Kensuke’s Kingdom Directors: Interview

Kingdom of KensukeIt is directed by Neil Boyle and Kirk Hendri, based on Michelle Morburgo’s novel, a hand -drawn feature that managed to disrupt the nominations of the Pavta and Annie Prize this year. The work movement focuses on a young boy named Michael (Aaron McGregor), who was taken by his family (Silian Murphy, Sally Hawkins and Ravi Cassidi) focused on a sailing journey. When the storm rolls, he and his dog are pushed, steel, outward and end up on a remote island where they should learn to survive on their own. It is about to lose all hope, Michael faces a painful, qualified Japanese soldier (Ken Watanabi), who was cut off there after his military boat turned during World War II.

Here, the deadline talks to the duo to make films about reviving this story to life.

The deadline: How did they come to this project?

Kirk Hendri: Sarah Radkelvi, director and producer, chose Michael Morpurgo, probably 20 years ago. She had this tremendous belief that would make a great movie. For her, it was a real passion project because it took 20 years of time to see it in seeing the final film that was shown last year. So she was really stuck in her and then bought it in Camilla [Deakin] Drain [Fielding] From Lupus, the main studio in London where we made the movie. I made some things for the Global Wildlife Fund at that time and was looking for managers and continued. I was working with Nile in a brushing company in Soho. We were developing our own projects, and I said, “Can Nile come on this trip as well?” She said, “Certainly.”

So we presented our copies of the movie and loved it. Since then, we have been on the plane, and we started this 10 -year flight to obtain me with Michael Morburgo, Sarah, Camella and Barnabi Sporier, another product, and we became intimate friends during this time and really believe in the project. Then, in the end, Covid was the one that really pushed the movie to production. We thought that Covid could end it during the first lock, but at that time BFI could not make any live movies due to insurance. But with animation, they said: “If you can prove that you can make it a distance, we will give you some money.” We can make it remotely because the technology has just came, as the enlargement enables you to share your screen and other programs where you can share the footage and go to the frame according to the frame and draw on it. It was very incredible. This is how we made it.

Neil Boyle: The great thing in that time period – there was nothing great in Covid – was that it took eight and a half years before we got the money to make the movie, then we finally got the money. We went and talked to the artists on board the plane and said: “See, this channel [feeling]. We are all isolated at the present time. We are isolated in our homes, bedrooms, in our studios, and this is a movie about isolated people and trying to make contacts. So what you feel now, put it in the movie. “

The deadline: This actor is great. How did you end up gathering everyone together?

Boyle: Well, the first thing to say is that they were all our first choice. So we were incredibly lucky to have a realistic list of wishes. The members of the younger team had read all the writers at school because in the UK, it is part of what they knew at school, so they knew all of this, some members of the older representatives team had read the book for their children. We had a list of wishes from the amazing actors, we went to them, and they all said yes. Everything was about the fact that they all loved Michael Morpurgo, a wonderful writer, who wanted to be part of the movie.

The deadline: What is the negotiation that you had to have in this movie?

Hendari: The main thing was that this was Frank Cotrell Boyce, the idea of ​​this screenwriter. In the book, Kensuke can speak a little English, so that Michael and Kensuke can speak to each other. Now, think Frank, let’s get rid of this idea and make them do not have any common language. When we read and obtained the script, we saw, this may be a silent movie. Neil and I really like to tell silent cinematic stories. It is the so -called Pure Cinema, where you should use cinematic means only to transfer story ideas and characters to the public. The audience should become a little more involved and do more detective work to find out what is going on instead of just telling characters with what is happening. So we really love this type of storytelling. Once Michael is washed into the sea alone, there is almost no dialogue. So it becomes basically a silent movie at that point.

Another thing is that we definitely do not want any lyrical songs, animals, animal dance, and the stereoscopic thing you get in youth films. In some sense, we did not want to talk to the audience. We believe that young people understand a lot of things. Because we remember to be young, we remember what was the case at the age of seven, eight, and we go to the films, and we really loved the films that did not speak to us. So this was not negotiable, let’s provide this to the current generation of children who will watch movies.

The deadline: Talk about the art style. How did you go to create your vision with animation?

Boyle: The most important thing for us to find the method was to make sure that the film was reasonable enough to feel that this moving character painted by hand is in danger. It is believed that he can starve to death or dehydration, affect himself, or even die. So there should be a certain level of nature. The island is like another character in the movie. So we needed these visual details rich in animation so that you can really believe this place.

An example of this will be when Kensuke recalls what happened tragically for his family in Nagasaki, so he draws that his missing family in the Japanese water brush style, then we felt that if you go inside his head, this will see this his family, as a Japanese waterproof that comes to life.

Hendari: Neil also said, because the island is mainly similar to the character, we really wanted to have enough details, so the audience felt that they were reaching this new world like Michael. You have this urban child who suddenly comes from the gray concrete modernity to this whole world. It is somewhat similar to the transit of black and white to Oz technology. It is like a new birth. What happens to you after you are born again symbolically somewhere and find yourself new and completely change it because of the process. This is a dramatic analizer that occurs in a lot of stories, especially in movies, because you can show it a lot.

The deadline: Michael’s path for me is very fun. He has a talent for not listening to what others tell him. But he has a tremendous growth at the end of the movie. Can you talk about what happened in filming that? Were you worried that the masses had found him slightly unwanted?

Boyle: Yes, the thing, it is clear that the movie had to have an arc. In order for Michel to learn a lesson in the end, he must start interviewing it. But you are right that we do not want to make it really hateful. There were early drafts of the text when we were working with Frank, as Michael would be almost a little wisdom in the way he spoke, and we were keen to try and get rid of that so that he did not do so. These lessons as he went.

What really helped him, to return to the actors, was Aaron McGregor. We looked at 40 or 50 children to play this role. We have found Aaron and the great thing in Aaron is that in reality Scottish, with this Scottish accent, but he can do an incredibly English English tone. But when we tested it and when we finally met him and we directed and worked with him, he is really a normal child. He does not have school plays on the stage, until he is an ordinary child. But there is another part of his brain that can be very ripe and can listen to the direction and can understand the technically that it needs to do. So we really helped us make Michael a lover.

Hendari: He had a beautiful weak quality. This is what the character really needs to be sympathetic when she behaves badly. So when he delivered this in the test sequence, it is clear that when we were doing the movie, this really helped make the character more attractive even when he was somewhat hateful or ignored his parents.

Boyle: Of course, we are very happy in a way that ignores his parents and does not listen to them because if he listens to them, we will not have a movie. It will not be clouded in the sea and will not enter this adventure. So in a strange way, it may be something that needs to be done. Perhaps he needed to be just a little hateful [laugh].

The deadline: How did you go about making the island and its animals feel vibrant? There are great details in these elements.

Hendari: The main theme of the film revolves around families. The film and the book revolve around some things, but we decided that one of the main things was about families. There is your blood family, then there are families that were found, whether they are strengthening or adopting or in Michael, they are a family with Kensuke and Orangens. Then, there is Kensuke who lost his family, but now he found a new family from Orangean, so we only thought the broader family [should be] From all creatures on Earth. So we applied this to every animal at all and all things on the island. Because the fishermen will come at some point and take some of these animals, this is the way we make it more effective emotionally, rather than just choosing some random animals for the public. We had to make her feel that she was the disintegration of families.

Boyle: In terms of animation, we were lucky. We had a wonderful animated manager named Peter Dod, who worked directly with animation on all animation, especially Kensuke, Michael, etc. But we had another painter who was working with us named Ludivine Berthouloux, a French painter who had a real feeling of animals. She loves to draw animals. We put it on scenes with Stella, the dog. She was doing these beautiful drawings, where the angle of the ears was only, what was the tail to do, etc. … She was doing it correctly using the dog’s dissection and not making them look like someone in a dog like a dog. We have made it start working on many other animals, and it was one of our main players in the end, while making sure that we were very detailed in our research.

We have conducted tons and tons of research using video clips that you can find on YouTube and BBC Wildlife and everything to make sure our animation has given original movements for each of these animals for each animal. Then pushed it enough so that you can get emotional contact with them until they feel very realistic. It was a little budget, but I think we pulled it. We are proud of that.

[This interview has been edited for length and clarity]