, who they are, who the
real them is - the ideal version, and
just kind of chip away every day and in a year, maybe they'll that at least
they'll be happy with what they put their mind to. I also experienced it first hand
because I was really not good at drawing. And there was that same thing, my
drawing teachers saying, “Oh, if you draw out 15 minutes a day, you'll be
amazed in a month.” Obviously you do [better] under the direction of a teacher
of course, but yeah, it's unbelievable.
Alexandra Bowman: Last year at the start of quarantine, I
challenged myself to draw one cat every day in April. And just because I would
feel bad for skipping a year, I'm doing that again this year. Even after a
week, I feel like I've improved and I already draw most days. But for some
reason, focusing deeply on something over the long term or doing something
little every day helps add up.
Gísli Darri Halldórsson: Your mental health is just also
for your happiness, to have meaning in your life. There's nothing sadder than
just thinking, “What did I do last week? Like what was I doing?” and there's
nothing, you know?
Alexandra Bowman: Yeah. I kind of enjoy looking back at my
Instagram and what I've drawn and thought, “This is evidence that I existed,
just to myself. Maybe it probably won't be remembered in 50 years or whatever,
but at least I know that I was alive and I was thinking and creative and used
this time.” I think that's really interesting.
(continued in part 2)
Gísli Darri Halldórsson: I don't know how to answer that… 
Alexandra Bowman: Speaking of filmmaking, what is your
next project?
