A Look Into the Technical Process of the Emotionally Powerful & Award-Winning Short Film, "Bär"
Q&A with Pascal Floerks, Freelance 3D Artist & Character Rigger, Animation Director
The Freelancers: Tell us what your film “Bär” is about?
Pascal: “Bär” is a personal film about my view towards my grandfather and his time as a Paratrooper in World War II. The film is told through a series of narrated photographs in which I depict my grandfather as a bear, inviting audiences to emotionally connect to the character of my grandpa. With that, “Bär” offers a perspective on the complexities of family legacies shaped by wartime experiences.
The Freelancers: What inspired you to create this film?
Pascal: “Bär” was my final thesis project at the Animationsinstitut / Filmakademie Ludwigsburg, Germany. After so many years now, I can’t recall the exact succession of how it all began, but I remember that I wanted to explore anthropomorphism in a more realistic context. I had a couple of different ideas, one being the story about my grandfather. I felt it could be a good fit and of course this story had the biggest emotional attachment for me. I remember having a hard time making the decision between this personal story and the others that were more fictional. I had a lot of respect making a short film about his story so at the beginning I thought of dropping it. However, I kept asking myself : “If one of these projects would be the last project I worked on, what would be the project that was the most important to me? What would be worth telling?” I started to realize more that to have the time and creative freedom to tell a personal story is a great luxury. I also liked the fact that this project would most likely become something completely different to what I was used to work on in the past and even probably the future. So with that in mind, it became a lot easier on how to proceed after. That gave me a lot of inspiration for the creation of this film.
The Freelancers: You took the idea of a simple family photo slideshow and really flipped it on its head to make a cinematic masterpiece, how did you come up with the idea?
Pascal: It started with our creative director at Animationsinstitut at the time, Andreas Hykade, asking all the students to express their ideas through a single image. This was a new way of approaching an idea for me and it was challenging. However, it really helped to limit yourself to find a way to visualize a core idea and share it with others. For “Bär”, I took a photo from WW II soldiers and photoshopped another image of a bear onto it, replacing one of the soldiers. The idea was to tell a story about a person, without ever showing that person. I did not want to create a Biopic, I rather wanted to abstract the person to make it more accessible for the viewers. The bear was my obvious choice for my grandpa, which was very clear for me from the beginning. I showed the image to Andreas Hykade and he was immediately intrigued by it. In fact, it had such a strong impact on him that it reflected onto me, giving me more confidence in this project. I can say that this film exists because of the support and confidence that Andreas gave me. For that I’m still very thankful!
After the choice was made, we shared the images between us students. After seeing my photoshopped image, a Polish colleague told me about “Wojtek”, a bear who was adopted by polish soldiers during WW II. I looked it up and couldn’t believe it. Reading about “Wojtek” and looking at all the imagery that actually exists was both exciting as well as shocking. I felt like I was about to copy “Wojtek” for my story and had very mixed feelings about it. After having more exchanges with Andreas Hykade, friends, and other student colleagues however, I was able to take the story of “Wojtek” and the imagery as a gift of inspiration and reference and continue with what I had started. It's very important to have support from others when making films!
To tell the story as a slideshow was not clear at that point. I imagined a more “animated” approach and was on a journey to “find the way”. But with every round of progress that I wanted to make visually I felt I was only adding unnecessary complexity and I came back to the initial picture. This was the time where I got warm with the idea to only use photos to tell the story. However, I struggled with that choice at the beginning as I felt it could be boring to watch. To be honest, this feeling accompanied me a long time during the production and was a personal rollercoaster. But it got better with time accepting the choice of limitation and the freedom it can bring! It’s very cliché to say “Don’t worry, move on and stay true to yourself and your idea” when it can be really tough to do so in reality. On this project however I learned the gratitude that following your heart can bring.
The Freelancers: Where did you find all this imagery and did it feel like you were unearthing your grandfather's life, one picture at a time?
Pascal: My main source was my families, mostly my grandmas, photo albums. I did not have any useful war-time photos from my grandfather. There were just a few from his time of imprisonment but the quality was bad, and I knew I needed other sources. Ultimately, I was able to search the German “Bundesarchiv”, where I found many WW II photos of the German paratrooper units. I had the story mostly laid out, so I knew what I was looking for, but of course there was no guarantee that I would find the right imagery. Therefore, I also needed to adjust to the images available. At the end, I think I was very “lucky” – if this is the right word in this context – to find images that had a certain visual quality as well as had the right content to carry the story I wanted to tell.
For some parts of the story, I needed to create new photos as I wouldn’t have a fitting image available. For example, the hospital-photo. I got in contact with a local hospital that granted me access to one of their empty rooms. This was one of the more “modern” photos that I created as I could capture additional lighting information on the set that I could use in my Software to help with integrating the bear into the scenery.
This was a luxury that I didn’t have on all the old photos from my families’ archives. But these old photos were a real treasure to (re)discover. On the visual side these photos did carry a great quality and atmosphere that would have been hard to replicate and that naturally depicts the time of the story. On the emotional side, it had me discover new and known stories about my grandfather that kept on fueling my inspiration and motivation for the film. I fondly remember the time going through the photos and stories together with my grandmother.
The Freelancers: It's a very personal deep dive into your grandfather's life, how did you balance your own emotions creating the film?
Pascal: I think that my emotions in many ways were the biggest drivers for this film. My emotions towards my grandfather carried the spark of the production and held me on track to overcome my emotions of fear to open up this personal story via this film. To stay connected with the film it was also very necessary to not lose my emotions throughout the production. I believe that the film would have suffered if at some point I would have emotionally disconnected from the creation of the story. At the same time, you don’t want to drown into your own emotions and lose yourself in that as well. I didn’t want to create a completely devastating film full of only negative emotions but wanted to give it a touch of the personal humor that I carry. I tried to implement those nuances through the narration.
The reduced technical complexity of the film also didn’t have me strive away from the more emotional creational part. I was quite confident on the technical part of the film, so it didn’t become the core of my creative problems. I was able to stay emotionally connected to the story mainly but was also able to take some breaks when working on the photos. I believe this was a great balance that worked well for me.
The Freelancers: The images are seamless and feel completely natural. How did you go about creating each image with the bear? Were you doing all the photograph retouching and was your grandfather actually in all these images before?
Pascal: Although I knew that it would very likely fail, I started testing using images of bears and compose them into my photos. I was even thinking of potentially scouting a real bear to take photos from. But of course, I realized quickly that it will not lead to any good nor consistent results. I needed a different approach. After all, I was studying Animation so creating a 3D-Version of a bear was the next logical choice. And ultimately that is what I did.
I used 3D-Software like Autodesk Maya, ZBrush and Mari to create the bear. I knew I would need different types of poses and facial expressions to convey feelings and emotions, so I created a simple rig in Maya that allowed me to art direct the bear into the necessary poses. One of the biggest challenges was the creation and rendering of the Fur. It was the first time for me diving into 3D-Fur and it was a fun journey. The textures for the fur also needed to be adjusted to show different stages of aging throughout the story. Also matching the lighting in 3D and retouching the bear into the photos was challenging. At the beginning it took me several weeks to create the 3D bear and the first images. Later, to put the bear into a single image would usually take me a few days but with more experience, I was getting pretty fast to my own standards. With this approach I was able to create all the images with the bear and replace my grandfather on the family photos. I also used photos without my grandpa or other people in it that I gave some basic retouching work to make them fit nicely into the context of the other photos.
What I believe to have also pushed the quality of the images was the treatment after. I was looking into different ideas to “display” the images in the film and one option was to create a digital slideshow. But this felt very sterile to me, so I was looking for more analog ways. At the end I had processed every photo as a physical slide and projected it through an old slide projector. I was trying different canvases as this would have a big impact on the projection and look of the image when re-filming it. I took a digital camera and filmed the whole analog slideshow. This also gave me another dimension of creative execution as I could focus / defocus and reframe the images as well as choose between locked or handheld camera. All this I have done minimally but it helped to create visual impact when it was needed.
The Freelancers: There is over 7 minutes worth of imagery, what was your process creating each image to make sure you tell the story?
Pascal: The biggest part of telling the story was to sculpt the way of how to tell it. It was a very interesting production as I felt that the story was in front of me like a puzzle that I needed to put together, literally.
Besides the image creation, I spend most of the time building the narrative and emotional curve through the arrangement of the photos. It took time to design the pace of the story to be able to show enough photos for the story to unfold while not going too slow nor fast. I decided to have 3 pinnacle moments that would frame the storytelling. The first one being the shot cat that would create the transition into the war time. After that it was the war time ambush story and the last one being the gun, which became the end of the film. In fact, the ending was the most unclear part for me for the longest time.
Another big part of the impact of the images was the narration to the images and the music. For the music I had this idea of a consistent soundscape that carries a certain type of tension. It metaphorically should inherit the “danger” of my grandfather that should never relief itself drastically in one or the other direction. In one of the early Layout Cuts, I put the track “Hand Covers Bruise” from the “Social Network” Soundtrack on the edit. For me it was the perfect track, and my good friend and Sound-Designer Christian Heck did a fantastic job creating an even better fitting track that still inherits the quality and tension of “Hand Covers Bruise”. Christian was also responsible for convincing me to do the narration part myself and giving me great support while doing it.
The Freelancers: The war photos are extremely moving and powerful, especially the image for the Battle of Abruzzi and the story of the ambush. There's a struggle to connect with this generation about their war experiences, was this a conversation you had with your grandpa?
Pascal: I did not have that conversation with my grandpa unfortunately. He didn’t really talk much about the war and it was only little glimpses here and there. There was a boundary that was difficult to cross. However, it was very clear that there was much more buried deeper within him that he wouldn’t share. The ambush story was one of the few examples where just that one time he did share a deeper look. It was a moving moment to witness.
This was the part that stuck with me. So, not having had that conversation with him is what ultimately made “Bär”. It’s the ambivalence of knowing, not knowing, of wanting to know and even not wanting to know that I felt compelled to tell a story about.
The Freelancers: The film was screened in over 150 film festivals, was that an overwhelming process and what about this film do you think resonates with all these audiences the most?
Pascal: After the film was done, I started to apply it to different festivals. I also got a lot of support from Filmakademie as they have all the experience of applying student films to festivals and they did already cover a lot of the bigger festivals at the beginning. But doing it myself to some degree had me learn and understand how much work festival applications are. That was a great experience, and it takes a lot of time and organizational skills to not get lost in this process. After a while, as the film got more festival runs, I decided to outsource this work to an agency specializing in festival applications. This allowed me to concentrate on the first steps of my professional journey after film school and find projects to work on. At the same time the film got accepted by more festivals and I had many great and unforgettable opportunities to visit national and international festivals all around and see people react to the film.
I think what resonated with the viewers and what I have been told by people is that they enjoyed the “honesty” of the film. Many viewers were able to project their own family heritage and feelings into this film although it is a personal story about someone they have never met. I had people approach me after screenings, telling me that they feel like they got to know me through this film, which I feel is a great thing to achieve as it displays the connection it was allowing to build. It also showed me how other families share similar feelings about the unprocessed war histories of their parents and grandparents too.
At the end I think that all the limitations and renunciations of this film that I was fearing would fail to spark interest for it, is what made the film accessible for many and is its strongest point. I’m glad it turned out this way!
Pascal Floerks is a freelance 3D Artist and Character Rigger. You can view his work at www.floerks.de
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