“It is [like] A film by Pedro Almodóvar, but animated, “said the creator and director Gonzalo Cordova for women on Friday,” Gonzalo Cordova, during an Annecy work session in progress.
The influence of the Spanish filmmaker can be seen in the very structure of the title of the program and the bright colors of sets and costumes appearing in this next swimming show for adults.
Pitching in a panel of progress works of the Annecy animation festival, Cordova, formerly a writer of “Tuca & Bertie”, linked the show to his family connection with the equator. The initial idea came from the move of Cordova in the United States at the age of five and its distance from the practice of people eating guinea pigs.
This has turned into the overall intrigue of “women wearing shoulders”. Mainly located in Quito, in Ecuador, the program follows a rich woman who moves to the country, seeking to exploit the guinea pigs and transform them into a company. But the series is also affected by the absurd: to start, the guinea pigs are massive. “These are the size of people and can be fought in corrida rings,” said Cordova.
The current work session has shown other intentionally stupid clips of non -sequential scenes, such as a woman adopting a duck in her meat business, and in response, imagining herself dancing and a novelist one of the aquatic birds. Others presented a character explaining to be welded by a slideshow and a woman finding the side of the priest of a confession cabin occupied by a pigeon.
To build the show, Cordova connected to the Cinema Fantasma studio, which also launches “Je suis Frankelda” – the first animated feature in Stop -motion produced in Mexico – at this year festival. The director of episode, artistic director and production designer Ana Coronilla, and the Founders of Cinema Fantama Roy and Arturo Ambriz spoke at the panel of their collaboration with Cordova.
Coronilla has talked a lot about design work and how “when you design for stop motion, you have to think about all the other departments of your studio – how the costumes will affect animation and construction.”
In an interview Variety After the session, Coronilla, who produced certain episodes of the show and worked on the development of his look, described how they used mixed media to manage the time and the cost of building sets, which also allowed freedom to experience spaces.
3D printing was also useful for puppets. The series pilot was entirely handmade, with Roy Ambriz describing how much he has evolved, in particular with the 3D -printed puppet pieces. “At first, we were a little afraid because we like to do everything manually,” he said, “but we then understood that it was also a manual. The programs always allow you to use them as clay.”
But a large part of the conception of production, especially the costumes, came somewhere even more personal: the conceptions of the fashion school of Cordova’s mother. His creations were among the first images that Cordova showed the Cinema Fantasma team. The filmmaker’s wife, Rachel, also consulted on the elements of the series fashion, tilting the most specific shoulder and silhouettes associated with the time.
“Women wearing shoulders”
Credit: Adult swimming
Their feature film “I am Frankelda” appeared during the panel, while the productions occur simultaneously. “The sets were literally right next to each other to the point that they were just separated by a black fabric,” said Cordova. “So you enter, see a monster, then you would go on the other side and see a puppet dancing.” (Coronilla sounded to clarify that the puppet was dancing with a duck.)
The crew was often shared between the two, a process that Roy Ambriz describes as “crazy” because the productions each had their own identity and their mood. “We have a system in our” war room “, as we call it, where we make all decisions,” said Ambriz. “He was full of white paintings with a lot of cards, and it was as if we were paranoid, by connecting things” (he mimicked connections on an inquiry committee). He continued to explain that logistics came to the characters of “women wearing” women “using many different cabinets.
For the extras, they would reuse the bodies and change the heads. Coronilla explained that the simple fact of keeping a trace of all the parts of moving puppets was a challenge in itself, especially with misadventures. “You will have different situations:” Oh, this puppet broke a finger, you have to adjust the wig on it, we have to change the clothes on it “”, she said. “And you use all the time, and sometimes you should know exactly which puppet of the animator has in which together.”
In addition to keeping the right deadlines, it was also a challenge overall for the studio to work in a new style, according to Arturo Ambriz. “It was one of the main directions why [Roy] And I did not run any of the episodes, “he added.” We were involved in the driver’s direction, but we thought we created a toolbox, and now Gonzalo needs to have access to the complete toolbox, but without our interfering. “Cordova replied that he had learned a lot about work with Stop Motion, one thing being flexibility:” You have to let the soul of the cliché be what guides you and not the specificities of the blow. “
Coronilla also talked about the meeting in the middle of puppet physics and the whole. “The movements of the camera you can do in this environment, you must have a certain flexibility because Gonzalo would have this reference, and although they are incredible, there are certain things that are physically impossible to do,” she said. “But at the same time, we had freedom and creativity to change the things we knew.”
The two existing sets in parallel can have created logistics chaos, but it has also solved so many problems. Ambriz said that the opportunity itself was enriching, saying that for the animators, the transition from the animation of monsters to more daily circumstances was a good experience. He described the process as a dance, the productions in partnership learning each of the other. Sometimes the solutions were more direct in nature. The team recalled that the director of photography Fernanda G. Manzur using students from a “Frankelda” puppet as replacements for a “Women”, for more expressiveness.
“Women wearing shoulders”
Credit: Adult swimming
Cordova also studied erotic thrillers by considering the tone of the show. “People like Brian de Palma, we also looked at” working girl “, which had a great influence,” he said. “What I found is that if you try to imitate them, you just get a copy of a copy.”
So, to get the right adjustment, they went to the source. “At the time when Todd Haynes did” far from heaven “, it was like a gateway drug to Douglas Sirk,” said Cordova, “who was a gateway drug for, you know,` `lava to heave ”, which was a great influence. William Wyler’s films as the letter” and I wanted to exploit in this same inspiration. “
By discussing “Leave Her to Heaven” by John M. Stahl, Cordova recalled that the team “referred to this scene where [Gene Tierney] throws herself on the stairs because she does not want to have a baby “, reproducing the tension as well as the increased tone.” There is also the one where she disperses her father’s ashes while majestically going up on a horse, the chin is very high, “added Cordova.” Many of this series comes back to this “ chin chin ”. “”
A love of kitsch is important for “women carrying shoulder shoulders”, but the creators have recognized that the pursuit of this tone is a delicate balance. “If you are doing the camp intentionally, you must forget that you are doing the camp and you have to be really sincere.”
The team admitted that sometimes they found this sweet spot and sometimes they did not do it. But the seriousness remains important. “You must think that you are going to make the public cry even if the scene concerns a fucking duck,” said Cordova. The conversation turned to a scene of “Shin Kamer Rider”, where the main character has a serious conversation and finished it by solemnly making a standing backflip before leaving on his motorcycle. Cordova replied: “There could be a scene like this here.”
“Women wearing shoulders” will be published on August 17 on Adult Swim.
