Interview: Searit Huluf talks Self
Addy Fong had the pleasure of chatting with animator/filmmaker Searit Huluf, who’s in Sydney to show her animated short, Self, as part of the Africa Film Fest’s Afrofutures Animation Screening and Q&A session. Self, Pixar’s first hybrid stop-motion animation was made as part of Pixar’s SparkShorts program:
Before we began, I was a little nervous, so I told Searit I cut my fringe at home the day before, ‘Sorry, you can see it’s kind of wonky, it looks like I’m a bit crazy. Don’t worry, it’s fine if we look bad, I’m going to transcribe this interview so no one will know.’ Thankfully, she laughed and recommended I watch an episode of Fleabag, ‘I love that you cut your fringe and that was the first thing you said to me’. After the interview I showed her my mug which is shaped like a T-Rex.
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I watched Self and found it quite emotional and beautifully made. Perhaps it’s the lack of dialogue, the use of music and sound design which strengthens the story’s overall feeling. I know you voiced the main character, and I can see your hair is like theirs, so the film is a very personal story to you, it has your likeness. I understand the film took about two years to make, so I was wondering about your creative process, not just writing, directing, and filming, but I guess working through those feelings of creating such a personal film?
Yeah, this is an immigrant African character and I wanted to do it justice, to talk about my mom’s immigration story and my own personal struggles of belonging. I’m Ethiopian American so I kind of hold two different worlds, two different cultures, and sometimes I feel like I don’t fit into either. So, I’m in this weird situation where I want to be more Ethiopian, but whatever I try doesn’t feel right, and when I try to be more American, I’m feel like I’m not really accepted because I don’t look like a typical American. These are some of the thoughts and feelings I had while writing the story, the first phase of filmmaking, just me figuring out the story I wanted to tell and specifically why. Self-sabotaging myself is just such a prominent pattern and theme in my life and I wanted to explore it, I wanted to challenge the animation medium because I think there’s a tendency to always write a happy ending type of film where everything’s solved and OK. I think this film is little more deeper, we leave it a bit open-ended and I like that because it’s kind of like a slice of life. Even though we see the decisions she makes, I think there’s still this question of, is going to happen again? How is she going to figure out who she is in her life?
You studied filmmaking and then you moved into animation. Is it easy for creatives to go between the two?
I studied at UCLA film school I was concentrating in stop motion and screen writing, but the program I was in was heavily a live action program. I studied animation but I was taking classes with the MBA students while still doing my live action work. I’m very grateful that I have both experiences because my goal in life is to be like Guillermo del Toro who does both animation and live action. I want to be able to do like Shape of Water and Pinocchio. I’m very grateful that I have the education doing both because there’s not a lot of directors who can do both. When you look at just like directors’ careers of doing both animation and live action, there’s like a lot of flops or like a big hurdle to get the grasp of both. So, primarily my career has really been in animation, I would say my day job’s animation, but I spend a lot of my weekends and nights working on live action short films. Now I’m kind of at this point of like, OK cool, I’ve done all these live action films and then I did Self, which is fully animated. Now I’ve directed a short film last fall that was hybrid animation live action cause I wanted to see what that experience would be like.
Oh cool, a new thing that you just finished in addition to Self?
Yeah, I’m a post-production of it right now.
So, you’re an animator. With video, I try to make short films and stuff, I use Premiere. What kind of software do you use to edit? I’m just curious.
I let my editors decide what software they want to use. For Pixar, we use Avid software and then for my live action film, it was also avid because my editor likes using that program, she’s familiar with it, so I don’t really have like a mandate. Even when I shot my live action film with my DP I’m like it has to be this camera but we kind of talked about it like this is the emotion and feeling I want in the film what camera do you think could help with that? Also, this is our budget. How much can we afford? I see these things all as tools in our toolbox and whatever tool will best help us tell the story I’m fine to use, I’m not really married to a specific program.
That’s great. You speak about how filmmaking’s such a collaborative process. For me, I’ve met so many people, filmmakers, and some can be perfectionists who don’t want to collaborate, you seem open to collaboration, which is cool. I have this weird misconception of animators being artists, introverts, hidden away in their dark room drawing whereas filmmaking seems a slightly more extroverted activity?
I’m such a team player. I love being in a team setting and working with other people and I think that is the extrovert side of me. I do think there’s some aspects of animation that fits an introvert, just slowly away animating all these shots or storyboarding or creating art for it but I love having a very collaborative kind of set. Even when I choose my department heads, I choose them because I want them to give me opinions and input on the story. What’s interesting about Self is that it is about an African immigrant character, but primarily our team was white but the fact that people on my team were able to identify with that universal feeling of not belonging was something that really struck with a lot of us.
As an example, I was shooting myself and acting out all the parts for all the stop motion shots and I sat in a room with my two stop motion animators. I was like, ‘Ok, let’s talk about all these shots. Do you think this is good?’ It’s collaborative because at the end of the day I’m working with experts. I’m not an animator expert nor an edit expert, I have these people because they are going to help tell the story I want to tell. So, it’s more about me leaning on them and not feeling like I must figure out everything myself.
It’s interesting you shoot yourself performing to show the animators what you want, how you want scenes to take place, the action, the story, is this your process on how you direct a scene? The feeling of scene through acting it out yourself, is this part of your process?
No, but it’s something new I did for the first time because we were in such a tight timeline and budget. I couldn’t ask any of the animators to redo any animation shots so the way to figure out a happy medium was me filming myself acting out all the parts so that we could all be on the same page of what we’re looking for. I do have to say that I am not an actress, so me getting in front of a camera was so awkward and uncomfortable and having to rewatch it with other people who were then giving me notes I’m like, I know I’m terrible, I get it, but they were very kind and I think it helped. Again, going back to collaboration, I think that’s the aspect of collaboration. I could have easily been like, here, I did it all, just do this, but I was like no, let’s have an open conversation about it. What do you think? Is this something that you think makes sense that Self would do?
I really like that. Even for me creatively, thinking that could be an interesting way to almost like live storyboard cause, I’ll be honest, my drawing skills are shit. I grew up wanting to be an animator. I like Shrek.
I love Shrek too.
And all those stop motion films, like Wallace and Gromit, but I can do clay figurines, my drawing skills are bad, but I hope I’m improving, but I think as a filmmaker, storyboarding is a thing that terrifies me. So, if I could do it through acting, maybe that’s an alternative.
Yeah, I know a lot of animators who do that too. If you watch some behind the scenes of feature films, animators will film themselves for certain shots. I think it helps them visualise what they’re trying to do too, so it’s a very good tool if you’re not shy.
You just have to get really drunk to get over the shyness or lock yourself in your room. That’s how creativity works for us right?
[Laughs] Exactly.
In Self there’s no dialogue but there’s sound design and composition in the film, I was wondering if this was for international distribution purposes? Because it’s easier to market it to an international audience, given the lack of translation, with costs that kind of thing?
I wish it was, but when I was writing the script, I was trying to write dialogue, and something about it felt inorganic and not right. Then I was like, OK, let me try narration but the narration felt cheap, and I felt like the story, like kind of, deflated. That’s when I was just like, I guess there’s just no dialogue, it’s just going to be action, description. I was like, is that OK? I go back and think about it and am like oh, that’s what animation is the best at. The thing about animation is that you don’t really need it, like if you focus on the acting and the movement you can tell a story. When I think about a lot of immigrant parents bonding with their kids, I know that animated films are a way to do that, because of the way the acting is, the way animation works, anyone can understand what the story is, even if they don’t speak the language. I wish I could be like, yeah, it’s to save money but it was more just like organically as I was writing the script.
Yeah, it’s almost a happy accident, it worked out for the best. I think it simplifies the story, and it works well. Thinking of stop motion animations with no dialogue I’m thinking of Pingu but I don’t know why
Pingu?
Pingu the one that’s Canadian with the penguin? The kids’ show? The one that goes ‘Meep Meep’? Sorry, just a random bit of trivia
No, I haven’t heard of him. [looks up Pingu] Awww, that’s cute and this is stop motion too.
Yeah, it’s stop motion. [laughs] I grew up watching it and have niche interests. You said you like Guillermo del Toro, the guy who did Pan’s Labyrinth. Do you like Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox cause that’s one of my favourite films.
Yeah, I also love Isle of Dogs. I love both of those films because sometimes when you watch a film, you kind of know how it ends but when I watch those two films, I literally have no idea how it’s going to end. I’m on this ride, this journey, this story, I’m so hooked in. So, yeah, very big fan.
What are your favorite animated films? Do you have a top 5?
I think for animated, I Lost My Body (2019) is one of my favorites. It’s a French film that came out a couple years ago. I also really love Only Yesterday (1991), which is like a Studio Ghibli film. Same with Howl’s Moving Castle (2004). Let’s see two more. I really love Incredibles (2004), that movie I remember when I was young and I watched it and my mind was blown, I was like, whoa, and Fantastic Mr. Fox (2009) is just really good too.
Ah, yeah. Incredibles, 2004, I think. Love that era. Incredibles, Wall-E. I like Wall-E.
Wall-E, it’s such a good film.
I watched another interview of yours and you describe the Self as a ‘stop motion hybrid film’. It’s very interesting cause you made the main character using stop motion and the other characters are computer generated. Can you talk about that, and I guess if that’s something you thought about as a director, like the technical aspects in showcasing the story?
Yeah, I think that I wanted to show different ways of her not belonging. I knew that she’s an African Immigrant character, I knew she was going to be made from wood, natural material but I think I was still craving more degrees of separation between her and the other characters, which we’ve been calling them ‘goldies’ internally because they look like gold people. I think that’s kind of the main thing that made the film click with the stop motion was just having her be the only character in stop motion versus everyone else is CG. What’s great is that it’s not untypical, if you watch a lot of stop motion films there’s actually a lot of CG and stop motion, so the idea of creating hybrid film is already existent, it’s not like we’re doing the impossible, but within Pixar, because we’ve never done stop motion, we were just like how do we even begin? We partnered with Tippett Studios, which is created by Phil Tippit. Like Jurassic Park, RoboCop, Star Wars films, he’s just like a stop motion legend. We worked with his team to figure out this hybrid setting and how to do the film speaking specifically to the technicalities because we have no experience in building stop motion puppets, so we really had them do that and all these stop motion shots because we just knew that’s not something in our wheelhouse.
I find it interesting thinking about the hybrid form of stop motion and computer-generated CG used in Self, the way it’s lit, you incorporate virtual lighting with real lights as part of the filmmaking process and try to balance those elements. It’s a challenge but like you said before, it’s all about collaborating, giving other people control, and trying to figure things out together. Is this generally how you approach filmmaking/animating/creativity?
Yeah, I think it leads in with curiosity. I grew up being very curious and because I come from a poor family and my mother, couldn’t really speak English well, I knew that if I wanted something I knew I couldn’t rely on people to do it. I had to be that person to guide my own ship and figure out how to do it and I learned that from such a young age. So, when I was making my own independent live action films, there was a sense of, I really want to do this, I’m very curious about it, I knew it won’t be given to me, I have to do the work. That’s kind of my motto and mindset, lead by curiosity, take it one step at a time, and don’t overthink it. That was kind of the approach we had with stop motion. Again, for Self we’re very focused we had Tippett, this is like their bread and butter so that was really helpful. I think for us, we also allow ourselves to be curious and be like how do we want to make this film, do we want to have a relationship with Tippett and what are our kind of goals, hopes of Self being the only stop motion puppet in this kind of CG world?
Amazing. I love that you talk about curiosity, I feel like maybe I have that too, so it’s very inspiring for me personally, that maybe it’s what drives creatives to continue is that curiosity. Do you have any advice or words of wisdom to other animators/filmmakers?
Yeah, advice I always give to people is, and I hate saying this because it sounds so generic, but it’s to just do it. I think at times we become so precious with ourselves and our ideas and what we want to do. I remember when I made my first short film and how insecure I felt about myself, because I think my taste in films was so much higher than my skill set, and my skill set couldn’t reach my taste value. I think there was something about that that felt very heartbreaking at the time. I want people, especially younger people, like students to understand, don’t put all your eggs in one basket, in one film. You are creative, you are an artist, you have a lot of ideas and don’t feel like this one idea is going to be the thing. When it doesn’t pan out just go on to the next one and just keep going.
For more info:
Africa Film Fest Australia: https://www.africafilmfest.au
Searit Huluf: https://www.searithuluf.com.
Interview by Addy Fong.
