1: What did Javier Mariscal give to the director Fernando Trueba as the starting point for the animated film Chico and Rita? in 2007, Javier Mariscal gave his sketchbook from his trip to Cuba to Fernando Trueba, the director of Chico and Rita. The colourful drawings within it clearly show a passionate love for the architecture and interiors of Cuba. Looking at some of the art, you can almost see the beginning of the ideas for Chico and Rita.
2: This is Fernando Trueba first animated film. What was he surprised to be working with? As this was Fernando Trueba’s first animated film, he had assumptions about animation; he thought that he would only be working with drawings, and animated characters, but to his surprise, he actually collaborated with real-life actors.
3: What are the benefits of working this way? He realised that working with actors “is a really good idea because it’s the best way to keep the film under control”, otherwise when the director tells the animator to make something, there could be a million different outcomes. Working with actors allows the director to make exactly what they want, so then when the animators come to animating the sequences, there is no deviation from the director’s original cinematic vision.
4: Why did the director feel it was important to use Cuban people? To represent the Cuban characters more accurately.
5: Where was most of the film filmed and how and what was filmed differently? Almost all of the film was filmed on set, except for exterior shots with cars and such. But when filming outside, they had to make sure that everything was “Marked up”, which involved putting striped balls on everything, so that they could go back and digitise all of the camera movements.
6: How many animators worked on the film? Around 200 people.
7: What was their biggest challenge? Making the 200 animators seem like just one person because they all needed to draw in the exact same style for continuity in the film.
8: What locations are described as also ‘the star of the film’? Havana and New York.
9: How did Javier Mariscal visually record Havana? By drawing the backdrops and backgrounds in great amounts of details. They evoked the characters, the feeling of Havana, and New York.
10: How does colour support and enhance the story in the film? Two different colour palettes are used for Havana and New York. Havana has very warm colours, with lots of sunshine, and New York has much more muted colours, with rain and shadow. This makes it easier to distinguish one place from the other.
11: What other story does the film try to tell? The story of all of the other Cuban musicians at that era. How they moved to New York and influenced Bebop there.
12: Why did the director decide to recreate the music rather than use the existing original recorded music? They were going to use the original music, but then Fernando Trueba realised that musically speaking, it would turn the film into some kind of compilation disc. Instead, he was much more excited at the idea of recreating the music for real, by “getting the musicians to play other musicians.” He wanted an original, contemporary produced soundtrack.
Rotoscoping
The animation technique used in Chico and Rita is called “rotoscoping”. It is where the animator uses a pre-recorded piece of real-life video, with real actors, then they trace around them on every single frame. This allows them to artistically, but accurately translate the video into an animation.
Javier Marisca
He is a Spanish Artist, Designer and Director. Among his best-known works are Cobi, the mascot for the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. One of these latest works is Chico&Rita (2010), an animated film directed together with Fernando Trueba. The film was nominated for an Oscar and received the Goya award for the best-animated film.
Ciaran :3 