RIGA - It doesn't often happen that the work of the Latvian film industry achieves international success and acclaim. But that is precisely what has happened to the Latvian animation studio Rija Films, which was a major contributor to the Oscar-nominated French-Canadian-Belgian animated feature film "The Triplets of Belleville."
The quirky film, which is a universe away from Disney-style animation, was an unlikely worldwide success, but its Oscar nomination for best animation feature will surprise few who have seen it.
"I was very happy about the nomination," says Vilnis Kalnaellis, Rija Films' managing director and producer, with pride in his eyes. "I do believe that we (Rija) also had something to do with that."
And rightly so. Rija was one of four animation studios working on "The Triplets of Belleville," and can, according to Kalnaellis, take credit for about 30 minutes of material of the 78-minute feature. From October 2001 to May 2002, more than 50 people worked on the project, which resulted in approximately 45,000 drawings for the film.
The film's director, Sylvain Chomet, had already designed all the characters for the film before Rija started working on. But this didn't mean that the animators at Rija just had to sit there and robotically draw.
"Of course the director already had storyboards (see glossary) and a firm idea of what things should look like," says Kristine Cibulska, production supervisor at Rija. "But an animator is the creator who has to find the spirit of what a director imagines and the best way to show exactly that."
Cibulska remembers making "The Triplets of Belleville" with a smile, and the hours and hours spent communicating via e-mail, conveying information back and forth between the director and the team of animators at Rija.
Rija Films was founded in 1995, and besides having produced and distributed a number of Latvian animation films, Rija has also cooperated with companies in countries such as England, Germany, France, Canada and the U.S.A. on various feature and short films.
Though it's a relatively small studio, Rija has the facilities and the staff to complete any task concerning animation films. This covers anything from developing characters and layouts to 2D and 3D animation and sound production, as well as making commercials.
Due to the fact that there is no animation school in Latvia, most of the animators at Rija are more or less self-educated in the art. Most have studied at the Latvian Academy of Arts and then continued learning through their work at Rija. But why is it that foreign companies want to work with an animation studio in Latvia?
"In Latvia they (foreign companies) find European quality and ways of thinking. But here it is just less expensive," Cibulska says, before Kalnaellis suddenly bursts in.
"That is not why they come here," he says. "It is because of the quality." He explains that Rija worked on the successful feature film "Kirikou and the Sorceress" (1998) with a producer in France, who liked their work so much that he came back to them with "The Triplets of Belleville."
Still he admits that the salary for an animator in Latvia is smaller than in most European countries, and that cooperation with foreign companies means larger budgets, which means that he has more money to give his staff. On Belleville he was able to pay 0.90 lats (1.35 euros) per inbetween-drawing (see glossary). On Latvian productions the amount is seldom higher than 0.20 lats.
So is it at all profitable to be in the animation film business in Latvia? Kalnaellis laughs. "It could be a good business if all companies stuck to their agreements. You never know if people will pay for the work we do," he says. He tells The Baltic Times about a problem he has at the moment with an American company that doesn't seem to want to cough up the 100,000 euros that it owes Rija for a job. This is far from the first time something like this has happened.
Although Rija Films is a private studio, it is able to apply for financial help for productions from state film funds in Latvia. This financial support is crucial in enabling the company to produce films, but sometimes Rija is able to inject some money into a project if state funding doesn't come through.
"It is the usual procedure that the government supports the film industry. It doesn't support the company, but chosen projects. This is the way it is everywhere, well, perhaps except in Hollywood," Kalnaellis explains.
It is by no means easy to get funding for film projects, and perhaps even more so in Latvia where there is always extraordinarily little state money put aside for supporting the film industry.
Kalnaellis says that money for coproductions is a major problem for Rija. The company gets a lot more coproduction offers on foreign productions than it can accept because it is difficult to provide as much money as other companies can put into projects. There was not sufficient money, for example, to invest in "The Triplets of Belleville" for Rija to get official coproduction rights and credits. Instead Rija got the distribution rights for the film in the Baltic states, which means that all the profits from the three countries will go to the company.
Still, the missing coproduction credit is perhaps the reason why so few people know about the amount of work that Rija put into the film.
Kalnaellis has some films that he feels have been especially important to Rija as a studio and himself as a producer. He is very proud of the first entirely Rija-made film, the half-hour TV special "Velnini" (The Little Devils, 1999).
"This was our first film, my first film, and people in Latvia really liked it. Some children have seen it perhaps a 100 times," he says.
He also mentions the worldwide successes of "The Triplets of Belleville" and "Kirikou" as projects he is particularly fond of. The short 2D film "Sieviete" (Woman, 2002) is another one of his favorites.
Rijas next project, "The Prickly," a fairytale about a hedgehog and a princess that it has been working on for five years, will be shown to the public in May this year.
In the meantime Kal-naellis and the others at Rija will be waiting and hoping that "The Triplets of Belleville" wins the Oscar on Feb. 29 - something that would make Rija's already bright future even a little brighter.
SHORT ANIMATION GLOSSARY
Animatic: a slideshowlike, full-length video near to the final production in terms of framing and timing, but minus the animation.
Breakdown: the frame-by-frame analysis of sound tracks to synchronize animation with sound.
Cel:
Traditional: a sheet of clear plastic on to which artwork is painted. A scene would be composed
of up to six layers of cel.
Digital: same usage, but no
limitations as to number
of levels.
Inbetweens: the drawings that fill in between the keyframes. The inbetweener draws them.
Keyframe: the main pose within a sequence of animation.
Layout: shows the position
of characters in a shot, the extremes of their actions, their scale relationships to one another and to the background.
Line test: the animation drawings are shot to check the movement and timing before coloring.
Lip sync: the synchronization of characters' mouth movements to a soundtrack. The dialogue will be recorded before drawn animation is initiated.
Paint(ing): traditional: the cel, having been traced, is turned over and acrylic paint applied. When dry, the cel is turned back the right way and the paint will be almost perfectly flat. Digital: a click of a mouse and a whole area is painted.
Slate: board with text placed before a shot indicating the scene and shot number that follows.
Storyboard: the story of a production in pictures together with dialogue, indications of framing, camera moves and sound effects.
Trace/Tracing: traditional: the animators' line drawings are copied on to cel. The result is a line drawing, used to paint over on the reverse side of the cel. Digital: the word 'ink' is mostly used to describe the element of a cel that was drawn by the animator. It can be colored and is also used to "hold" the areas of paint.
