Go behind the scenes of the, Oscar nominated, Animated Feature Film, "Flow".
This weekend, “Flow”, an independent animated feature film by Latvian filmmaker Gints Zilbalodis, will be competing against the likes of “Inside Out 2” and “The Wild Robot” at the 97th Academy Awards ceremony.
Having already racked up a vast array of awards on the festival circuit and, with the recent addition of the Golden Globe for Best Animated Feature Film, Flow may well be adding an Oscar to the collection, despite strong competition.
Gints Zilbalodis is a filmmaker whose work I’ve followed over the years since watching his first short film Aqua. Made whilst in high school, about a cat facing it’s fear of water, it is the idea that he later expanded into the film Flow.
After creating a number of other short films, Gints made the bold choice to tackle his first feature film.
This film, “Away”, released in 2019, was a remarkable achievement since it was made entirely solo, with Gints not only writing, directing, and animating the film, but also composing the score.
After achieving moderate success with Away, Gints was able to find the funding to develop his next film, Flow. Whilst still operating on a tiny budget compared to other films, he was now able to expand the team of people he was working with.
He brought in a number of people to work in a small studio in Latvia whilst also collaborating with French and Belgian studios for the animation.
Despite having a team, he still tackled large parts of the production himself, including taking sole responsibility for the animatic and lighting, and, once again, contributing to the score.
Having always worked solo before, one of his biggest challenges was learning to direct others and work as part of a team, something which mirrored a central theme of the film since the animals have to learn to work together.
Whilst he had previously made use of Maya, Gints decided to switch to Blender for the creation of Flow, primarily because of the EEVEE render engine. This allowed him to work quickly, something important for low budget productions, whilst still creating a high quality result.
Interestingly, he chose not to create storyboards for the film, instead jumping straight into 3D with rough versions of the models. This allowed for experimentation with the camera placement and the creation of long takes with sweeping camera moves which would have been difficult to storyboard.
This short making of featurette provides an interesting glimpse behind the scenes of the production.
If you’d like to dive further into the making of the film, there is also an interesting interview with Gints Zilbalodis on the Blender website.
And, if you use Blender, you will be seeing a lot more of this particular cat since Flow will be featured on the splash screen of the upcoming Blender 4.4.
I find films such as Flow, and filmmakers like Gints Zilbalodis, inspiring since they show that there’s more than one way to make a movie.
With creativity and passion it’s truly possible to create stories which can go up against those from big studios with vast budgets. And, with open source tools such as Blender, the technology to bring those stories to life is available to anyone.
