Channel Frederator Blog

Episode 73

Two chickens race through a hellish obstacle course while the cheering chefs place their bets…

As a stand alone, “Cocotte Minute” is fantastic. The fact that it was created by six students just learning CG blows me away. The filmmakers are from a French school called Gobelins, which consistently produces top of the line animation. The filmmakers responsible for this film are: Thibault Berard, Loic Miermont, Romain Vacher, Nathalie Robert, Amandine Pecharmand, and Sylvain Marc. I had the opportunity to interview one of the filmmakers and submitter, Sylvain Marc on the creation of this piece.

MELISSA: So how did you guys come up with this idea?

SYLVAIN: We sat all together and anyone could pitch about anything, the others reacting about it. A small video about people doing a toy-car race gave us the very first idea. And this very first idea is not in the film anymore.

MELISSA: How long did this film take to produce?

SYLVAIN: 6 months

MELISSA: Did everything go as planned, or were there stumbling blocks along the way?

SYLVAIN: We redo things from the beginning. We went very far with another idea that was too complicated for one minute, a character was even totally designed and modelled for nothing and it didn’t work well. So we changed the story…to make it work.

MELISSA: Who are some artists that have influenced you?

SYLVAIN: So many from our early age…but not one precisely for the short.

MELISSA: What software did you use to produce this short?

SYLVAIN: Maya for 3D, flash and after effects for 2D.

MELISSA: Were there any aspects of the filmmaking process you found to be very challenging?

SYLVAIN: The most challenging part was the overall cartoony style, because we learnt how to do 3D while doing this film. And we have a 2D background so we approach the film with a 2D point of view…So we wanted exagerations,deformations….The blue chicken was pretty tricky with its weird proportions we had to cheat a lot working the poses.

MELISSA: What scenes were the most fun to work on?

SYLVAIN: Our favorite part is the stunts in the corridor and kitchen with the blue chicken..And when the red one loses its head.

MELISSA: What are you working on now?

SYLVAIN: We all work in companies for commercial or features but we have ideas about short films.

Thanks so much to everyone who made this film! There’s a great montage of the process HERE