Loving Vincent: The Impossible Dream (2019) - full transcript
The journey of two passionate filmmakers to achieve their impossible dream: creating the world's first fully painted feature film.
I was brought up in Bytom,
which is in the south of Poland.
It's a region called Silesia.
It's a mining district.
And I was brought up by my
grandmother in communism.
When I was around 14
I wanted to sign up
to the theater club,
and I went there to sign
up to the theater club
and the tutor, she was sick.
They offered me to sign up
to the art, to painting club,
so I did that,
and I met people there
that I really liked
and I actually discovered
that I really liked
painting and drawing.
This is how it
all started and I,
that's how I got into
the art high school.
We had like this very
close group of friends.
- We had also a lot of luck
when it come to our professors.
Our art history
teacher enabled us
to have our first proper
and tangible meeting
with important basics of art.
- She used to
take us for excursions
during school time
and also on holidays
we used to go together to
see museums all over Europe.
- Where, amongst others, we
learned about Vincent Van Gogh.
- After high school,
some of use stayed with
and carried on the
same education,
went to a fine arts academy.
- Dorota, as long
as I can remember,
always wanted to
take on directing.
I think her love for it
came from her grandfather.
Whenever she visited her
family home in Bytom,
they would go to cinema together
and later had a discussion
about film classics.
- One of my best friends, Kamil,
he went to film school
and he came back always
with amazing stories
and on some point
he got me involved with
his films and his projects,
which, for me, it
was just incredible.
It was kind of like a
back door to film school.
Kamil invited me to
work on his film Switez.
With Switez I was
working on concept art,
on animatic, on animation,
on texturing in 3D.
So all sorts of things.
After a few months,
all of a sudden,
all the work on
Switez were stopped.
Kamil just disappeared.
I was alone in the city
that I didn't know anyone,
and I didn't have much to do
because I went there just
to work on Kamil's film.
And when he disappeared I
decided just to wait around
and wait for him, so
I started painting,
and all of a sudden,
he did come back,
and he met with me
and then I realized
we have to take a
break from Switez.
He needed a break and
he just advised me to,
instead of waiting around for
the other's people project,
to start my own project.
And I think that was
really good advice
and I took it, and I started
working on my own idea.
But on the other hand I
really missed painting
and I felt that would be amazing
to actually combine
these things.
And I think it took me
around two weeks, maybe,
to decide what I'm gonna do
and that I'm gonna paint a film
and at first that is all I knew.
That I wanted to do
a painting animation
and it would be a
seven minute short film
that I would paint
entirely by myself.
I was thinking about bringing
my own paintings to life.
I was thinking about
telling a fictional story
in the style of
a famous painter,
and then I was also
wondering whether
I could actually bring a famous
artist's paintings to life
to tell their own story.
And as soon as I
had thought that,
then I knew I would make a
film about Vincent Van Gogh.
I vividly remember as a
teenager at art school
being overwhelmed by
both Vincent's work,
and also by the tragic
sadness of his short life.
And I think that the fact
that he started painting at 29
after having failed
several professions
meant that I identified
with him even more,
as that was the exact age I was
when I was coming up with
the idea for the film.
Vincent's bravery in
starting over at 29,
in throwing himself
into a profession
he had no training in,
in believing that
he could make art
that would touch people, help
them even, was inspiring.
So I decided that I
wanted to tell his story,
and tell it through
his own paintings.
You don't get artist who paints
so much and so personally.
He painted the world around him.
His room, his shoes,
the food he ate, the
friends he spoke to.
So that's why it
had to be Vincent.
I had to wait for three months
to get the production started
and get the money, and so
I had this three months
and then someone in Lodz,
he recommended me in
BreakThru to Hugh.
So I thought that's
amazing opportunity
and I went to Lodz to
work on the project.
- I've been working
in film and animation
for 20 years.
I started off going
to film school.
After I left film school
I set up my company,
BreakThru films, 17 years ago.
Before Loving Vincent,
I was best known for
producing a film called
Peter and the Wolf
which I won an
Oscar for in 2008,
and after that I had another
fairly big production
which was the Magic Piano.
Because of that
project, I crossed paths
with a very talented woman
called Dorota Kobiela.
- BreakThru, they were
looking for a concept artist
and someone for animatic.
- A very unintended
consequence of hiring her
was that we almost
instantly fell in love.
- Hugh fell in love,
not only with me,
but also with my project.
- It's not often that you
feel that you see something
that's very fresh, that's very
new, that's very exciting.
First it wasn't because
of Vincent Van Gogh
because I didn't really
know that much about him
at the beginning.
And then, as I started
reading the books
that we had lying
about our flat,
I became more fascinated.
And I was shocked
when I found out
that Vincent had only
started painting at 29
after failing at
four other careers.
I'd always assumed he'd
been a gifted artist
from a young age,
like other geniuses,
yet Vincent's first
encounter with art
was when he joined his
uncle's art dealership,
and despite working
very hard there
and despite his
family connections,
he was sacked because
of his inability
to deal with customers.
He subsequently
tried to be a teacher
and then a bookstore clerk,
and finally he tried to be
a preacher like his father,
but was thrown out
of his own church
for being overly religious.
This ended him up in a barn
in a desperately poor
mining region in Belgium,
subsisting only off bread
and doing nothing
but reading books.
And at that low point he
decided to gamble everything
on becoming an artist, and
with the support of his brother
who was financing him and
believed in him to do this,
he threw himself entirely
into becoming an artist,
and I think his extraordinary
passion and emotion
was really what got me
hooked on Loving Vincent.
- So it's fair to say
that Hugh definitely became
interested in Vincent's
life later on,
but at first it wasn't
until our third date
that we talked about
my project properly.
- In a bar called
Kaliska in Lodz.
Through a night of
tequilas, Dorota told me
six different stories in
terms of the directions
that Loving Vincent
could go into.
And this was at the stage when
it was still a short film.
But even then, I think
what we were both
most fascinated by was
Vincent's final days.
How Vincent was
in his final days.
- What was
going through his mind?
Because by this point,
Vincent was beginning
to have some success.
- And things seemed to
be going well for him,
well, for the first time
in his adult life almost.
And yet this was the time
that he killed himself,
and that mystery
really hooked us.
We had a few discussions
about the possibility
of making it into
a feature film.
- I thought
it was a crazy idea.
Unlike Hugh, I'm a
painter and an animator
and so I knew how
much work it would be
to make a painting
animation feature.
It would take an entire
lifetime to paint.
- We knew that it was
a very big undertaking.
To go from doing a
seven minute film
that's fully painted by hand,
to doing an 80, 90 minute film
that's fully painted,
was a huge change
and requiring a totally
different outlook.
For me, anyway, the final
straw in terms of going,
okay, let's do it, let's
make a feature film,
was when I visited an
exhibition in London
about his letters.
And that was a queue for
three and a half hours
to get into this
exhibition and I thought,
if people will queue up
for three and a half hours,
this man is so popular that
it has to be a feature film.
We have to give
it the opportunity
for as many people to
see it as possible.
So I went back to
Dorota and I said look,
whatever it takes, we
have to take the leap
and make this as a feature film.
While we were doing Magic Piano
we were traveling around
the world quite a lot.
- It was great.
I was taking it all in.
Painting, sketching,
visiting museums.
But then we stopped traveling
and I was faced with
the reality of having
to turn my seven minute script
into an 80 minute script.
I was confident about how
I wanted the film to look
and about how we would
animate the film.
But writing the
script, that was scary.
I didn't know how to start.
I felt lost.
So I went through a period
of binge-watching films
and thinking about and
analyzing their story structure.
After that, I ordered every
recommended script writing book
I could, and I started reading.
This gave me enough
inspiration and enough tools,
and soon I was so
absorbed by the story
that I forgot about my fears
and we began shaping the script.
- One of the things
that I struggled with
was exactly how would this look
and what kind of feeling
would it give to audiences?
Dorota would go oh, well
it's gonna look like this,
it's gonna look like that.
And we got to a point
where I thought,
let's stop talking about
it, let's just do a test.
And that's when we
came up with the idea
of the concept trailer.
With the concept trailer,
we shot it with our friends
instead of actors.
We shot it with white bedsheets
instead of like, green screens.
So we found these
four oil painters
who we were gonna try and train
for the concept trailer
to be painting animators.
And essentially they
were our guinea pigs.
- I worked on the first trailer,
but because I couldn't
move to the free city,
I painted from home in Warsaw.
And the first
animated Armand Roulin
that appears on the trailer,
was done here in my flat.
- Hugh brought
a couple of people over
from BreakThru and we
had our team assembled
ready to start production
on the trailer.
- Other than the
material for the trailer,
we also shoot some
material for tests.
We drove down to a barn
in extremely cold weather.
We dressed up just to see
what it would look like
and how it will be to
animate more dynamic scenes,
including one where I was a
young boy in a cowboy suit
who could be Vincent
potential here.
- If we could train
those painters
to become painting animators
during the time scale
of the concept
trailer, then we knew
it was something we could
replicate on a bigger scale.
- Eight years.
860 paintings.
1,026 drawings.
800 letters.
20 people telling
the story of one man.
- He works til late,
get up before six.
He was happy here.
He was.
- Everybody rejected him.
- Until
he started hanging around
with the Gachet's.
- On the wall he wrote a
message in his own blood.
You know what he writes?
I'm the holy spirit.
- Well, the truth is,
we cannot speak other
than by our paintings.
With a handshake,
your loving Vincent.
- When we got to the
end of that process,
how I felt about it was
that I hadn't really seen
anything like it before.
I was very excited.
I was very keen to
show it to people.
And two of the first
people I showed it to
was Sean Bobbitt, who then
immediately came on board
as a shareholder in BreakThru
and also as a
producer on the film.
- He came to me and
he showed me a trailer
for the next film that
he was planning on doing,
Loving Vincent, and
I immediately fell
in love with it.
I mean, it was like nothing
I'd ever seen before.
And I just said yes,
I definitely wanna
be a part of this.
- And the other
person I showed it to
who had exactly the same
reaction was Ivan Mactaggart
from Trademark Films.
- It's an animation
about Vincent Van Gogh.
And I said, well let
me stop you there
because we don't do animation.
And he said just watch this
90 second concept trailer
that we've made.
He pulled out his iPad
and he sets it going,
and I watched, transfixed
for 90 seconds,
and at the end of it said,
okay, now we do do animation.
Where do we sign?
- And then you know,
as things progressed
we needed to have a serious
kind of base for the film.
We then moved to Gdansk.
We moved to GPNT Business center
and we had this
huge empty space,
2,000 square meters,
and there was five of us
rattling around in
this enormous space.
So we had a badminton court,
we had our roller blades.
We were gonna not only fill
all of that space in time,
but we'd need to have much more.
- While we were
making the concept trailer,
it was taking us
at least two hours
to paint a single frame.
We knew we had to find
a way to cut the time
in order to make
it efficient enough
to create a whole
film in the same way.
- Our first work station for
painters was very homemade.
An easel, a camera,
projector, IKEA shelving unit,
a tripod, two computers,
and a memory stick.
My job was to come up
with something better
to help animators to be able
to animate more efficiently.
So we came up with painting
animation work station.
In addition, parts
could minimize
the amount of things
that could go wrong
during the animation.
- So I think
in the very beginning,
Piotr was doing three hours
a frame on our first set up,
and, you know, by the
time we got him into
our painting animation
works station,
our PAWS version 3.0,
we had cut it in half
to one and a half hours.
- It took us five
days to assemble the first
30 animation work stations,
and after that, we were ready
for the first painters test.
- We went through
a very careful process
of selecting the right paint.
We compared a number
of major brands
and paid attention to
the quality of the paint,
the differences in color,
but also affordability.
And in the end, the best option
ended up being Van Gogh.
- With painting animation
work stations set up
and paints chosen,
the only thing missing
was to have enough good
painting animators.
- In the case of Loving Vincent,
there weren't painting animators
or there certainly weren't
enough painting animators
that were out there
in the whole world
to come and work on this film.
So we had to create a
work force from scratch.
We had to take
brilliant painters
and convert them into
painting animators.
- We had more than
1,000 portfolios
submitted just from
Polish artists.
We ran three day tests
in three cities in Poland
just for more than 300 of them.
From these, we selected
60 for training
of whom 40 joined the film.
- I had a three
day test in Lodz,
after which I waited for
a call from BreakThru.
Then after some time we
brought back two times
where we went through a
six week training course.
- After the training,
those who were accepted
were invited to start
design process for the film.
- We did 157
design paintings in total.
These were crucial
for precisely defining
the look of the film.
The animators all had
to follow the colors,
the style of the brush strokes,
and the feel of the
design paintings.
Without them it wouldn't
have been possible
to keep the painting
animation consistent.
While we were designing
the look of the film,
we also had to start
animation tests,
but we needed to have material
for the painters to test on.
We decided to dress up as the
characters from the paintings.
It was great fun.
We just rented the costumes,
I dressed up as
Marguerite Gachet,
Hugh dressed up as a post man.
- My friend wouldn't
kill himself.
- Together we got
funds from Kickstarter
and from the unemployment agency
and that allowed
us to put together
a training program for
painting animators.
Hello Kickstarter.
I'm Hugh Welshman.
I would like to show you
something, follow me.
I think the first 65
people who went through
were funded out by
those two entities.
- The 30 painters
that you see here,
thanks to you, started
training this morning,
and over the course of
the next three months
we'll be able to train
about 50 painters
with the monies that we've
raised on Kickstarter.
- Then we needed
money not just for training,
but for the whole film.
And as we're a Polish project,
having the backing of
the Polish Film Institute
was a crucial step.
If you don't have the backing
of your national
film institution,
then international
investors are wary
and less likely to have
confidence in your project.
- We applied for Loving
Vincent as a feature film.
- We really had a
struggle with PFI.
I think we were turned
down two or three times.
- And then you get to go
and see the commission
and discuss with them why,
and get to know about it.
So I went there.
I remember the situation
was emotionally disturbing
and painful because I had to
sit in front of four people
and they were all telling me
that this is first
of all boring,
second of all, I do
not have experience
and I'm not a proper director.
But of course after some time,
they proved to be a really
big supporter of the project.
And without them, it would
have been nearly impossible
to get the project going.
But it took some convincing
and determination at first.
And as I was walking
away from the institute
I was so emotionally destroyed,
but I was thinking,
maybe they're right,
but on some point I thought, no,
I can't let them beat me down.
That's what Vincent did.
He really had this persistence
and I should follow him if I
really, truly believe in it.
That's what kept me motivated.
- We were at a pretty critical
point in the production.
Basically we had to
either raise some money
relatively quickly,
or we had to stop production,
or at least put
production on hold.
And at that point, a friend
of mine came to me and said,
Wroclaw is the European
capital of culture in 2016.
Maybe they would like to
support the production
as part of the European
capital of culture.
So I went to Wroclaw.
I met with the
president of the city.
I showed him what
we were trying to do
and he said, well, as a city,
we would like to
support this production.
And it was a really important
moment for the film.
We started looking
around for work
that we could do in Wroclaw.
We partnered up a CETA,
which is Centrum
Technologii Audiowizualnych.
They have a beautiful
facility for shooting
on a blue screen, and they
also had VFX facilities
so they could take on
part of the work with VFX,
and we could also
do the Polish shoot
at their facilities.
- And it was a really
important time for us
because it allowed us
before we had finalized
with the Polish Film Institute,
it allowed us to get the funding
which meant that we
could shoot the first
shots from the film.
For example, the famous
shot that's on the poster
of Vincent turning around,
that was actually shot right
after we closed the financing
with the city of Wroclaw.
It was actually just a test shot
both for Robert
Gulaczyk, the actor,
and for Anna Kluza,
and it turned out to be
the most iconic shot
of the film, I think.
- One of
our main challenges
in bringing Vincent's
painting to the cinema screen
was the fact that Vincent used
many different canvas sizes
and that was part of
his choice as an artist
in terms of the composition,
whereas for cinema we
could only use one size.
This meant that we
had to add or subtract
or cover the painting through
some kind of movement.
And in the beginning, we did
the whole film 16 by nine,
which is the standard HD format.
It was causing us
a lot of problems
because actually most
of Vincent's paintings
was a size 30 canvas,
which is more a square format.
So for every single
painting almost
we were having to
invent these side bars
and change the composition.
And then Lukasz Zal,
our cinematographer,
came along to us and he said,
well why don't you
just shoot at academy
and then you don't have to
second guess the genius
of Vincent Van Gogh.
And we were sacked by our
first sales agent company
because we made the decision
to go with the academy format.
But I would rather go
against the sales agent
then go against the
compositional choices
of Vincent Van Gogh.
- We started
working with Lukasz.
We invited him to our studio
to go through it step
by step, shot by shot.
- That's when we
had to have the very
detailed conversations
of actually how
we were going to
translate this 2D medium
into a live action
reference shoot,
which would then have to
go back into the 2D medium
of painting.
So we'd got to this point.
We had filled up a
quarter of our studio
with 20 painting animators.
We had raised I think
around a third of the money.
We were still a long way off
being able to go ahead and
know that we can make this film
and finish this film.
We made the decision to
actually go and shoot
a third of the film
and to do the painting animation
of a third of the film.
- We decided to record
one of our main
characters Pere Tanguy,
mainly because his
role in the film
wouldn't change, even if
we were going to change
other parts of the
script later on.
And because we needed to
have some painted material
to persuade people to join
us and finance the film.
- This was really a decision
that would either make
or break the production.
We swam in a direction
which could potentially
not only bankrupt the company
and destroy our
reputations as film makers,
but also make it unlikely
that we'd make another film
in the future.
It was a tough decision to make.
There weren't so
many options then
and so we took the
plunge and we decided to
go ahead and do
the Wroclaw shoot.
- Wroclaw was
quite difficult for me.
It was my first
shoot on a big set
and it was a real
learning experience
and a very new situation.
I was a first-time director on
a Polish, male-dominated set,
and I think the crew
was quite skeptical
about how it would all turn out.
- We always had
that hanging over us
that we knew that we
had taken a big risk
in going ahead and
making parts of the film
when we had no commitment
of distribution,
we had no commitment of funding
that covered the entire budget.
- The most attractive
thing about this project
is it's not a
commercial project.
It's not a big bucks project.
It's not Harry Potter.
It's not Disney
film or whatever.
It's an extraordinary labor
of love about a great artist,
and involves a lot of
extraordinary artistry to make
in every department
of this film.
- It was a big lesson
in directing a production
on this scale for me,
but also for Hugh,
who had joined me
as co-director.
- I think I kinda went from
being a creative and at
points controlling producer
to an accidental director.
Me joining Dorota as director
just sort of organically
flowed out of the experience
of the production and of
the writing of the script.
Definitely the hardest
part was the Wroclaw shoot.
I think it was particularly hard
because we were working
out as we were going along
how this type of film making
would actually be done.
After all, we were
doing something new,
so we couldn't phone someone
up who'd already done it
and ask for their advice.
We couldn't read
any how to manuals.
We just had to find
out for ourselves.
We had no proof that
it would work out,
we just had to
trust our instincts
and hope for the best.
- It's trying something
incredibly new and exciting
by having moving images of
the paintings of Van Gogh.
And hopefully we will
all be remembered for it.
- So one of the scary things
that came out of Wroclaw
first shoot was we
realized that the actors,
when they were
acting out the parts,
took almost twice as
long as me and Dorota
when we had acted
out all of the parts.
- Listen son, I'm afraid
you'll never deliver that
letter to Theo Van Gogh.
- Practically in
the space of three months
we had to cut over a quarter
of the story from the script
that we've been carefully
working on over three years.
And also we needed to
record more painters.
- You'll see that now we
have another 15 PAWS units
and inside each one we
have a painting animator
doing their very first
shot on Loving Vincent.
Once we saw the material,
once it had been painted,
we got that whole enthusiasm
back for the project.
We realized we actually
were doing something
that was special.
And we cut together this
little trailer of material
from that first shoot.
And someone took this
trailer that we did,
they put it onto
their Facebook page
and it went viral.
- Loving Vincent.
- Finally tonight, it's
never been done before.
A fully hand-painted
feature film
now giving new life to
Vincent Van Gogh's works.
The attention to detail
so extraordinary,
the finished product is
turning into a masterpiece
in its own right.
- Within 24 hours, two
million people had seen this.
Within three months, 200
million people had viewed this.
We went from a situation
that seemed hopeless
to a situation
where it was like,
we can go ahead and
we can make this film.
We didn't have enough time
but at least we finally
had a promise of resources
to make the film.
- And, action.
- Even though
for most of my life
I've been working with
animation and painting,
I always wanted and dreamed
about working with actors.
And suddenly when I
found myself on that set,
I realized how much I enjoy it.
- For the London shoot, the
biggest issue was time, really.
It is that we were
trying to shoot
over 60 minutes of material
with our main actors
in the space of 11 days
doing up to 30 setups,
which is a speed of shooting
which maybe you
get on soap operas.
- The
concept of this film
was from the very beginning
that it will be a story
told by Vincent's paintings
and the characters
of his portraits.
Therefore, I though
that it's important
that these portraits
who were real humans
before they were painted,
should be portrayed
by real humans now
because they had real emotions,
emotions that the actors follow
and show based on the script.
- I knew that we were all
going to be turned into sort of
Van Gogh style paintings,
but I didn't quite know how
you guys were gonna
go about doing that.
The concept was new
and it was something
that hadn't been done before.
That's why I wanted to do it.
That's why I wanted to
do it with you guys.
I was really interested
to see what the
process was gonna be.
- We're working to
enormous green screens,
the type that you
usually don't see
unless you're on a
huge multi-million
dollar American movie.
- The cornflower is
lovely this time of year.
It's really quite
pretty, isn't it?
Amazing, the scenery around here
and I just live down the
road around the corner
sort of back over
there somewhere.
- I knew very little about
Van Gogh before starting this.
Only what I had leanred
in school as a kid.
I knew about his ear,
I think that's probably
the most famous thing.
But I had absolutely
no idea about him
supposedly killing himself,
or that there was ever
any question around
how exactly he died.
It's been fascinating to
explore that in the script
and also to read
different accounts
from the different characters.
It's really interesting.
- I always like when the
technical side of film
meets the artistic side.
So it's been a great experience
and the cast have been amazing.
- Oh Jesus Christ.
Dick.
You know that it's glued on?
- Need that hot water.
- If I had known
about the beard.
I would have ran away.
- What do I say when I find him?
- It's customary to start
with I'm sorry for your loss.
- I play Armand Roulin
who is a young guy
that Van Gogh painted
'cause he was the son of one
of Van Gogh's best friend.
And throughout the film,
he sort of has a self discovery,
which is sort of aided by
his discovery of Van Gogh.
To start with it was
completely the painting
that captivated me because
I didn't really know much
about him other than
he was this mad guy
who cut off his ear
and everyone though
he was a bit strange.
But then through this movie
and noticing more about the
man behind the paintings
and suddenly the paintings
became so much more interesting.
They just became alive
for me to sort of,
he's one of the first painters
that really started
painting with emotion.
- Once we had
finished with the actors,
then it was all about painting.
Every single frame of the
film would need to be painted
carefully in oil paints,
mainly in Vincent's style.
And his style is
not easy to animate.
The fact you can often see
individual brush strokes,
the fact that he had
such a thick impasto,
meant that for a lot
of shots the painters
had to stop motion animate
each individual brush stroke.
Move each individual
brush stroke bit by bit
across the canvas.
It was my job to
critically evaluate
and eventually approve
every single one
of the 65,000 paintings.
- I think by that
time we'd only painted
15,000 frames of the film,
so we had another 50,000
frames of the film to paint
and not enough time
to paint it in.
And not enough painters
to paint it with.
- We were still in the
process of sorting out
all the applications that
had been coming through
and trying to find
the right painters.
- We had a whole new
recruitment drive.
We had 4,000 new applications
and just the task
of sifting through
all of these applications
to try and find people
that we wanted.
- We did tests on I
think over 500 painters.
- We were setting up a
separate unit in Wroclaw
with 10 painters.
We were setting up
a unit in Athens,
Studio Mabrida, that
went up to 18 painters.
But we also knew that
we're gonna need like
100 painters
working on this film
if we were gonna stand a
chance of getting it made
before the deadline.
- We now have
three different studios
in two countries
and our main studio
which at first had 20 painters,
was now filled up
with 67 painting
animation work stations.
- We were ready to
go full steam ahead
with the painting process
to complete the film on time
with our new larger
team of painters.
Okay so let me take you
through the animation process.
First thing, we start
with a clean canvas,
open up the software and
load up the references
from the live action shoot.
We take a key frame for the
scene and based on that,
we paint the first frame
and check it over
with our supervisor.
If the frame gets accepted,
we can move on and we
can begin animation.
The projector display the
second frame of the shot,
and then we have to
scrape the paint off
or change it a little bit
and we paint the scene
to match this new frame.
Once this is done,
we take another two
pictures with the camera.
We are doing the film
12 frames per second,
but we have to take two pictures
to match the 24 frame
standard for the film.
After we've taken the picture,
we project the next
frame and start again.
- I had to look after
a group of painters
and make sure that
they were all sticking
to the correct style
and ensuring that every frame
has the same
standard of quality.
- Some shots took a very
long time to complete.
I think my longest shot took
me about six months to finish.
Now imagine working every
day here on one single shot
for it to then be on the
screen for around 42 seconds.
- Some of us definitely
spent thousands of hours
in a painting station,
half of our lives was there.
So in a way they became
our little homes at work.
- It was very clear
that some painters
became attached to their PAWS
and would decorate them
and very often leave a mess
in there too.
- Sometimes we had to
fix certain scenes.
We would paint and
animate just a part
that needed fixing,
and stick in onto
the original shot.
We wanted to avoid
throwing out whole shots
as it would be a
huge waster of time.
- It happened to me twice
when I did a mistake
during my painting animation,
and I have to redo 10
or 15 frames again.
That was very painful.
- There are very few scenes
that they were thrown out
after they were painted
because they all took a
very long time to paint.
- You hear that,
I'd better go talk to the lad.
- I told
you you're not going anywhere.
You are not help
talking the shop.
- The scenes that took the
longest were the dynamic scenes
which has a lot of
camera movement.
- I painted descending
through the starry night
over the town.
Because of moving camera,
I often only managed
a painting a day,
mostly one and a half,
on rare occasions two.
So it took me a
long time to animate
just a few seconds of the film.
- We were held back a little
bit by what we could do.
The moving camera shots cost,
I'm the finance guy .
On the set I was like, Dorota,
do we really need to have
the moving camera shot here?
But you know at
the end of the day
it was a matter of the budget.
- I think that we
had the situation
several times a year where
we really didn't know
where the next money
was gonna come from.
It was brilliant
working with Sean
because Sean had this ability
to pull rabbits out of the hat.
There was this month
where Sean was like,
I have no more rabbits.
Really, the only
option I could see
was getting on a
plane to America
and going and talking to
one of our largest investors
and saying to them,
we'd like you to increase
your investment by 50%
and we'd like you to put it
in in the next two weeks.
Thankfully, they were
yet again very supportive
and came through to us.
That kept the whole
thing moving forward
for more months
until we wrapped up
all the legal work,
all the bank documents
that finally got the final
monies flowing through to us.
And then it was all
about pushing to get more
painting done, week by week.
That was putting a
lot of pressure on us
and that kind of increased
when I had to go to Britain
to do the sound and the music
and left Dorota on
her own in Poland
to continue supervising
the production.
- That was very
disappointing for me.
I had written every
draft of the script
to Clint Mansell's music.
For me, he was the only
composer for Loving Vincent.
I had my heart set on him.
He was a hero and
inspiration to me
so to have missed the
recording and mixing
was really heartbreaking.
But there was no choice
because at that point
in the production, we were
at our most intensive stage.
- We had people working
five, six, seven days a week.
It was really up to the painters
how much they painted per week,
and the more they painted,
the more they got paid,
and obviously we had
a vested interest
in trying to keep them
there as long as possible.
And one of the things
that we would do
that later became a tradition
is that one of us would
cook for the entire crew
and we'd post what we were
cooking on a Friday night
and hope the painters would
be streaming into the studios
on a Saturday.
We also provided
breakfast in the morning
to try and get painters
to start work earlier,
but some painters
always preferred to
work during the night.
- Like Vincent,
I like the night time,
which was very
useful as each night
I had to do scheduling
for the next day.
Because in the day time, there
was too many approvals to do.
Deciding which
animator did which shot
was incredibly important
to the quality of the film.
The studio was
different by night.
Much calmer and there
were few painters
who were also night owls,
so I could take a break
and review the work
and discuss those shots
in a more in-depth way.
But even with the long days,
we knew that we
weren't going to meet
our September deadline,
and a lot of our painters
who had arranged
their return home
were starting to leave.
- The pressure just went
up increasingly every week.
- Because on one hand
we were still working very hard
and very intense.
The deadline was so close.
And on the other hand,
there were these people
leaving every day
and every week.
- We would
have a farewell party
at least once a week where
we had some cake and beer,
and after we all said goodbye,
the rest of the crew
went back to work.
- The studios in
Wroclaw and Athens
finished their animation
by the end of October.
In Gdansk we were still
painting the front titles
and doing some corrections.
But by November 21st, the
painting process stopped.
- I think
that's it then guys.
Okay, champagne.
- By November 30th,
we dismantled all the
painting stations,
and it was time to move
after four memorable years.
- Two years and 50 weeks ago,
I stood here in the snow
giving the first
Kickstarter update.
In this studio over here,
which is now a warehouse,
we dreamed, devised,
planned, produced, designed,
and most importantly painted
the Loving Vincent film.
- Our life was
revolving for five years
around Loving Vincent.
And we were expecting
that we're gonna have
this incredible sense of relief
and achievement
after we finished.
But it was quite
different actually
because we finished in March
and we had to wait
til the world premiere
that was planned
for June in Annecy.
So yeah, these three months
were really difficult.
I remember them as a very
dark period of my life
because it was filled with
this sense of dread and anxiety
and expectations
building up in my head.
It was also very cold.
I remember snowing
on the main day
and I just remember
that I felt burned out.
I felt physically and mentally
really in a bad way, I think,
and I just really wanted
finally to share this film.
I had to introduce the
film and after I did that,
which was incredibly
emotional moment for me,
I had to go and
sit in the audience
and be part of the audience
and watch the film with them.
I was terrified and I had
no idea what to expect.
I knew that I have to share
this film with the audience
and they will react,
and I had no idea how.
I do remember that moment,
that time extremely vividly.
The film comes to the end.
The end credit starts to roll
and the audience
starts applauding.
But then that applause
is transforming
into bigger applause,
and then that bigger
applause is transforming
into standing ovation
and that lasts 12 minutes.
- There was just
this incredible relief
when we had that standing
ovation at the end of the film.
- That was a moment in my
life when it just ,
it all sort of washed away.
The stress of the
previous five years.
Just realizing that
we had done something
that people appreciated.
- Whatever happened after that,
whether it was successful
in other countries
or other festivals,
we knew that there was
this kind of appreciation
for the film there.
And I think that was
a real turning point
and things moved
very fast after that.
The day after Annecy we went
straight out to Shanghai.
- We said yes to
every opportunity
to promote the film.
We said yes to every interview,
every screening we Hugh and I
and all the promotional action.
- We barely went home.
We had 90 flights in 10 months,
so you know, having nine
or 10 flights a month
to try and be there
for all the premiers
and to just do as
much press as possible
because we didn't wanna
take anything for granted
and we'd spent seven years,
or more even, making the film.
And so we wanted to
do everything possible
to make it successful.
- It really is touching,
to know that you
actually made a film
that can make people cry,
that can inspire people,
and I think that's, for me,
the biggest success
of the release.
- The reception of the audience,
and it wasn't just
in the cinemas.
It was also at the festivals.
We got 16, I think
now we've actually,
'cause we got another
couple over the past month,
I think we got 18
audience awards.
And those awards are
voted for by the audiences
and in a way they're
like the best awards
because it's the
people going out there
bothering to attend
the festivals
and bothering to vote
and backing you for
what you've done.
- In China, in the US,
in Germany, the Netherlands,
in virtually every
country we visited,
we had these people
coming up to us with tears
that wanted to share their love
and wanted to come
up to us and hug us.
I wish that Vincent
could have had
some of these kind words,
these good emotions,
these hugs that I have received,
because I believe that
this could keep him going
and keep him alive
for more years
and keep him dreaming
and creating.
- The
Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences invites
you to be its guest
at the 37th annual
awards presentation.
- The film had done
really well at festivals,
really well in the cinemas.
Financially it had
been a success.
Yet somehow we were
still viewed as outsiders
within the film industry.
And the biggest stamp of
legitimacy that you can get
in the film industry
is an Oscar nomination.
We were all racked
with nerves in the days
leading up to the announcement
of the Oscars, 2018.
- For best animated feature
film, The Boss Baby.
The Bread Winner.
Coco
Ferdinand.
And, Loving Vincent.
which is in the south of Poland.
It's a region called Silesia.
It's a mining district.
And I was brought up by my
grandmother in communism.
When I was around 14
I wanted to sign up
to the theater club,
and I went there to sign
up to the theater club
and the tutor, she was sick.
They offered me to sign up
to the art, to painting club,
so I did that,
and I met people there
that I really liked
and I actually discovered
that I really liked
painting and drawing.
This is how it
all started and I,
that's how I got into
the art high school.
We had like this very
close group of friends.
- We had also a lot of luck
when it come to our professors.
Our art history
teacher enabled us
to have our first proper
and tangible meeting
with important basics of art.
- She used to
take us for excursions
during school time
and also on holidays
we used to go together to
see museums all over Europe.
- Where, amongst others, we
learned about Vincent Van Gogh.
- After high school,
some of use stayed with
and carried on the
same education,
went to a fine arts academy.
- Dorota, as long
as I can remember,
always wanted to
take on directing.
I think her love for it
came from her grandfather.
Whenever she visited her
family home in Bytom,
they would go to cinema together
and later had a discussion
about film classics.
- One of my best friends, Kamil,
he went to film school
and he came back always
with amazing stories
and on some point
he got me involved with
his films and his projects,
which, for me, it
was just incredible.
It was kind of like a
back door to film school.
Kamil invited me to
work on his film Switez.
With Switez I was
working on concept art,
on animatic, on animation,
on texturing in 3D.
So all sorts of things.
After a few months,
all of a sudden,
all the work on
Switez were stopped.
Kamil just disappeared.
I was alone in the city
that I didn't know anyone,
and I didn't have much to do
because I went there just
to work on Kamil's film.
And when he disappeared I
decided just to wait around
and wait for him, so
I started painting,
and all of a sudden,
he did come back,
and he met with me
and then I realized
we have to take a
break from Switez.
He needed a break and
he just advised me to,
instead of waiting around for
the other's people project,
to start my own project.
And I think that was
really good advice
and I took it, and I started
working on my own idea.
But on the other hand I
really missed painting
and I felt that would be amazing
to actually combine
these things.
And I think it took me
around two weeks, maybe,
to decide what I'm gonna do
and that I'm gonna paint a film
and at first that is all I knew.
That I wanted to do
a painting animation
and it would be a
seven minute short film
that I would paint
entirely by myself.
I was thinking about bringing
my own paintings to life.
I was thinking about
telling a fictional story
in the style of
a famous painter,
and then I was also
wondering whether
I could actually bring a famous
artist's paintings to life
to tell their own story.
And as soon as I
had thought that,
then I knew I would make a
film about Vincent Van Gogh.
I vividly remember as a
teenager at art school
being overwhelmed by
both Vincent's work,
and also by the tragic
sadness of his short life.
And I think that the fact
that he started painting at 29
after having failed
several professions
meant that I identified
with him even more,
as that was the exact age I was
when I was coming up with
the idea for the film.
Vincent's bravery in
starting over at 29,
in throwing himself
into a profession
he had no training in,
in believing that
he could make art
that would touch people, help
them even, was inspiring.
So I decided that I
wanted to tell his story,
and tell it through
his own paintings.
You don't get artist who paints
so much and so personally.
He painted the world around him.
His room, his shoes,
the food he ate, the
friends he spoke to.
So that's why it
had to be Vincent.
I had to wait for three months
to get the production started
and get the money, and so
I had this three months
and then someone in Lodz,
he recommended me in
BreakThru to Hugh.
So I thought that's
amazing opportunity
and I went to Lodz to
work on the project.
- I've been working
in film and animation
for 20 years.
I started off going
to film school.
After I left film school
I set up my company,
BreakThru films, 17 years ago.
Before Loving Vincent,
I was best known for
producing a film called
Peter and the Wolf
which I won an
Oscar for in 2008,
and after that I had another
fairly big production
which was the Magic Piano.
Because of that
project, I crossed paths
with a very talented woman
called Dorota Kobiela.
- BreakThru, they were
looking for a concept artist
and someone for animatic.
- A very unintended
consequence of hiring her
was that we almost
instantly fell in love.
- Hugh fell in love,
not only with me,
but also with my project.
- It's not often that you
feel that you see something
that's very fresh, that's very
new, that's very exciting.
First it wasn't because
of Vincent Van Gogh
because I didn't really
know that much about him
at the beginning.
And then, as I started
reading the books
that we had lying
about our flat,
I became more fascinated.
And I was shocked
when I found out
that Vincent had only
started painting at 29
after failing at
four other careers.
I'd always assumed he'd
been a gifted artist
from a young age,
like other geniuses,
yet Vincent's first
encounter with art
was when he joined his
uncle's art dealership,
and despite working
very hard there
and despite his
family connections,
he was sacked because
of his inability
to deal with customers.
He subsequently
tried to be a teacher
and then a bookstore clerk,
and finally he tried to be
a preacher like his father,
but was thrown out
of his own church
for being overly religious.
This ended him up in a barn
in a desperately poor
mining region in Belgium,
subsisting only off bread
and doing nothing
but reading books.
And at that low point he
decided to gamble everything
on becoming an artist, and
with the support of his brother
who was financing him and
believed in him to do this,
he threw himself entirely
into becoming an artist,
and I think his extraordinary
passion and emotion
was really what got me
hooked on Loving Vincent.
- So it's fair to say
that Hugh definitely became
interested in Vincent's
life later on,
but at first it wasn't
until our third date
that we talked about
my project properly.
- In a bar called
Kaliska in Lodz.
Through a night of
tequilas, Dorota told me
six different stories in
terms of the directions
that Loving Vincent
could go into.
And this was at the stage when
it was still a short film.
But even then, I think
what we were both
most fascinated by was
Vincent's final days.
How Vincent was
in his final days.
- What was
going through his mind?
Because by this point,
Vincent was beginning
to have some success.
- And things seemed to
be going well for him,
well, for the first time
in his adult life almost.
And yet this was the time
that he killed himself,
and that mystery
really hooked us.
We had a few discussions
about the possibility
of making it into
a feature film.
- I thought
it was a crazy idea.
Unlike Hugh, I'm a
painter and an animator
and so I knew how
much work it would be
to make a painting
animation feature.
It would take an entire
lifetime to paint.
- We knew that it was
a very big undertaking.
To go from doing a
seven minute film
that's fully painted by hand,
to doing an 80, 90 minute film
that's fully painted,
was a huge change
and requiring a totally
different outlook.
For me, anyway, the final
straw in terms of going,
okay, let's do it, let's
make a feature film,
was when I visited an
exhibition in London
about his letters.
And that was a queue for
three and a half hours
to get into this
exhibition and I thought,
if people will queue up
for three and a half hours,
this man is so popular that
it has to be a feature film.
We have to give
it the opportunity
for as many people to
see it as possible.
So I went back to
Dorota and I said look,
whatever it takes, we
have to take the leap
and make this as a feature film.
While we were doing Magic Piano
we were traveling around
the world quite a lot.
- It was great.
I was taking it all in.
Painting, sketching,
visiting museums.
But then we stopped traveling
and I was faced with
the reality of having
to turn my seven minute script
into an 80 minute script.
I was confident about how
I wanted the film to look
and about how we would
animate the film.
But writing the
script, that was scary.
I didn't know how to start.
I felt lost.
So I went through a period
of binge-watching films
and thinking about and
analyzing their story structure.
After that, I ordered every
recommended script writing book
I could, and I started reading.
This gave me enough
inspiration and enough tools,
and soon I was so
absorbed by the story
that I forgot about my fears
and we began shaping the script.
- One of the things
that I struggled with
was exactly how would this look
and what kind of feeling
would it give to audiences?
Dorota would go oh, well
it's gonna look like this,
it's gonna look like that.
And we got to a point
where I thought,
let's stop talking about
it, let's just do a test.
And that's when we
came up with the idea
of the concept trailer.
With the concept trailer,
we shot it with our friends
instead of actors.
We shot it with white bedsheets
instead of like, green screens.
So we found these
four oil painters
who we were gonna try and train
for the concept trailer
to be painting animators.
And essentially they
were our guinea pigs.
- I worked on the first trailer,
but because I couldn't
move to the free city,
I painted from home in Warsaw.
And the first
animated Armand Roulin
that appears on the trailer,
was done here in my flat.
- Hugh brought
a couple of people over
from BreakThru and we
had our team assembled
ready to start production
on the trailer.
- Other than the
material for the trailer,
we also shoot some
material for tests.
We drove down to a barn
in extremely cold weather.
We dressed up just to see
what it would look like
and how it will be to
animate more dynamic scenes,
including one where I was a
young boy in a cowboy suit
who could be Vincent
potential here.
- If we could train
those painters
to become painting animators
during the time scale
of the concept
trailer, then we knew
it was something we could
replicate on a bigger scale.
- Eight years.
860 paintings.
1,026 drawings.
800 letters.
20 people telling
the story of one man.
- He works til late,
get up before six.
He was happy here.
He was.
- Everybody rejected him.
- Until
he started hanging around
with the Gachet's.
- On the wall he wrote a
message in his own blood.
You know what he writes?
I'm the holy spirit.
- Well, the truth is,
we cannot speak other
than by our paintings.
With a handshake,
your loving Vincent.
- When we got to the
end of that process,
how I felt about it was
that I hadn't really seen
anything like it before.
I was very excited.
I was very keen to
show it to people.
And two of the first
people I showed it to
was Sean Bobbitt, who then
immediately came on board
as a shareholder in BreakThru
and also as a
producer on the film.
- He came to me and
he showed me a trailer
for the next film that
he was planning on doing,
Loving Vincent, and
I immediately fell
in love with it.
I mean, it was like nothing
I'd ever seen before.
And I just said yes,
I definitely wanna
be a part of this.
- And the other
person I showed it to
who had exactly the same
reaction was Ivan Mactaggart
from Trademark Films.
- It's an animation
about Vincent Van Gogh.
And I said, well let
me stop you there
because we don't do animation.
And he said just watch this
90 second concept trailer
that we've made.
He pulled out his iPad
and he sets it going,
and I watched, transfixed
for 90 seconds,
and at the end of it said,
okay, now we do do animation.
Where do we sign?
- And then you know,
as things progressed
we needed to have a serious
kind of base for the film.
We then moved to Gdansk.
We moved to GPNT Business center
and we had this
huge empty space,
2,000 square meters,
and there was five of us
rattling around in
this enormous space.
So we had a badminton court,
we had our roller blades.
We were gonna not only fill
all of that space in time,
but we'd need to have much more.
- While we were
making the concept trailer,
it was taking us
at least two hours
to paint a single frame.
We knew we had to find
a way to cut the time
in order to make
it efficient enough
to create a whole
film in the same way.
- Our first work station for
painters was very homemade.
An easel, a camera,
projector, IKEA shelving unit,
a tripod, two computers,
and a memory stick.
My job was to come up
with something better
to help animators to be able
to animate more efficiently.
So we came up with painting
animation work station.
In addition, parts
could minimize
the amount of things
that could go wrong
during the animation.
- So I think
in the very beginning,
Piotr was doing three hours
a frame on our first set up,
and, you know, by the
time we got him into
our painting animation
works station,
our PAWS version 3.0,
we had cut it in half
to one and a half hours.
- It took us five
days to assemble the first
30 animation work stations,
and after that, we were ready
for the first painters test.
- We went through
a very careful process
of selecting the right paint.
We compared a number
of major brands
and paid attention to
the quality of the paint,
the differences in color,
but also affordability.
And in the end, the best option
ended up being Van Gogh.
- With painting animation
work stations set up
and paints chosen,
the only thing missing
was to have enough good
painting animators.
- In the case of Loving Vincent,
there weren't painting animators
or there certainly weren't
enough painting animators
that were out there
in the whole world
to come and work on this film.
So we had to create a
work force from scratch.
We had to take
brilliant painters
and convert them into
painting animators.
- We had more than
1,000 portfolios
submitted just from
Polish artists.
We ran three day tests
in three cities in Poland
just for more than 300 of them.
From these, we selected
60 for training
of whom 40 joined the film.
- I had a three
day test in Lodz,
after which I waited for
a call from BreakThru.
Then after some time we
brought back two times
where we went through a
six week training course.
- After the training,
those who were accepted
were invited to start
design process for the film.
- We did 157
design paintings in total.
These were crucial
for precisely defining
the look of the film.
The animators all had
to follow the colors,
the style of the brush strokes,
and the feel of the
design paintings.
Without them it wouldn't
have been possible
to keep the painting
animation consistent.
While we were designing
the look of the film,
we also had to start
animation tests,
but we needed to have material
for the painters to test on.
We decided to dress up as the
characters from the paintings.
It was great fun.
We just rented the costumes,
I dressed up as
Marguerite Gachet,
Hugh dressed up as a post man.
- My friend wouldn't
kill himself.
- Together we got
funds from Kickstarter
and from the unemployment agency
and that allowed
us to put together
a training program for
painting animators.
Hello Kickstarter.
I'm Hugh Welshman.
I would like to show you
something, follow me.
I think the first 65
people who went through
were funded out by
those two entities.
- The 30 painters
that you see here,
thanks to you, started
training this morning,
and over the course of
the next three months
we'll be able to train
about 50 painters
with the monies that we've
raised on Kickstarter.
- Then we needed
money not just for training,
but for the whole film.
And as we're a Polish project,
having the backing of
the Polish Film Institute
was a crucial step.
If you don't have the backing
of your national
film institution,
then international
investors are wary
and less likely to have
confidence in your project.
- We applied for Loving
Vincent as a feature film.
- We really had a
struggle with PFI.
I think we were turned
down two or three times.
- And then you get to go
and see the commission
and discuss with them why,
and get to know about it.
So I went there.
I remember the situation
was emotionally disturbing
and painful because I had to
sit in front of four people
and they were all telling me
that this is first
of all boring,
second of all, I do
not have experience
and I'm not a proper director.
But of course after some time,
they proved to be a really
big supporter of the project.
And without them, it would
have been nearly impossible
to get the project going.
But it took some convincing
and determination at first.
And as I was walking
away from the institute
I was so emotionally destroyed,
but I was thinking,
maybe they're right,
but on some point I thought, no,
I can't let them beat me down.
That's what Vincent did.
He really had this persistence
and I should follow him if I
really, truly believe in it.
That's what kept me motivated.
- We were at a pretty critical
point in the production.
Basically we had to
either raise some money
relatively quickly,
or we had to stop production,
or at least put
production on hold.
And at that point, a friend
of mine came to me and said,
Wroclaw is the European
capital of culture in 2016.
Maybe they would like to
support the production
as part of the European
capital of culture.
So I went to Wroclaw.
I met with the
president of the city.
I showed him what
we were trying to do
and he said, well, as a city,
we would like to
support this production.
And it was a really important
moment for the film.
We started looking
around for work
that we could do in Wroclaw.
We partnered up a CETA,
which is Centrum
Technologii Audiowizualnych.
They have a beautiful
facility for shooting
on a blue screen, and they
also had VFX facilities
so they could take on
part of the work with VFX,
and we could also
do the Polish shoot
at their facilities.
- And it was a really
important time for us
because it allowed us
before we had finalized
with the Polish Film Institute,
it allowed us to get the funding
which meant that we
could shoot the first
shots from the film.
For example, the famous
shot that's on the poster
of Vincent turning around,
that was actually shot right
after we closed the financing
with the city of Wroclaw.
It was actually just a test shot
both for Robert
Gulaczyk, the actor,
and for Anna Kluza,
and it turned out to be
the most iconic shot
of the film, I think.
- One of
our main challenges
in bringing Vincent's
painting to the cinema screen
was the fact that Vincent used
many different canvas sizes
and that was part of
his choice as an artist
in terms of the composition,
whereas for cinema we
could only use one size.
This meant that we
had to add or subtract
or cover the painting through
some kind of movement.
And in the beginning, we did
the whole film 16 by nine,
which is the standard HD format.
It was causing us
a lot of problems
because actually most
of Vincent's paintings
was a size 30 canvas,
which is more a square format.
So for every single
painting almost
we were having to
invent these side bars
and change the composition.
And then Lukasz Zal,
our cinematographer,
came along to us and he said,
well why don't you
just shoot at academy
and then you don't have to
second guess the genius
of Vincent Van Gogh.
And we were sacked by our
first sales agent company
because we made the decision
to go with the academy format.
But I would rather go
against the sales agent
then go against the
compositional choices
of Vincent Van Gogh.
- We started
working with Lukasz.
We invited him to our studio
to go through it step
by step, shot by shot.
- That's when we
had to have the very
detailed conversations
of actually how
we were going to
translate this 2D medium
into a live action
reference shoot,
which would then have to
go back into the 2D medium
of painting.
So we'd got to this point.
We had filled up a
quarter of our studio
with 20 painting animators.
We had raised I think
around a third of the money.
We were still a long way off
being able to go ahead and
know that we can make this film
and finish this film.
We made the decision to
actually go and shoot
a third of the film
and to do the painting animation
of a third of the film.
- We decided to record
one of our main
characters Pere Tanguy,
mainly because his
role in the film
wouldn't change, even if
we were going to change
other parts of the
script later on.
And because we needed to
have some painted material
to persuade people to join
us and finance the film.
- This was really a decision
that would either make
or break the production.
We swam in a direction
which could potentially
not only bankrupt the company
and destroy our
reputations as film makers,
but also make it unlikely
that we'd make another film
in the future.
It was a tough decision to make.
There weren't so
many options then
and so we took the
plunge and we decided to
go ahead and do
the Wroclaw shoot.
- Wroclaw was
quite difficult for me.
It was my first
shoot on a big set
and it was a real
learning experience
and a very new situation.
I was a first-time director on
a Polish, male-dominated set,
and I think the crew
was quite skeptical
about how it would all turn out.
- We always had
that hanging over us
that we knew that we
had taken a big risk
in going ahead and
making parts of the film
when we had no commitment
of distribution,
we had no commitment of funding
that covered the entire budget.
- The most attractive
thing about this project
is it's not a
commercial project.
It's not a big bucks project.
It's not Harry Potter.
It's not Disney
film or whatever.
It's an extraordinary labor
of love about a great artist,
and involves a lot of
extraordinary artistry to make
in every department
of this film.
- It was a big lesson
in directing a production
on this scale for me,
but also for Hugh,
who had joined me
as co-director.
- I think I kinda went from
being a creative and at
points controlling producer
to an accidental director.
Me joining Dorota as director
just sort of organically
flowed out of the experience
of the production and of
the writing of the script.
Definitely the hardest
part was the Wroclaw shoot.
I think it was particularly hard
because we were working
out as we were going along
how this type of film making
would actually be done.
After all, we were
doing something new,
so we couldn't phone someone
up who'd already done it
and ask for their advice.
We couldn't read
any how to manuals.
We just had to find
out for ourselves.
We had no proof that
it would work out,
we just had to
trust our instincts
and hope for the best.
- It's trying something
incredibly new and exciting
by having moving images of
the paintings of Van Gogh.
And hopefully we will
all be remembered for it.
- So one of the scary things
that came out of Wroclaw
first shoot was we
realized that the actors,
when they were
acting out the parts,
took almost twice as
long as me and Dorota
when we had acted
out all of the parts.
- Listen son, I'm afraid
you'll never deliver that
letter to Theo Van Gogh.
- Practically in
the space of three months
we had to cut over a quarter
of the story from the script
that we've been carefully
working on over three years.
And also we needed to
record more painters.
- You'll see that now we
have another 15 PAWS units
and inside each one we
have a painting animator
doing their very first
shot on Loving Vincent.
Once we saw the material,
once it had been painted,
we got that whole enthusiasm
back for the project.
We realized we actually
were doing something
that was special.
And we cut together this
little trailer of material
from that first shoot.
And someone took this
trailer that we did,
they put it onto
their Facebook page
and it went viral.
- Loving Vincent.
- Finally tonight, it's
never been done before.
A fully hand-painted
feature film
now giving new life to
Vincent Van Gogh's works.
The attention to detail
so extraordinary,
the finished product is
turning into a masterpiece
in its own right.
- Within 24 hours, two
million people had seen this.
Within three months, 200
million people had viewed this.
We went from a situation
that seemed hopeless
to a situation
where it was like,
we can go ahead and
we can make this film.
We didn't have enough time
but at least we finally
had a promise of resources
to make the film.
- And, action.
- Even though
for most of my life
I've been working with
animation and painting,
I always wanted and dreamed
about working with actors.
And suddenly when I
found myself on that set,
I realized how much I enjoy it.
- For the London shoot, the
biggest issue was time, really.
It is that we were
trying to shoot
over 60 minutes of material
with our main actors
in the space of 11 days
doing up to 30 setups,
which is a speed of shooting
which maybe you
get on soap operas.
- The
concept of this film
was from the very beginning
that it will be a story
told by Vincent's paintings
and the characters
of his portraits.
Therefore, I though
that it's important
that these portraits
who were real humans
before they were painted,
should be portrayed
by real humans now
because they had real emotions,
emotions that the actors follow
and show based on the script.
- I knew that we were all
going to be turned into sort of
Van Gogh style paintings,
but I didn't quite know how
you guys were gonna
go about doing that.
The concept was new
and it was something
that hadn't been done before.
That's why I wanted to do it.
That's why I wanted to
do it with you guys.
I was really interested
to see what the
process was gonna be.
- We're working to
enormous green screens,
the type that you
usually don't see
unless you're on a
huge multi-million
dollar American movie.
- The cornflower is
lovely this time of year.
It's really quite
pretty, isn't it?
Amazing, the scenery around here
and I just live down the
road around the corner
sort of back over
there somewhere.
- I knew very little about
Van Gogh before starting this.
Only what I had leanred
in school as a kid.
I knew about his ear,
I think that's probably
the most famous thing.
But I had absolutely
no idea about him
supposedly killing himself,
or that there was ever
any question around
how exactly he died.
It's been fascinating to
explore that in the script
and also to read
different accounts
from the different characters.
It's really interesting.
- I always like when the
technical side of film
meets the artistic side.
So it's been a great experience
and the cast have been amazing.
- Oh Jesus Christ.
Dick.
You know that it's glued on?
- Need that hot water.
- If I had known
about the beard.
I would have ran away.
- What do I say when I find him?
- It's customary to start
with I'm sorry for your loss.
- I play Armand Roulin
who is a young guy
that Van Gogh painted
'cause he was the son of one
of Van Gogh's best friend.
And throughout the film,
he sort of has a self discovery,
which is sort of aided by
his discovery of Van Gogh.
To start with it was
completely the painting
that captivated me because
I didn't really know much
about him other than
he was this mad guy
who cut off his ear
and everyone though
he was a bit strange.
But then through this movie
and noticing more about the
man behind the paintings
and suddenly the paintings
became so much more interesting.
They just became alive
for me to sort of,
he's one of the first painters
that really started
painting with emotion.
- Once we had
finished with the actors,
then it was all about painting.
Every single frame of the
film would need to be painted
carefully in oil paints,
mainly in Vincent's style.
And his style is
not easy to animate.
The fact you can often see
individual brush strokes,
the fact that he had
such a thick impasto,
meant that for a lot
of shots the painters
had to stop motion animate
each individual brush stroke.
Move each individual
brush stroke bit by bit
across the canvas.
It was my job to
critically evaluate
and eventually approve
every single one
of the 65,000 paintings.
- I think by that
time we'd only painted
15,000 frames of the film,
so we had another 50,000
frames of the film to paint
and not enough time
to paint it in.
And not enough painters
to paint it with.
- We were still in the
process of sorting out
all the applications that
had been coming through
and trying to find
the right painters.
- We had a whole new
recruitment drive.
We had 4,000 new applications
and just the task
of sifting through
all of these applications
to try and find people
that we wanted.
- We did tests on I
think over 500 painters.
- We were setting up a
separate unit in Wroclaw
with 10 painters.
We were setting up
a unit in Athens,
Studio Mabrida, that
went up to 18 painters.
But we also knew that
we're gonna need like
100 painters
working on this film
if we were gonna stand a
chance of getting it made
before the deadline.
- We now have
three different studios
in two countries
and our main studio
which at first had 20 painters,
was now filled up
with 67 painting
animation work stations.
- We were ready to
go full steam ahead
with the painting process
to complete the film on time
with our new larger
team of painters.
Okay so let me take you
through the animation process.
First thing, we start
with a clean canvas,
open up the software and
load up the references
from the live action shoot.
We take a key frame for the
scene and based on that,
we paint the first frame
and check it over
with our supervisor.
If the frame gets accepted,
we can move on and we
can begin animation.
The projector display the
second frame of the shot,
and then we have to
scrape the paint off
or change it a little bit
and we paint the scene
to match this new frame.
Once this is done,
we take another two
pictures with the camera.
We are doing the film
12 frames per second,
but we have to take two pictures
to match the 24 frame
standard for the film.
After we've taken the picture,
we project the next
frame and start again.
- I had to look after
a group of painters
and make sure that
they were all sticking
to the correct style
and ensuring that every frame
has the same
standard of quality.
- Some shots took a very
long time to complete.
I think my longest shot took
me about six months to finish.
Now imagine working every
day here on one single shot
for it to then be on the
screen for around 42 seconds.
- Some of us definitely
spent thousands of hours
in a painting station,
half of our lives was there.
So in a way they became
our little homes at work.
- It was very clear
that some painters
became attached to their PAWS
and would decorate them
and very often leave a mess
in there too.
- Sometimes we had to
fix certain scenes.
We would paint and
animate just a part
that needed fixing,
and stick in onto
the original shot.
We wanted to avoid
throwing out whole shots
as it would be a
huge waster of time.
- It happened to me twice
when I did a mistake
during my painting animation,
and I have to redo 10
or 15 frames again.
That was very painful.
- There are very few scenes
that they were thrown out
after they were painted
because they all took a
very long time to paint.
- You hear that,
I'd better go talk to the lad.
- I told
you you're not going anywhere.
You are not help
talking the shop.
- The scenes that took the
longest were the dynamic scenes
which has a lot of
camera movement.
- I painted descending
through the starry night
over the town.
Because of moving camera,
I often only managed
a painting a day,
mostly one and a half,
on rare occasions two.
So it took me a
long time to animate
just a few seconds of the film.
- We were held back a little
bit by what we could do.
The moving camera shots cost,
I'm the finance guy .
On the set I was like, Dorota,
do we really need to have
the moving camera shot here?
But you know at
the end of the day
it was a matter of the budget.
- I think that we
had the situation
several times a year where
we really didn't know
where the next money
was gonna come from.
It was brilliant
working with Sean
because Sean had this ability
to pull rabbits out of the hat.
There was this month
where Sean was like,
I have no more rabbits.
Really, the only
option I could see
was getting on a
plane to America
and going and talking to
one of our largest investors
and saying to them,
we'd like you to increase
your investment by 50%
and we'd like you to put it
in in the next two weeks.
Thankfully, they were
yet again very supportive
and came through to us.
That kept the whole
thing moving forward
for more months
until we wrapped up
all the legal work,
all the bank documents
that finally got the final
monies flowing through to us.
And then it was all
about pushing to get more
painting done, week by week.
That was putting a
lot of pressure on us
and that kind of increased
when I had to go to Britain
to do the sound and the music
and left Dorota on
her own in Poland
to continue supervising
the production.
- That was very
disappointing for me.
I had written every
draft of the script
to Clint Mansell's music.
For me, he was the only
composer for Loving Vincent.
I had my heart set on him.
He was a hero and
inspiration to me
so to have missed the
recording and mixing
was really heartbreaking.
But there was no choice
because at that point
in the production, we were
at our most intensive stage.
- We had people working
five, six, seven days a week.
It was really up to the painters
how much they painted per week,
and the more they painted,
the more they got paid,
and obviously we had
a vested interest
in trying to keep them
there as long as possible.
And one of the things
that we would do
that later became a tradition
is that one of us would
cook for the entire crew
and we'd post what we were
cooking on a Friday night
and hope the painters would
be streaming into the studios
on a Saturday.
We also provided
breakfast in the morning
to try and get painters
to start work earlier,
but some painters
always preferred to
work during the night.
- Like Vincent,
I like the night time,
which was very
useful as each night
I had to do scheduling
for the next day.
Because in the day time, there
was too many approvals to do.
Deciding which
animator did which shot
was incredibly important
to the quality of the film.
The studio was
different by night.
Much calmer and there
were few painters
who were also night owls,
so I could take a break
and review the work
and discuss those shots
in a more in-depth way.
But even with the long days,
we knew that we
weren't going to meet
our September deadline,
and a lot of our painters
who had arranged
their return home
were starting to leave.
- The pressure just went
up increasingly every week.
- Because on one hand
we were still working very hard
and very intense.
The deadline was so close.
And on the other hand,
there were these people
leaving every day
and every week.
- We would
have a farewell party
at least once a week where
we had some cake and beer,
and after we all said goodbye,
the rest of the crew
went back to work.
- The studios in
Wroclaw and Athens
finished their animation
by the end of October.
In Gdansk we were still
painting the front titles
and doing some corrections.
But by November 21st, the
painting process stopped.
- I think
that's it then guys.
Okay, champagne.
- By November 30th,
we dismantled all the
painting stations,
and it was time to move
after four memorable years.
- Two years and 50 weeks ago,
I stood here in the snow
giving the first
Kickstarter update.
In this studio over here,
which is now a warehouse,
we dreamed, devised,
planned, produced, designed,
and most importantly painted
the Loving Vincent film.
- Our life was
revolving for five years
around Loving Vincent.
And we were expecting
that we're gonna have
this incredible sense of relief
and achievement
after we finished.
But it was quite
different actually
because we finished in March
and we had to wait
til the world premiere
that was planned
for June in Annecy.
So yeah, these three months
were really difficult.
I remember them as a very
dark period of my life
because it was filled with
this sense of dread and anxiety
and expectations
building up in my head.
It was also very cold.
I remember snowing
on the main day
and I just remember
that I felt burned out.
I felt physically and mentally
really in a bad way, I think,
and I just really wanted
finally to share this film.
I had to introduce the
film and after I did that,
which was incredibly
emotional moment for me,
I had to go and
sit in the audience
and be part of the audience
and watch the film with them.
I was terrified and I had
no idea what to expect.
I knew that I have to share
this film with the audience
and they will react,
and I had no idea how.
I do remember that moment,
that time extremely vividly.
The film comes to the end.
The end credit starts to roll
and the audience
starts applauding.
But then that applause
is transforming
into bigger applause,
and then that bigger
applause is transforming
into standing ovation
and that lasts 12 minutes.
- There was just
this incredible relief
when we had that standing
ovation at the end of the film.
- That was a moment in my
life when it just ,
it all sort of washed away.
The stress of the
previous five years.
Just realizing that
we had done something
that people appreciated.
- Whatever happened after that,
whether it was successful
in other countries
or other festivals,
we knew that there was
this kind of appreciation
for the film there.
And I think that was
a real turning point
and things moved
very fast after that.
The day after Annecy we went
straight out to Shanghai.
- We said yes to
every opportunity
to promote the film.
We said yes to every interview,
every screening we Hugh and I
and all the promotional action.
- We barely went home.
We had 90 flights in 10 months,
so you know, having nine
or 10 flights a month
to try and be there
for all the premiers
and to just do as
much press as possible
because we didn't wanna
take anything for granted
and we'd spent seven years,
or more even, making the film.
And so we wanted to
do everything possible
to make it successful.
- It really is touching,
to know that you
actually made a film
that can make people cry,
that can inspire people,
and I think that's, for me,
the biggest success
of the release.
- The reception of the audience,
and it wasn't just
in the cinemas.
It was also at the festivals.
We got 16, I think
now we've actually,
'cause we got another
couple over the past month,
I think we got 18
audience awards.
And those awards are
voted for by the audiences
and in a way they're
like the best awards
because it's the
people going out there
bothering to attend
the festivals
and bothering to vote
and backing you for
what you've done.
- In China, in the US,
in Germany, the Netherlands,
in virtually every
country we visited,
we had these people
coming up to us with tears
that wanted to share their love
and wanted to come
up to us and hug us.
I wish that Vincent
could have had
some of these kind words,
these good emotions,
these hugs that I have received,
because I believe that
this could keep him going
and keep him alive
for more years
and keep him dreaming
and creating.
- The
Academy of Motion Picture
Arts and Sciences invites
you to be its guest
at the 37th annual
awards presentation.
- The film had done
really well at festivals,
really well in the cinemas.
Financially it had
been a success.
Yet somehow we were
still viewed as outsiders
within the film industry.
And the biggest stamp of
legitimacy that you can get
in the film industry
is an Oscar nomination.
We were all racked
with nerves in the days
leading up to the announcement
of the Oscars, 2018.
- For best animated feature
film, The Boss Baby.
The Bread Winner.
Coco
Ferdinand.
And, Loving Vincent.