ottowa
The best description of who we are comes from an article written by Tina Paas for the Ottawa Film Festival;
"In an industry where the best bet is a safe bet, bolexbrothers studio is an anomaly. Flourishing in the shadow of so many sanitized conglomerates, the Bristol based studio is passing up the tried and and true techniques for the chance to test out new styles and bizarre concepts. Their subject matter, like their techniques, verge on scientific experiments; every film has the effect of peeling back the skin and exposing the guts of life, leaving the viewer both enlightened and a little queasy.
"The studio emerged out of a desire to be different, a pirate enclave outside the boundaries of the world of film and animation. Founded by Dave Borthwick in 1983, the bolexbrothers began as a small group of freelancers who honed their skills working primarily in the live action industry. Borthwick, then working as a cameraman for the BBC, teamed up with fellow cameraman Dave Riddett and Nick Upton, a 'natural all rounder’ with a penchant for pixilation. The trio were brought together by a nagging dissatisfaction with the terms and conditions that went along with the industry. “Our shared interest wasn’t in animation per se,” says Borthwick, “ it was more a frustration of having to work as specialists in film-making when in fact our interests were much more in the whole process from the conceptual through to directing, shooting and editing. The fact that I’ve ended up working in animation is due more to an unfailing fascination with the way film works.” Animation would have the most appeal for in it one could dissect and manipulate the minutiae in action, costume and set and each individual frame of film.
"Armed with a little more than intent, a pioneering spirit and naturally, a Bolex camera, Borthwick and his company began experimenting with various animation techniques in the form of “ very low budget short films” set to music. Out of these early films came a keen interest in combining live action with stop motion. ” Live action and stop frame animation seem to lie at opposite ends of a pretty broad spectrum and I’ve always been fascinated by that 'no man’s land' in between the two.” A friend of Borthwick's at the BBC heard about the techniques that they had been using and approached Borthwick to do a 10-minute piece for network television. The short came in the form of Tom Thumb, a dark little number loosely based on the 400-year old fairy tale. The story was a perfect vehicle for their burgeoning style, in that it contained both fiction and fantasy and loads of eccentricities. Appropriated throughout the centuries, the tale could at once contain wizards, fairies, kings and queens and had wee Tom sporting girdles & big hats, falling into lakes and puddings, being swallowed by cows, maimed by spiders and ingested by snakes. While there was no end to the scenarios, each tale was unified by a strong message - it was tough being a tiny guy in a big mean world. Keeping this in mind , Borthwick gave his rendition a more modern twist; little Tom is helpless against an ugly, far less pastoral, far more industrial world, where shifty bureaucratic misters, in a quest to leave no rock unturned , swallow Tom whole and spit him out. Unfortunately, the short didn't do so well on television, due to the fact that it was a "little too grotesque" for the slot they assigned it (Christmas). However, it did put the studio on the map in terms of garnering interest from the animation community and the festival circuit. A year later the BBC approached them to remake Tom Thumb as a feature length: The Secret Adventures of Tom Thumb.
"So how does a relatively unknown studio, with only a few short films under it's belt, deal with the prospect of creating a large film within a much larger time frame? Ordinarily, this would seem like a daunting feat, where noble artistic intentions are sacrificed to those intimidating high powers and big bucks. But Borthwick and his team hold on to their relatively unorthodox beliefs and the organic manner of film making that fueled their earlier projects. While the need for equipment necessitated the need for a larger studio the staff only increased by a handful. Borthwick continued to hire on people who were extremely interested in numerous , if not all aspects of film making. “It's an exciting way of working because it creates an environment in which ideas are stimulated and drawn from all quarters, making for a a much richer end result, something that is greater than the idea that you started with.” As director of the project he sought to provide inspiration to his crew rather than becoming a taskmaster. cont:
""Creative energy and expertise need to be reciprocal and mutually inspiring on all levels of production. It seems pretty obvious that any director who's entirely dependent on the crew to realize the film is seriously compromising the eventual vision they might have had."
"This free and easy manner of working with very little interference was aided by the fact that funding came from many companies, thus breaking it up into less worrisome amounts. After the initial start up funds provided by the BBC, the studio found it easier to attract other funding bodies. Support came from Manga Entertainment and La Sept TV in France as well as more unconventional sources such as John Paul Jones of Led Zeppelin fame who "just liked the project" and fellow business partner Richard Hutchison. The crew worked for 18 months and squeezed out a most bizarre film, which combined pixilated live actors with stop motion - a twisted trick where the inanimate was coaxed to life while the living were reduced to freezing their movements frame by frame. As in the initial short, the film explored the plight of the underdog and the shady, sweaty,sourly decaying side of life.
