a film by
Nirvan Mullick
[PRESS KIT]
"The Box Man is actually inspired by a Kobo Abe novel but could easily (and uncannily) apply to the US these days and the culture of fear we both live in and created for ourselves."- Chas of CHASbah, Florida Film Festival
"It's like Aardman goes film noir; a stop-motion Kafka-esque fable."- Bumpershoot, Seattle Weekly
"An eerie, wordless stunner..." - Richard von Busack, Metro News
"Fucking fascinating..." -Jackson's Mom
THE BOX MAN
SHORT
SYNOPSIS
A disturbing encounter between a man and a
cardboard box.
[35mm TRT: 5 min 20 sec]
LONG SYNOPSIS
In a cold empty city, a man notices a cardboard box abandoned on a street corner. The box has a small rectangular slit that compels him to take a closer look inside. . . Inspired by The Box Man, a 1974 novel by Japanese existentialist Kobo Abe (Woman in the Dunes), stop-motion animation explores the anxiety of being seen.
FOR A DETAILED PLOT SUMMARY, CLICK HERE. (Contains spoilers.)
DIRECTOR'S BIO: NIRVAN MULLICK
Philosophy-student-turned-animator, Nirvan has been animating independently since 1997. He was led to experiment with animation through an idea of 'perfect moments'- the idea of creating small moments no matter how long they take to make. ‘The Box Man’ was his CalArts thesis film and has played in over 50 festivals worldwide, including Cannes and Annecy, winning numerous awards. In 2003, Nirvan directed the title sequence animation for the New Line feature Willard, starring Crispin Glover. He has developed an animated television series for Nelvana (Beetlejuice) based on his first film, Fish Eye Guy, and is currently writing/directing his first live-action feature film which is being produced by Michael Besman (About Schmidt, The Opposite of Sex). For more of his work, including his 70mm epic work in progress 'The 1 Second Film', visit www.nirvan.com.
MUSICIAN'S BIO: CHARLIE MUSSELWHITE
Charlie Musselwhite is a world renowned harmonica musician whose body of work comprises over 20 albums. He has been a guest artist on countless other albums, such as: Tom Waits’ MULE VARIATIONS, Bonnie Raitt’s Grammy award-winning LONGING IN THEIR HEARTS; The Blind Boys of Alabama’s Grammy-winning SPIRIT OF THE CENTURY; and even playing the driving harmonica on INXS’ SUICIDE BLONDE. He was also a longtime compadre and musical partner of John Lee Hooker. With 6 Grammy nominations and 14 W.C. Handy awards to his credit, Charlie is firmly entrenched in musical history and has toured world wide. Charlie himself is simply interested in sound – as he puts it, "music from the heart": international, cross-cultural, modern, and classic, those sounds and tones that have feeling.
DIRECTOR'S FILMOGRAPHY:
Fish Eye Guy and Why the Trees Died (1998)
The Box Man (2002)
The Three of Us (2003)
The One Second Film (WORK IN PROGRESS)
CREDITS
Written, Directed and Animated by Nirvan Mullick
Music by Charlie Musselwhite
Sound Design Rob Cairns
Digital Post-production Jamie Caliri and Benjamin Goldman
Editor Jackson George
Developing and Processing made possible by a FotoKem student grant
Inspired by Kobo Abe’s novel, The Box Man
Made at CalArts
© nirvan mullick 2002
Festival Screenings and
Awards
CANNES ~ Official Selection Cinéfondation
2003
AFI FEST 2002 - *Audience Choice
Award for Best Int’l Short Film*, *Jury Prize
for Special Achievement in Animation*
STUDENT ACADEMY AWARD 2003 National Finalist
(*to be continued...)
CINEQUEST 2003 *Jury Prize- Best Animated
Short*
BUMPERSHOOT- ONE REEL Film Festival 2003 *Best
Animation*
NY EXPO of Short Film and Video *Best Debut- Animation*
BROOKLYN Int’l Film Festival *Best Animation*
MOVING SIDEWALK Film Festival *Best Animation*
TEMECULA VALLEY *Audience Choice Award for Best Int’l Short Film*,*Jury
Prize for Special Achievement in Animation*
DEEP ELLUM Film Festival *Best Animation*
SANTA MONICA Film Festival *Best Animation*
CLEVELAND Int’l Film Festival *Honorable Mention Animation*
SITGES 2003 - *Special Mention for mise-en-scene*
* The Box Man was one of 5 National Finalists for the 2003
Student Acadamy Awards, but was not available to participate in the final
judging due to a print traffic error. The Box Man will be an automatic finalist
for the 2004 Student Academy Award.
Other screenings include:
ANNECY 2003, SXSW, RESFEST 2003, San Francisco Int’l Film Festival, Ottowa
Int’l Student Animation Festival, Atlanta Int’l Film Festival, Independent
Film Festival of Boston, Florida Film Festival, Sarasota Film Festival, Ojai
Film Festival , Portland Int’l Film Festival, Anima 2003, Durango Film
Festival, iMAGES Festival of Independent Film & Video, Philadelphia Int’l
Film Festival, Newport Beach Film Festival, Kansas City Jubilee, Taiwain Int’l
Animation Festival, Hamburg Short Film Festival, Waterfront Film Festival,
First Glance Film Festival, Palm Springs Int’l Short Film Festival, Malibu
Int’l Film Festival, Wiesbaden Film Festival, Semarang Int’l Film
Festival, TORCON Sci-Fi Festival
My film is inspired by Kobo Abe’s 1974 novel, The Box Man. I
originally story-boarded the film for Mark
Osbourn's stop-motion class during my first week at CalArts.
We were to board a simple idea that could be completed in two weeks. I ended
up working on "The Three of Us"
for the class that year, but kept developing The Box Man. After Charlie
Musselwhite agreed to record music, I made more elaborate story-boards.
I felt the idea deserved more time than two weeks and ended up taking almost
two years (I spent three weeks filming the opening shot alone).
The
Production
- The 5 minute film took 2 years to make.
- The film was a CalArts student thesis project.
- Inspired by Kobo Abe’s 1974 novel.
- Student Grant from FotoKem paid for lab costs.
-
Transfered from High Def to 35mm film courtesy of Foto Kem.
Nirvan spent two years making the five minute film. He shot The Box Man while at CalArts. Studio time was limited to 2 weeks per semester. In order to get extra shooting time, Nirvan would use whatever time wasn't being used. He once even paid a student fifty bucks for her shooting time.
An average shot would take three days to set up and light and another day or two to animate. The elaborate opening shot took two weeks. The physical production lasted a year and a half. Six months were spent making the puppet and sets (one month alone was devoted to carving brick walls). The animation was spread out over 8 months, working around other student’s schedules.
Sharing a studio meant having to break down elaborate setups after not having slept for days. There was rarely time to develop film and see if a shot had come out before having to break down a set. Near the end of the production, Nirvan had already graduated and no longer had official access. He would sneak into the space at night, borrowing equipment to get the last shots done. Post-Production lasted 3 months.
Nirvan was also working on The 1 Second Film during this time, whenever he couldn't work on The Box Man.
KY Jelly
The effect of water running in the gutters was achieved by using KY
Jelly and brushing it between each frame. One time I ran out of KY in the
middle of a shot. It was four in the morning so I had to run to the 24 hour
grocery store, having not changed clothes or shaved in a week, and buy a tube
of KY. I knew this was going to be embarassing, so to make it as absurd as
possible, I also bought a big cucumber, just to see if the cashier was paying
attention.
The most grueling shot was my opening sequence; a one minute continuous camera move, which is a very difficult thing to do with stop-motion animation because you only have one chance to get it right. It took 9 days to program the camera and set up the shot and another 7 days to animate it. The shot involved an elaborate two part camera move that I wanted to appear seamless, but during the shot, after having spent five days animating the puppet into position, a motor in the camera stopped working. In animation you don’t want to even touch the camera, yet alone take it apart in the middle of a shot, but that’s what we had to do. To fix the shot I needed to create a two frame dissolve in post; and to do that I had to transfer the entire film to digital files, but that is another story. . .
The
Lucky FotoKem Grant
Getting the FotoKem student grant was a lucky break. I was in FotoKem’s
lobby and overheard an employee describing the grant to a USC teacher. This
was a new grant being offered to every local film school. It would pay for
lab fees all the way to the answer print. I found out that CalArts had not
heard of the program. So I brought the grant to my school’s attention.
An entire year went by and nothing happened with the grant. Meanwhile, I had
finished building my sets and was ready to start filming. I made follow up
calls to FotoKem, got updates about the grant, and forwarded them to my school.
I kept pestering the administration until ultimately they just gave me the
grant so that it didn’t go unused.
Having the grant allowed me to shoot on 35mm. It also changed the way I could work because I no longer had to worry about minimum processing fees, which add up in animation. Usually I would have to wait until I’d shot a hundred foot roll of film before processing, which could be three weeks of shooting, but now I could break off each shot when I was through, even if it was only a few feet, and see if it turned out before breaking down an elaborate set. Which is really the way to go if you can afford it, and suddenly I could.
Technical Details
(High Def Film Transfer)
Though originally shot on 35mm, the film
was transferred to High Def for post-production and then went back out
to film from the digital files. The 1920 x 1080 digital files were stored
on a Western Digital 80G Firewire Drive and taken to home computers. Once
the film was in the digital realm, we (Benjamin
Goldman and Jamie Caliri)
used After Effects, Final Cut Pro, and Photoshop to fix mistakes and polish
the film in ways that an optical printer could not have done. I can't
give Jamie and Benji enough credit for the work they put in, they spent
hundreds of hours to make their labor invisible, they fixed camera bumps,
out of focus shots, lighting problems, screen direction, animation, color
timing, editing and lots of other stuff in ways that no one will ever
notice. Once the film was polished, we went back out to film courtesy
of Mike Brodersen and David Rosenthal at FotoKem’s Digital Division,
who donated services not covered by FotoKem’s Student Grant.
Because I started on film, we were able to keep the
image quality very high, much higher than if we had started with High Def.
THE MUSIC (and Charlie Musselwhite)
I saw Charlie Musselwhite at a concert when The Box Man was
still in its early stages. I felt a similarity between the hollow atmosphere
in my film and the way Charlie played harmonica on Mule Variations.
After the
show I asked Charlie if he would consider working on an animated student film.
I was very excited when he said yes. Most people won't even recognize that
the music in the film is coming from a harmonica, which I think is cool. He
can play harmonica in unconventional ways, which is what I like about animation.
Charlie was very generous with his time, incredibly modest and a real honor
to work with.
FILMMAKER STATEMENTS
About The Box Man
I made The Box Man as a reflection of how I was not feeling at the time. It
is a very cold film, and if it expresses an emotion, it’s a lack of emotion.
I was getting over a relationship at the time, so the theme of isolation came
naturally. The film is in part about the difference between seeing and being
seen, and how we isolate ourselves in an attempt to be in control. In many
ways I think the film is as political as it is personal.
About Animation
I've always liked the idea of 'perfect moments' in animation; the compressing of so much time and effort into small moments. My favorite part of animation is the process, the things that happen in-between the frames that no one ever sees. The invisibility of the labor is attractive to me. I can lose track of time and spend hundreds of hours to make a few seconds of film.
The Box Man is different for me in that I tried to focus on basic story telling. I was also trying to use stop-motion in a very realistic way to create a sense of alienation; so that the world has a sense of reality but there is something not quite right about it. The film is in part about isolation, as was the process of making this film.
As a fine art form, animation is relatively obscure and there still seems a great deal of room for individuals to create their own voice. Perhaps because the medium has yet to reach a wide audience in noncommercial ways.
