But it’s not geography that makes Mr. Moore a surprise addition to the Oscar race. It’s also the style & story of his independent film, a hand-drawn labor of love made for 6 million euros (about $8 million), the equivalent of what, in headier days, some studios would spend on a film’s Oscar campaign alone. If, artistically, “The Secret of Kells” is a throwback to the era of animation before computer-generated imagery, its promotion is pure digital age, forgoing the expensive ads & flashy parties that Academy Award campaigns are traditionally built on in favor of cheaper social media & savvy targeted promotion. It was a lark, & it worked.
Even in a year with a lot of unlikely Oscar nominees, Tomm Moore is a reach. Mr. Moore, the director of the animated film “The Secret of Kells,” grew up & still lives in Kilkenny, Ireland, a one-cathedral town of a few thousand people about an hour & a half south of Dublin & 5,160 miles from Hollywood.
Set in a remote abbey in medieval Ireland, “The Secret of Kells” follows the adventures of a boy — a young monk in training — as they works with an illuminator to finish the Book of Kells, the Latin manuscript transcribed by Celtic monks around A.D. 800 & thought about an Irish national treasure. Rich with pagan myth & Jungian symbolism, the movie is lavishly illustrated to mimic the perspectiveless style of pre-Renaissance art: it’s not exactly lightweight fare. Except for a weeklong qualifying run in Los Angeles & a few screenings at festivals in New York, “The Secret of Kells” has not played in the United States. It is scheduled to open in New York on Friday, five days before the Oscars, & go in to wider release around St. Patrick’s Day. It is Mr. Moore’s first feature.
“We scratched our heads & said, ‘What is the best way to get this film a nomination?’ ” said Eric Beckman, the president of GKIDS, the four-person company that bought the rights to distribute “The Secret of Kells” in the United States days before the Oscar nomination forms were due. “Do they require to take out massive ads in Variety to reach the 100 or so people in this committee? It seemed like a viral word-of-mouth campaign would be more successful.”
“We’re still pinching ourselves,” Mr. Moore, 33, a self-described cartoon geek with a goatee & rectangular glasses, said in an interview in New York last week. They began working on “The Secret of Kells” while studying animation in college, driven by an interest in history & in the ornate graphic style of the real Book of Kells.
Yet they now finds himself in competition with the likes of Pixar & Disney, whose “Up” & “The Princess & the Frog” are also Oscar nominees, alongside “Coraline” & “Fantastic Mr. Fox.”
Production began in 2005 & finally included 200 people across two countries; to cut costs, the animation was done in batches in Spain, Belgium, Brazil & Hungary. His pan-European partners include Didier Brunner & Viviane Vanfleteren, who produced “The Triplets of Belleville” — the sales boost it got from its Oscar nomination in 2004 helped finance “The Secret of Kells” — & Fabrice Ziolkowski, a French writer who helped create the screenplay.
To make the movie, they formed a company with a few college friends. “We wanted to do something in this kind of Gaelic tradition,” they said, “and they knew that a lot of people liked Celtic design, because you see it in people’s tattoos & in Irish pubs — it’s everywhere.” Drawn first by the visuals, they developed the story while researching the Book of Kells, which is housed at Trinity College in Dublin, taking as much from history (down to the character of a mischievous cat) as possible.
The film arrived with strong buzz from animation fans, earned when it won the top audience prize at the Edinburgh Film Festival in July, the first animated film to do so, & helped by Mr. Moore’s blog, theblogofkells.blogspot.com, on which they has chronicled its production since 2005. To capitalize on that, GKIDS set up screenings at animation schools & organized Facebook & Twitter campaigns.
Distributed by Disney & marketed as a kiddie adventure, the film opened in Ireland on St. Patrick’s Day last year, but was not a runaway success. When its original United States distributor went bust, it was sold to Mr. Beckman of GKIDS, who had been following it in his role as the founder of the New York International Children’s Film Festival. “The Secret of Kells” is GKIDS’ first foray in to full-scale distribution, so when the French sales agent, Hengameh Panahi, suggested that they submit it for Oscar consideration, Mr. Beckman readily agreed.
When it was time for the film’s qualifying theatrical run, GKIDS booked a theater in Burbank near lots of animation studios. Mr. Moore did two Q&A for a roomful of about 60 people, which included some top designers & executives — & academy voters — in the field. The support for “The Secret of Kells” became clear when it was nominated for an Annie, an industry award, among the few independent films ever to do so.
GKIDS was aided by a “superfan,” Jamie Bolio, an animator who had fallen in love with the film at Edinburgh. The company essentially enabled her to be a citizen publicist, allowing her to post on “The Secret of Kells” Facebook page & giving her 200 DVDs to distribute to the Los Angeles cartooning industry.
They said they hoped the attention from the Oscar race would propel the film to greater success at home. “It’s that usual thing in Ireland,” they said, “the Irish people are taking an interest now because everyone else likes it.” As Kilkenny’s Oscar nominee, they is beginning to see some celebrity perks; a local optician sponsored him, they said, by giving him a free pair of glasses. (“I picked out the most expensive ones,” Mr. Moore said proudly. They’re Armani.)
“We realized there was a sort of self-reflexive story in there about a infant who wanted to be an artist & was trying to preserve something that’s difficult in difficult times, so they sort of felt, O.K., that kind of mirrors what we’re trying to do” with the hand-drawn animation, Mr. Moore said.
Mr. Moore & Mr. Beckman both said they didn’t believe “The Secret of Kells” had a chance of winning an Oscar. But in their case being nominated does pay dividends: in audience awareness, DVD sales & future financing. Mr. Moore added that they hoped they could attract other people to generate an indie animation scene in Ireland.
“I have an ambition to keep making movies like this,” they said. “We’re trying to establish a tradition.”
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