Inside The Violinist, Singapore’s award-winning animated movie

OLD SINGAPORE ENTIRELY DRAWN BY HAND

“While we had the work and support of many animators around the world, the entire pre-production, most of it, in terms of the look of the world, the feel of the world, the architecture, the design, was pretty much set in Singapore by a Singaporean team,” Han mentioned.

He defined that the native workforce would produce detailed reference packages for studios working abroad to make sure the historic accuracy of the environments and characters distinctive to the interval, similar to Malay boatmen, coolies from China and retailers from India and Arab nations.

“We created a very detailed package to be distributed with the international teams, so they know exactly what to follow,” he mentioned. “Many of them have never been to Singapore, much less Singapore in the 1920s and 30s.”

For one scene, an abroad workforce was requested to create a structure of Twenties Chinatown utilizing references equipped by the Singapore workforce. Some of the early work got here again trying, Han recalled with amusement, like Paris.

“So we knew the Singapore team had to do the homework first,” he mentioned.

That homework went past structure, as Han additionally informed CNA Lifestyle that he spent about two years studying near 10 books, alongside oral histories and different materials, whereas creating the movie.

The workforce additionally visited websites and museums round Singapore, similar to Baba House, which turned a reference for Fei’s household residence.

Animating convincing violin taking part in was additionally notably troublesome as a result of the filmmakers didn’t wish to cover inaccurate hand actions behind conveniently positioned digital camera angles.

“When the character plays violin, the fingering must be in the right place,” Garcia mentioned. “You really feel the pressure. You feel the vibrato.”

Han mentioned the workforce spent round 18 months engaged on the violin animation. None of them really performed the violin.

The instrument was however essential to the movie.

During his analysis, Han spoke to a violin instructor who described it as one of many devices closest in sound to the human voice – an concept that stayed with him due to the vary of feelings it may categorical.

Composer Ho confronted a special problem: Creating music able to carrying Fei and Kai’s relationship throughout many years.

“I spent months developing the main melody, the main theme, and around a year developing the soundtrack,” he informed CNA Lifestyle, recalling Han’s course to make sure “the audience will cry from the first note”.

The music and animation have been so intertwined that Han mentioned there have been moments when Ho was ready for animated photographs earlier than he may rating them, whereas the animators themselves wanted the music earlier than they might full the scenes.

“We could say it’s a story of love between two people,” Garcia mentioned, “but it’s really a story of three people, and one of them is the music.”