An Ostrich Told Me The World Is Fake director Lachlan Pendragon pushes the boundaries of stop-motion for a “ridiculously meta” animated short

When Lachlan Pendragon planned a research project for his graduate program at the Griffith Film School, little did he know that his “ridiculous meta” take on stop motion would end up with an Oscar nomination. His stop motion animated short film An ostrich told me the world is wrong and I think I believe itfollows Neil (Pendragon), an office worker hiding behind a bouquet in stop-motion animation. Pendragon developed the short film from a research perspective with the goal of pushing the boundaries of stop-motion animation by showing elements of the world being built. While keeping audiences informed of the “filmmaking” behind the camera, he was careful not to sacrifice the story of a character discovering the terrifying nature of their world.

DEADLINE: Where did the idea for your animated short come from?

LACHLAN PEN DRAGON: This is ridiculously meta and very self-referential. It deconstructs the processes of making stop-motion films. So this idea comes from a research perspective. I created it as a research project for a PhD in Fine Art. So I made stop motion films and I tried to use what I like about stop motion and try to figure out what exactly I like about stop motion. I hadn’t thought of that before. And I use a lot of new technologies like 3D printing and motion control systems and things that with enough practice will make stop motion look the way you want it to. You can 3D print anything you want. And so you start asking yourself these questions like, “How polished is too polished for stop motion.” To me, stop motion is all about those tangible qualities and imperfections. I went way too far and made it very meta so you’re always aware that you’re looking at something handmade and handmade.

But I wanted to make sure that you could still connect with the characters and still be entertained. So that’s part of it. I have a story about an office worker who doesn’t like this job and is a bit stuck. And using that realization that he’s in a stop-motion world is a way to shake it up and have a lot of fun with it too. It sounds pretty scary when you think about a stop motion character discovering that their faces can fall off and some of their partners are just torsos because the animator didn’t have time to finish them.

DEADLINE: Did you work with stop motion for this film?

PEN DRAGON: I started in high school, but then I was pretty sure that I would go down the path of making live action films. I thought I would go to film school and do all that. At the time I was doing stop motion animations from sound and thought it was just another way to make films. . I had a backup to study animation. It took me almost a year to get back into stop motion and discover that it connects much more than anything else. I think it’s because stop motion is kind of a middle ground between live action and animation. They still use cameras and lights and there is the same kind of problem solving.

However, stop motion is not a very efficient or practical animation method. It’s a bit old-fashioned. I was practicing stop motion and I was like, ‘Now is it time to get into something CG or hand-drawn, or do I keep investing in this hoping it pays off? Because it’s one of those things where you just have to keep practicing, and I realized that if I followed an academic path I could keep doing that, so I went back and did a PhD in Fine Arts, which meant that theater comes from a research perspective. . I had to justify everything I did because it had to be research, so I would never have gotten into the film I made if it wasn’t through that lens. It forced me to think about it differently and it also meant that I could do any project I wanted and it could be stop motion. So it was a three year process and I think the animation took about 10 months. If you stop moving every day, you won’t feel like you’re getting better at it. But after a year or two, when I had something big done and could compare it to my previous work, I saw that I was making progress and it felt really good.

DEADLINE: How did Neil’s character come about? Have you always planned to voice the main character?

PEN DRAGON: No I didn’t. I voiced the main character in a previous short film and if you also animate it and listen to it over and over you just get bored with your own voice. So I wanted to bring someone else in, but it was done during Covid and lockdown, so it was hard to find people to work with over the internet. The other voice actors were over the internet, but I wanted to be in the room for the lead role. The easiest way was if I was the voice actor.

DEADLINE: Was it always planned to have the camera looking at the monitor and the movement in the background?

PEN DRAGON: It was in a draft of the script, so I had been thinking about it for a long time, but it was written in such a way that I didn’t know exactly how it was going to look or how much I wanted to show around it. The beauty of research is that it doesn’t have to be a successful film because it is research. You can learn from it, you can write a term paper and we’re fine. So it really takes the pressure off. They try things out and try to innovate. So I turned the monitor back a lot further to give me space and then I turned to the design confirmation because I was so afraid it would be way too distracting or the audience just wouldn’t get it. If you weren’t an animator, is it interesting? And it seems that people find it interesting.