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THE ANIMATION SHOW YEAR 3
Max Hattler
Animator, “Collision” (2005)
Interviewer: Taylor Jessen
Date: 10/25/2006
Via phone from Volda, Norway
Animation Show: Talk about where you grew up and how you decided to be an animator.
Max Hattler: I grew up in Germany and moved to London to study Media and Communications at Goldsmiths College. Coming across the animation specialization option on my degree course suddenly brought together my different interests. That’s how it started; it was more of an accident, really.
AS: I can see from the movie clips on your web site you’re trying a lot of different things. Does one or another style make you happier at this point?
MH: I think technique and style come last and depend very much on the project. What interests me in animation is not so much style or technique, but the potential to amalgamate different artforms into a highly condensed way of storytelling. What holds my works together (if anything) is their abstract narrativity and strong reliance on sound-image relationships.
Striper v01 - Max Hattler
AS: I see what you mean – even Striper is telling a story, despite that there’s no dramatic arc per se, if you take it just as a documentary about signs painted on the road. And your Theme for Yellow Kudra music video is telling a story too, even if it’s obscure. There’s a definite emotional arc there – gentleman does interpretive dance, and is covered with grass. There’s something going on…
Yellow Kudra - Max Hattler
MH: Yes, and I’m not too worried if everyone gets “the point”. I don’t want to shove absolute truths down people’s throats. As in any kind of art, it’s with the viewer as well. Collision, for example, – someone saw it as a film about RGB, the three video channels red, green and blue, and enjoyed it for its aesthetic quality. That’s fine by me.
AS: That’s what I think is the most interesting thing about Collision, that it can be interpreted in a radical number of ways. You could see it as being just a nice abstract short with no political overtones at all, or it could be a direct response to Mohamed Atta. It’s a litmus test for who’s viewing, and their level of anxiety, and what’s on their mind.
MH: Precisely. And it’s also about cross-cultural literacy. The color green and the Islamic patterns make so much more sense to a Muslim audience than to a Western one, for example.
AS: For an American audience, particularly, the sound cues must really help identify what culture the shapes and colors represent. But even the sound effects could resolve either way. The piece doesn’t end with the sound of mass destruction, it ends with the sound of fireworks, which can either be destructive or celebratory. To a viewer with the right mindset, the end could almost be considered a joyous melding of all of this. All of the colors smash together into this manic color wheel of harmony. It’s in some ways very positive.
Collision - Max Hattler
MH: I agree, it can be interpreted either way: carnage or carnival, it is open-ended. I don’t have the answers, I’m only asking questions.
AS: Was this your thesis project as a student at the Royal College of Art?
MH: Usually you make one graduation film. I decided to make a few shorter projects because I wanted to experiment more, and felt slightly stressed by the idea of having to make this one shiny masterpiece. So I ended up making a mock commercial called Snap, a music video for my father Hellmut Hattler entitled Nachtmaschine, and finally Collision. This last project had been brewing with me for a long time. It came out at the very end when I was almost bursting over with stress. In a way it’s the culmination of what I was doing, but it happened very quickly. Collision only took six weeks to complete.
AS: When did you realize you were ready to tackle it?
MH: Having finished Snap and Nachtmaschine I felt free to experiment, even to fail if need be. The way I usually work is to make things up as I go along. I don’t want to be a slave to my own storyboards. And by letting it go, you open the gate for things to develop. So the way Collision came together was really organic. I’d work on images, and then I’d put some sound to it which might trigger other images. You give yourself cues both from sound and image, and hope it all comes together in the end!
Nachtmaschine - Max Hattler
AS: At least half the animators I’ve talked to say they work the same way. They just barrel on through, and the ending announces itself to them, and they respect that, and say “Okay, I’ll stop.” I guess in traditional narrative-based material, you must storyboard to aim for that definite goal.
MH: And also, obviously, if you work commercially. If so-and-so says “You have to make this, fix that, and we want to see it,” of course I’ll try and do that, but if it’s just me making a film then I try and steer clear of those constraints.
AS: The obvious visual touchstone of the piece is a kaleidoscope. Did you set out specifically to achieve that look?
MH: Well, it just works with the concept of Islamic patterns and American quilts. I felt there was a good overlap. Originally I didn’t plan to make the designs totally centered all the time. When putting elements into After Effects, I literally stumbled across the kaleidoscope filter. I was just playing around with it and suddenly saw this strange American/British flag coming at me.
AS: In terms of borrowed American iconography, there’s stars and stripes, but were there any specifically Muslim symbols that you appropriated?
MH: A specifically Muslim symbol would be the crescents. Otherwise, everything pretty much overlaps. If you look at Arab flags you’ll find that they too have stripes of color, and some of them have five-pointed stars on them (appropriated from the American flag!). Then you have the colors – Old Glory’s red, white and blue, and the pan-Arab red, white, green and black. The American quilt and Islamic patterns, again, overlap.
AS: What are you working on now?
MH: At the moment, I’m teaching at Volda University College, Norway’s only animation school. I also occasionally teach at the London College of Communication and at Goldsmiths College. Otherwise I’m an independent filmmaker. I freelance as an animator and compositor but I’m trying to stay clear of too much industry. I recently finished the Theme for Yellow Kudra music video for Economy Wolf and I’m looking to direct more music videos without having to compromise too much.
AS: That’s certainly a medium where you can get away with a lot. And you don’t have to specialize. You can be an animator and still do live action. I mean, Jonas Odell is an animator but he still directed that great live action video for the Infadels, “Love Like Semtex”.
MH: But it’s difficult to make money with videos. Especially if you want to be creative. Then again, it does work for a few people like Jonas. Off the back of Goldfrapp’s low-budget “Strict Machine” promo he made a commercial for BMW for half a million pounds. (laughs) So if you can get there, you’ve got it made.
AS: Exactly – you do the thing for fun for yourself, and then the ad agencies come along and pay you to rip off your own work for their campaign. If you can manage that, it’s win-win! So you’d say yes to that sort of action if someone came knocking?
MH: No, I mean, well… yes!
AS: Where are you now and where are you headed?
MH: I’m in Volda, Norway, which has about 5,000 inhabitants, 3,000 of which are students. Interesting policies of keeping the regions alive – they put universities in villages. (laughs) It’s a beautiful place and everyone is very friendly, but at this time of year it gets exceedingly dark. I’m here for one more month and I think by the end of it I’ll be quite ready to go back to London to breathe some dirty city air and concentrate working on Butter and Spin.
AS: Yes, you mention a couple of works in progress on your Website – are they animation or live action?
MH: They’re both experimental animation. I’m not sure at this stage when Spin will be ready but Butter is scheduled to premiere in June 2007.
AS: Is there anything that no one’s asked you yet about Collision that you’d wished they’d asked? Any secrets or little hidden inner life that the short has…
MH: Well, there’s the spinning biohazard sign. It’s kind of a joke. But no one picks up on it. It’s made up of three Islamic crescents…
AS: (laughs) Oh, I see it right now. I’ve got the short running on my TV. You can’t see it when you still-frame it, it’s only in motion.
MH: It’s really fast. At the time, I almost got worried that I was pushing it too far, because I was really trying to steer clear of a very strong statement. But it sort of slipped in and stayed there.
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