‘Olivia & the Clouds’ Director Tomás Pichardo Espaillat Interview

Through the ideas and memories of its crew, Annecy __ “Olivia & the Clouds” jumped through multiple animation and live formats. This movie – only the third animation feature that was produced in dominican republicAccording to its director Tomás Pichardo Espaillat -Paper, film, scattered animation, stopping movement, two -dimensional digital animation, endoscopy, scraps and more.

The story itself revolves around a group of people – Olivia, Barbara, Mauricio and Ramon – are all linked to previous and current relationships with each other, which are the different methods of the film that represent the emotional distance between them.

The director Pichardo comes from the background of action, video and fine arts. Olivia and clouds, in its style and story, depends on the breadth of the experiment. When the film is shown at this year’s festival, diverse Talk to the director about his mixed path between media, domainic animation scene and learning to move the job.

What sparked the idea of ​​”Olivia and clouds”? Was it always intended to be moving across different means?

For the story, some short films that never occurred, as I realized, over time, “Oh, these characters communicate with each other”, then began to create a path between them.

It was a long process from the idea to the end of production – about 10 years. Most of this happened because, from the Dominican Republic, we have a very small animation industry and a small animation community, and during the first years, it was smaller. You can calculate the number of professional animation on one or hands. So there were not many opportunities to get projects like this. But with time, there were more opportunities.

Regarding different methods and technologies, we quickly realized that most of the animation that did not have the same background or the same education in animation.

We understood that this will not succeed for us to make a feature that was just one way. What we have tried to bring is that every animated painter works in its own style, and it is completely suitable with the personal views.

Regarding the idea and how the project came, I came from making short films. Most of these short films were a way for me to learn a new technology, as we did not have an animation school at that time.

I also did for their own account to Ted-. They have this part on YouTube where they put a lot of animation, and I took each project as a way to learn one specific technology, something new. I benefited from this in the sense of using it as a teacher. So if they give me creative freedom, I think, “I want to do something as animated drawings.” Or I will do one in the stopping movement. So I was learning this meaning too.

How did you discover the location of these different animation patterns inside that story?

I always took all my short films, and even if they were completely different, I tried to put them together as an amendment to myself. So I was playing a lot while reshaping my own work. But this is also because most of the people working in the movie were former students. I knew them well – how they work. So for some animation, I gave them the text program with full animation and everything and said: “This is what you will be in the drawings.”

With others, they will deal with more abstract animation or playing with feelings, and I would like to give them one word or expression. One sequence, a Bachata sequence in the bar, was made by six painters, all of whom worked regardless of each other. So I was giving them different ideas and asking them not to see what others are doing. Then I received all these materials; It was chaos and madness.

When talking about materials, one of the great things was the different textures you were using, such as the incisors that looked like bills.

Paper is something I used to use a lot – not in my films, but I came from fine arts, so I did a lot of pieces made of cardboard and sculptures and all of that. As for bills, it is because some of the story elements are of my past or people around me.

And when I was building Ramon as a character – my father is a trade engineer – he always made graphics on bills, on any kind of paper he could get, and made all these graphic paintings. So I thought, “What if I took all these bills, all these elements and all these messages and everything and made them in this person?” So I was taking all these different textures, and I see what they can bring to the story, or perhaps remind me of something of the past.

You have mentioned the change of the Dominican animation scene, even while you were working on the movie. What about the industry reflected in the production of the film?

We faced many challenges and things that occur. For example, in the Dominican Republic, we are strongly affected by American culture, films and animation it produces.

So the concept of animation here is the traditional Disney and Boxar animation, and 3D animation. If you make things out of this it is very rare, and sometimes they do not understand them when you try to explain them to them. For example, when I was trying to get money for “Olivia & The Clouds”, to shoot the SUPER 8 which contains animation elements over it, we had to ask for permission to register on this street specified in this field. They were like, “Isn’t this animation? What do you do?”

We also had the Chairman of the Film Committee during the project. The new is half Dominican, half of Russia, so she grew up as she watched a lot of different Soviet animation. I understood very well that the animation has all these ways. Many programs and financing have merged in the film industry, and this helped a lot, everything grows and develops at the same time.

With this concept, when we released the film, we presented an exhibition in the contemporary museum in the country. What we did is to dismantle the entire movie, and we made an exhibition for a full month. That full idea of ​​the ability of new people to understand how to make animation, as well as all these different processes.

Do you think that these mixed technologies are a situation you want to work again, or do you imagine that you will focus more on one?

It depends. In my short films, I love playing with different techniques, but I sometimes try to understand what the concept needs of animation. Olivia had the idea of ​​different views of the same memory, so I worked for me to have different patterns.

Now I write a new project in cooperation with one of the animated “Olivia”. It is the person who did all the clay animation, such as kissing the couple and the scene that turns into abstract. The story we are working on contains natural and more “cunning” elements: more coal, pastels, textiles, and more hand, because this is what the story requires. I think the mixing of the media will never leave me, because it was in the movie “My Films in All” and short films as well, but it changes depending on the story and what it means.