The Flying Sailor Filmmakers Amanda Forbis and Wendy Tilby on the combination of humor and “Shackles”

Filmmakers Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis were inspired The Flying Sailor from a small pamphlet about a sailor they found investigating the 1917 Halifax explosion. Intrigued by the flight aspect, their animated shorts cast a slow glimpse of life flashing before a man’s eyes while his “balletic” movements are underscored by a beautiful piano. The animation style combines 2D and 3D elements, which Forbis said created a “cartoonish” opening scene that contrasted the tragedy of the situation.

DEADLINE: How did this short circuit come about?

WENDY TILBY: Inspiration came about 20 years ago when we happened to be in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on the east coast of Canada. We went to the Maritime Museum which showed all about the Halifax explosion and amongst the many things we looked at there was a very small blurb which told the story of a sailor who was in the harbor when the ship exploded. And it took off and flew two kilometers and landed intact and naked except for a boot. We loved this story and thought it would be a very interesting animated film. And we were really only interested in the flying part because we wondered what it was like for the sailor. It was interesting because we were able to come up with a very surreal, subjective, ingrained representation of what it was like in animation. So we took a few seconds in the air and turned it into a few minutes of film.

DEADLINE: Are there any records of his experience with the explosion?

AMANDA FORBIDDEN: He wrote a one-page testimonial about his experiences, so there’s not much. The real man was about 21 or 22 years old and was a third mate who had to hand over $75 from his captain to another captain. He walked on the pier and saw Mont-Blanc on fire, the ship was about to explode, and finally he ran back to his ship. And then suddenly he exploded. He said his impression of the flight was very limited, he felt like he was under water, and then he found himself on that hilltop in Halifax, in a park, completely naked except for one boot and next to a crying child . And he asked, “Where are we?” And she said, “I don’t know.” And then someone handed him a pair of trousers and a McIntosh and he scrambled to his feet.

DEADLINE: The beginning starts very comical and cartoonish in 3D before deviating from the explosion. Can you talk about the combination of animation styles?

FORBIDDEN: We deliberately made the opening scene cartoonish, and the idea came to us because of the TNT. We also liked it because it separates the beginning from the later part of the film so much. It is meant to indicate that we all go about without imagining that misfortune will happen to us. We all walk around thinking we know how the day is going to go and that we can handle it, and then things happen that absolutely upset us and throw us around and hit us.

We also used a combination of 2D and 3D. The city of Halifax was built entirely in Maya by our man Billy Dyer, and then he blew it up too. The large plume of smoke and debris were all 3D and the sailor was 2D. We also have some live action in there, partly because we liked it and thought it worked in the context of the film.

TILBY: When you talk about the change in tone from cheerful cartoons to more serious disasters, we’re always keen to walk that line, and we do so more or less unconsciously. All our films seem to have a mixture of comedy and tragedy about them, although in this case it was tragedy but moving. We knew it was difficult in this case because we found something funny in the image of this pink naked sailor rising above all this chaos and we were aware that the slow motion aspect made his movements quite balletic. We wanted it to have a funny aspect, but we also didn’t want to undermine the seriousness of the real situation, especially for the people of Halifax for whom this is a very real and personal disaster affecting their families and their city. We wanted to go that route and make it entertaining and with a bit of humor, but also show the poignancy and seriousness of the real situation.

DEADLINE: This seems to show in the music as well, as you have a calm sound that contrasts with the chaotic events.

TILBY: We always wanted the contrast of the music to be nice and dancey, but it was difficult to find the right sound.

FORBIDDEN: We hoped the viewer would understand that we were looking at a severely delayed experience. He would have been in the air for probably four or five seconds, and in our film he flies for minutes. So we like the idea of ​​becoming a beautiful thing. This strange transformation from a disaster to something beautiful along with the music. It suggests that kind of melancholy, of letting life go in a way. He was practically saying goodbye to everything he knew, and the tone had to be thoughtful and straightforward without being sentimental.

TILBY: And then it transitions to a quieter sound as the sailor actually transitions from waving to flying in the clouds. Most of us fantasize about how fun it would be to fly, and he actually has a moment of that, about the actual fun of flying, and it goes into a state of bliss. And the music transitions for the final moment where he becomes a blob and then a particle and then everything changes again as he revives into a louder and more bombastic sound. The music has a lot of transitions and was very difficult, but it shaped the film and really formed the backbone.