I saw FLOW many weeks ago and it has haunted me ever since. The visceral punch of a cat and his friends traveling in a boat moved me somewhere past words. It is a film that had me sobbing from the sheer beauty of the images.
When I got out of the film I, and the others who were at the screening, spent the better part of the next hour talking excitedly about the film. I asked the Kaitlyn who was handling the PR if the director, Gints Zilbalodis, was doing interviews. She said that that he would be closer to the release and she would let me know. A short time before the film began it's limited run I got a call...
What follows is my talk with director/writer/composer/editor Gints Zilbalodis, It was one of my favorite talks with a filmmaker that I've ever done. Gints just went all in on any subject I asked about and as a result I love FLOW even more. What impressed the hell out of me is that he genuinely wants to talk about the film. Often you talk to someone about their film and you get a sense that whom ever it is tired of talking. Gints was not. More importantly Gints is genuinely interested in what people have to say about how they view the film and what they find inside it. While I stayed away from asking him about what he thinks the film is about, we did talk about how everyone has their own view and how the discussion of those differing views interests him. I love that he is interested in seeing how the film inspires people.
What follows is more or less exactly what happened. I trimmed some of my rambling but I have kept everything Gints said. I made only one edit which was to move the question that ends the transcription to the end because it is the best ending.
I want to thank Kaitlyn at Cinetic Media for chasing me down until we found a time that we could do this. I want to than John DiBello for giving the transcript a once over. And lastly I want to thank Gints Zilbalodis for taking the time to talk to me and more importantly giving the world one of the greatest films I've ever seen.
STEVE: I want to begin with what maybe a strange question, was this designed as a video game? Or did video games influence it? The reason I’m asking is when I got out of the film, several of us were standing in the lobby talking, and one gentleman was saying the film reminded him of a video game.
GINTS: It wasn’t a conscious decision, but I’m influenced by everything in my life, and video games are part of that. I wanted to have an immersive feeling and that you were inside this world, very close to the characters, not just observing them from a distance. I wanted to create a subjective feeling. And telling a story without dialog, you have to use everything else to fill that void and using the environment and not explaining everything with words, but having the audience piece things together with clues and participate in a more active way. I guess that is something similar to a video game, you participate in the storytelling,.,you’re not spoon-fed the story. You can draw a connection to some video games, but some of the smaller video games, where you might not have any objectives but are just exploring the spaces, and its more about the mood, the emotional impact instead of reaching a high score or shooting something. And with the visuals I wanted it to feel graphic and instead of having something hyper-real, having it feel painterly, and at the same time I wanted it to feel dimensional and immersive...which is something similar to these independent video games.
I know that sometimes when films are compared to video games it’s not meant to be a compliment, but I don’t think it should be seen as anything bad because there is a generation of people who have grown up with games and they see it as a positive.
When you think of video games you often think of something being unfocused and the audience can look around where ever they want and it creates a less guided experience. In this case we are guiding the audience and everything is art directed. I wanted every frame to feel like it’s not some random image. There are all these thoughts and work that go into making it look more like a painting and not just some digital artifice, which is what you get in video games.
STEVE: That’s one of the things I love about the film, the look is not like 99% of the films that are out there. It’s very much its own thing. It is very much a work of art.
Since you were saying that you want the audience to work out the meaning, I’m not going to ask you what you think the meaning is. I’ve had too many discussions about that. What I do want to know is, how you feel about how some people are going to state that “this” is what you meant. I know there are going to be dozens of YouTube videos and think pieces stating with absolute certainty what you meant without ever speaking to you. Do you want anyone to state the meaning or do you want everyone to work out their own?
GINTS: I find it more interesting when there is free discussion instead of a closed statement. But for me it’s kind of hard to summarize it into a neat statement. It’s about a lot of things and not a single idea. To me it’s about the journey the characters go through. For me it’s the experience that is more important than sending a message. For me the goal is to make you feel things. It’s closer to music than an essay that’s just about ideas. It’s more about invoking emotion.
When I am asked about certain things I try to describe my intention rather than what you should feel, rather than how I see things, rather than the definite way to see things. I think it’s okay if people see it different ways. I’ve had people approach me with very different views and sure it’s about certain things, and it’s not what I intended. But I won’t argue with them. I think it’s more interesting to allow people to project their own experience rather than imparting a certain view, my view.
STEVE: You compared the film to a piece of music and I think that is dead on. How involved were you with the score of the film?
GINTS: The score was done by me and another composer…
STEVE: Oops, sorry, my mistake for not realizing ….
GINTS: That’s okay; I’ll explain how it came to be. I’ve done the music for the two features I’ve done, so I still consider myself kind of new to this whole music thing. I didn’t study, I don’t play an instrument, I worked on my laptop basically. I can write something that’s simple. But that’s something I’m interested in, having the music be kind of minimalistic. My favorite music is quite simple, but you can build on those emotions on simple chords, simple foundation.
My process is, I write the script, but at the same time I write the music as the story is being developed. And music gives me ideas which direction the story will go, not just mood and tempo but plot points.
I also use the music to edit the film. Instead of using a temp score from other films which is how some films are made – where you ask the composer to do something that’s similar to something that’s already been done and make it different that it’s not the same – that’s not the greatest way of doing it. But because I’m using my own music it allows me to make something that is very specific to the film and doesn’t feel generic. It feels more integrated and not an afterthought.
Then after the film is edited, this is still in pre-production when there is a rough version of the film, we brought on another composer, Rihards Zalupe, who is much more experienced than me and is a more experienced performer with various instruments. He would fine-tune and polish the score and make it more cohesive and he added all the layers of emotion. And then we recorded it with a full orchestra and we recorded it with analog synthesizers and percussion instruments, because I didn’t want just traditional, with just an orchestra, but I wanted to use some random objects or objects which were not meant to be instruments, but which can create interesting sounds.
I wanted the music to have a lot of space, and be expressive. There are long sequences where the music is pretty much the only thing you hear. It’s not competing with the sound effects. The music and sound are working in tandem and not fighting each other. It was great that we had it done early so we knew when effects would be placed and could work around that and be collaborative and better the sound of the music.
STEVE: Thanks for explaining that. While the film has the characters they ride the wave of the music.
I’m curious when you started this how much of the story did you have? As you were writing the story and the music how did they shape each other?
GINTS: We had a script and all of the story is found that way, but it evolves through the process. It’s not like I knew the story in one day. It took weeks and weeks, months, to find it in many drafts and trials and errors. That’s the hardest part for me creatively. There are technical challenges, but writing is the most difficult part. That’s why I work on the music at the same time, because music is the most fun part and the most easy. So, if I get stuck writing I can do some music and that is a kind of productive procrastination.
But after I make the script, I make the animatic, which is a rough edit of the film without the animation, but you can figure out the camera angles and the way out of the scenes. And while I’m doing that, I’m not strictly following the script. It’s like another draft. Because I’m the one who wrote the script and I’m visualizing it I don’t have to follow the text. I feel I have the freedom to be organic, because sometimes you have something on the page, and when you try to visualize it on the virtual set you realize it doesn’t work, so you have to be very flexible.
After the animatic you have to stick to the plan. I know on bigger films they make changes very late and discard certain finished elements, but our budget was modest and our resources limited. We had to be precise in how we spent our time and resources.
I’m happy that we didn’t have deleted scenes of finished stuff, but there is a lot of exploration being done early on. I think it’s more fluid than most animated films.
STEVE: How close is the finished film to what you envisioned? Was this what you saw when you started working?
GINTS: It happens gradually with each draft. I add elements or take them out so the initial version is more like an emotion. I have this cat and there is water...and with each pass I add more detail and it gradually reveals itself.
I know some storytellers have a clear idea of what they want and can see everything. But for me I have to go through that process of discovery very gradually. It’s only when the film is finished do I see it myself.
STEVE: The way you visualize things… I don’t know if you know Signe Bauman who is an animator…
GINTS: Yes! Yes!
STEVE: I had interviewed her for her film MY LOVE AFFAIR WITH MARRIAGE, and she was talking about how she didn’t know what the finished film would look like until the end.
I know the film is surprising for people who don’t watch a lot of non-American animation, so I was curious what were your influences that weren’t the typical Disney, Miyazaki animators? Who are other animators you like? The film feels like a lot of old Eastern European, Soviet, animation. Was that an influence?
GINTS: I don’t think it’s like other Latvian films, it’s a different generation and a different sensibility than older traditional animated films from Latvia.
I’m more interested in live action filmmakers than animation filmmakers, in the way they would use the camera. It’s an important aspect because I’m not using standard close ups and wide shots and that kind of coverage. I want every shot to be specific to that scene, which is something that hasn’t been explored in animation.
So the work of Alfonso Cuarón, Kurosawa, Sergio Leone, Wes Anderson, are bigger influences on me than animators.
STEVE: That’s one of the things I’ve heard said in conversations — it doesn’t feel like an animated film. It feels like the work of a master, which I think you are.
I’m curious, after this film and your first film, both of which are largely silent films about journeys, I was wondering if you are going to go in a different direction for your next project.
GINTS: Yes, In some ways it’s similar and in other ways it’s quite different. I’m working on my next project — it’s an animated feature, but for the first time I’m using dialog, which is a new and exciting challenge for me. It’s still a visual film. The main characters are human so it would make sense they speak.
FLOW works as both a family film and an adult film. The next is less like a child, it is more for a teenager or older. I’m trying some ambitious visual techniques which I’m trying to figure out if they will work, so I won’t reveal anything yet. I want to push the techniques I explored in FLOW even further, so as I am writing the script I am doing visual tests to see if they will work.
STEVE: Was there any thinking behind the animals we see? Were the choices random or was there meaning in the choices?
GINTS: I’ll start with the cat, which was the inspiration for the story. That was because I had a cat growing up. I also had two dogs which inform the dog character. I wanted to have how the cat tries to be more trustful and work together. But I didn’t want it to be so simple so there is the dog who is on the opposite journey and he starts out almost too trustful and looks for someone to tell him what to do, and ends up being more independent. The personalities fit the animals, with the cat being grumpy and independent, and the dog being friendly. All of the others were based on the team and looking for a group to belong and they have different ways of achieving that goal. I wanted them to be distinctive visually so you can recognize them. Their voices should be different so there was a casting process to see how they interact with each other and what interactions might happen if we put them together. It became obvious quite quickly that they were best together.
STEVE: I need to ask, because I had discussions with people who left during the end credits, why did you put in the post credit sequence? Was that a late addition? I’m asking because that shot changes how some people feel about the film.
GINTS: That’s a very late addition to the film. It was not in the script. It was done a month before the premiere and all of the crew had left. It was only when I was designing the end credits that I had this idea and I used animation from another scene in a new context. It was an emotional discovery, and it felt right to add it. I know some people will watch it and some will miss it. It’s a gift to the dedicated members of the audience who stick through the credits. And the credits are short, only two and a half minutes, so it’s not that long a wait. But it changes the way you perceptive the film which I think is interesting that it makes a happier ending for some and less for others.
If people missed it, perhaps they’ll go again and see what they missed.
STEVE: Let’s end it here. I have other questions that I don’t really want answers to and I don’t want to spoil anything for other people who haven’t seen the film.
