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By Asnah Anver
It is not often that one hears a Sri Lankan name announced as a winner at prestigious film award shows. However at this year’s British Academy Film and Television Awards (BAFTAs) ceremony, one such name stood out – that of Anushka Kishani Naanayakkara, who won in the category of British Short Animation for her film ‘A Love Story’.
One Saturday morning following the win, the Daily FT got in touch with Anushka over Skype to discuss ‘A Love Story’, the intricacies of its filmmaking process, her Sri Lankan roots and love for animation film making. Cheerful and conversational Anushka, who prefers to be called Nush (“if people call me Anushka it sounds a bit like people are telling me off”), patiently explained to a novice like me the technicalities of animation film, pulling out the colourful puppet from ‘A Love Story’ to demonstrate at one point. It was almost like catching up with a friend.
Anushka was born in Loughborough, UK but her family moved to her mother’s hometown of Akuressa in the south of Sri Lanka when she was nine years old. Following the move, Anushka was enrolled at Sujatha Vidyalaya in Matara, where she studied up until the Ordinary Level (O/L) Examinations, spending a good chunk of her childhood and adolescence here in Sri Lanka. Anushka did not know how to speak Sinhala when she first came to Sri Lanka and was new to the all girl’s schooling system, but said she was made to feel welcome. After her O/Ls Anushka moved back to England where she continued her studies and currently resides.
Anushka’s path to animation was not a straightforward one. “I was first going to do engineering because everyone around me did engineering.” She even enrolled to pursue engineering, but soon found she did not ‘take to it.’ This was when she decided to study art instead, completing a one-year diploma in Art and Design at Bourville College before moving to London to do her B.A in Graphic Design.
It was in London that Anushka was first exposed to the world of animation. One of the early influences Anushka cites is Jan Švankmajer, a Czech filmmaker and artist who uses different materials such as clay and food to convey fascinating stories in stop motion animation. Anushka says that was when she started looking into animation – “even though I was on a graphic design course, my final project was in animation”.
For a few years after her degree, Anushka would work on personal projects, but because she was a self-taught animator, things were not always smooth. And so, deciding to get serious about animation, Anushka began applying to MA courses. After a few failed attempts, Anushka successfully applied to the National Film and Television School (NFTS) where she followed a course in ‘Directing Animation’ for two years. Needless to say, it worked out well for Anushka, whose award winning film ‘A Love Story’ was made as her graduation project for the MA.
‘A Love Story’ is a visually beautiful and conceptually interesting exploration of love, through two woolly beings who fall in love, only to then encounter a problem. At just seven minutes, the film which is based on a personal experience, captures the complexities of love sensitively and with a subtle poetic elegance.
The length of the film belies the detail and process that went into it, taking a year and a half before completion in June 2016.Because of the technicalities of the medium, one day would produce a mere few seconds of animation. Although it is painstaking work, Anushka who also animated 75% of the film says the result is rewarding: “You can spend a whole day in a dark room trying to work with a puppet, and that moment you just press the button where it moves, it›s this crazy euphoria pleasure, like magic. Its hard work but it’s such a pleasure.”
Speaking to Anushka it becomes evident that the film is a collaborative project bringing in multiple creative individuals, ranging from a writer, to a professional animator, production designer, among others. Although Anushka has worked on a few projects earlier, this was the first time she worked with a team at this level and “really understood what it is to be a director,” to manage creative team members and their ideas. Reflecting on her experience of working with like-minded people, Anushka states it very important “to have the people who you work with understand your vision”. In fact when I ask her whether her Sri Lankan experience has influenced her work, it is this aspect that she points to: “even though it may not directly influence what you see on screen, it has definitely influenced the way I work with people.” This, Anushka stresses is a very important aspect of filmmaking.
As the film has no dialogue, the writing process was quite different. Anushka and writer Elena Ruscombe-King did not use a script, but a beat sheet (which Anushka explained is used to track the main points of the story) visualising a language through the wool, with symbols, colours, and actions standing in for words.
There was also a lot of discussion on the visual tone of the film. Anushka wanted the film’s visuals to be poetic and artistic almost like a painting: “You know when you look at a painting you just kind of fall into it and stare at it and let it take you on a journey? That is kind of what the tone is for the film.”
This is also why there is no dialogue as Anushka felt that dialogue would interrupt this falling into the film. When I later ask Anushka what influences and inspires her, her answer reflects this thought. Pausing for a moment she says, “You can just go to an exhibition or a museum and get inspired….everything is communicating an idea, trying to tell a story and connect with you. There are so many things that are inspiring.”
Music and sound was also an integral component in setting this tone. The score composed by Victor Hugo Fumagalli was thus approached as a means of helping the narrative and the characters, with instruments used for ‘the blue character’ to bring out its colourful personality, and vocal, voice like sound used for the white character to give the effect of it narrating the film.
Interestingly, the two puppets do not have an explicit gender. Anushka says that in the developing process the characters did have genders, but when showing the animatic to the school the genders would often be reversed and swapped, making Anushka rethink the earlier conceptualisation: “I actually thought this film doesn’t need gender because it is not about gender it is about two beings…whatever people have been through they can understand it the way they want to. So I thought it would be nice to keep it open.”
Reflecting on the challenges, Anushka states that unlike, other forms of hand drawn animation, with stop motion animation there is no way of showing the visuals to stakeholders before making the puppets and the final look. “It’s just my personal opinion that it’s a bit difficult to make people see what you see.” Even in the case of ‘A Love Story’ it was only when Anushka did a test with one of the draft puppets that people understood the visuals and the world of the film.
Even after completing of the film, from June-October of last year, Anushka diligently applied to as many as 200 film festivals. This came with a lot of rejection. But ultimately the effort paid off when the film got selected to a few festivals, making it eligible for the BAFTAs.
You can sense the excitement when Anushka talks about the BAFTA experience. Anushka says when they found out that they were nominated there were tears. Recalling the win Anushka marvelled that “it was a different world…kind of like for a moment in your life you pass through a different world.” Mostly though for Anushka, the win was rewarding because ‘making the film was so difficult.’
When asked whether longer feature animation films can be expected, Anushka says she would love to do a stop motion feature but is realistic about the big budget and funding required as well as the long period it takes for a feature length animation film. “We just have to see what the future holds. That’s what I always say.”
Before I go, Anushka shows me her BAFTA award with her name engraved and I thank her for breaking down the nitty-gritty of animation film making. But Anushka laughs saying, “When you love something you like to talk about it anyway, I could spend hours talking about animation.”
