The world of minuscule things goes to the big screen
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FRENCH directors Hélène Giraud and Thomas Szabo started an adventurous journey into the world of the very small 10 years ago that brought ants, ladybugs and spiders to the small screen.
The short animation TV series “Minuscule” premiered in 2004 and produced two seasons with a total of 78 episodes. It was a huge success and has been sold to more than 100 countries for television or video.
Now the insect friends many people grew up watching are returning to the big screen in the 3D animation film “Minuscule: Valley of the Lost Ants,” released in France this January. The film will come to China in September.
This time, a battle breaks out between the black and red ant families as they fight for a box of sugar left by people at a picnic in the forest. The black ants are outnumbered by the aggressive red ants, and with the help of ladybugs, the black ants eventually defend their home.
The directors explained why they chose to feature ants and ladybug as the lead characters in the film after the TV series featured more kinds of insects.
“The casting took three years, because 500,000 ants came for the audition,” Giraud joked at the interview yesterday. “We chose them because they are the most representative characters from the TV series and people from anywhere in the world would recognize them immediately.”
They described the movie as “The Lord of the Rings in the insects’ world” and said these two species are the best in telling a war story.
“The black ants are more peaceful and try to avoid conflicts, while the red ants take things very personally and want to have it all,” Giraud said.
The directors’ intention for creating this minuscule wonderland was not to promote popular science, but to encourage the audience, especially children, to go out and observe insects in nature.
“This is what we expect the most. In France we’ve heard children saying they are not afraid of spiders anymore after watching our series, so I hope seeing these episodes and films will take the fear away and encourage them to discover and explore the world of insects,” Szabo said.
Giraud and Szabo wrote the screenplay together and took two years to make the film. Giraud was in charge of the artistic aspects, from setting and design to composition, while Szabo was responsible for the shooting and post production.
This new film combines real landscape with meticulously designed animated characters. The surreal scenery from the film was shot in Écrins and Mercantour national parks in southern France.
When doing outdoor shooting, the production crew used two cameras to create a human perspective, and the large and heavy equipment made it a challenge.
“Every time we took a scene, we waited very long to pursue excellent picture quality,” Szabo said.
Giraud, born in Paris in 1970, is an artistic director, producer and screenwriter. Graduated from Ecole Supérieure des Arts et Techniques, she worked as a graphic designer in Luc Besson’s sci-fi movie “The Fifth Element.”
Szabo graduated from Ecole Supérieure des Arts Appliqués and has been an animation director since the 1980s. He has directed short animation and live action films in the past, but he’s most known for creating “Minuscule.”
Giraud and Szabo started the production of “Minuscule” together, but it was not their first project together. They had worked on a 2001 video game called “Stupid Invaders.”
“I started working in the animation industry when I was 22 years old. ‘Minuscule’ wasn’t my first project. Before this I was mostly working on science fiction films,” Giraud said.
Revisiting the characters from the TV series after 10 years brought different feelings to the two creators.
“The characters become richer. We are familiar with them, we know every little secret of theirs, so we could get along and work with these characters better,” Giraud said.
With better technology and equipment as well as a bigger team (the shooting team had only four people when making the TV series while the film had over 20 cameramen), the directors said the film version brought what they had before to a much higher level. Though the “Minuscule” franchise is a French production, the TV series as well as the feature film avoids spoken dialogue, using only music and sound effects.
The soundtrack was done by Herve Lavandier, whom the directors have been working with since the first season of “Minuscule.”
Because of the absence of dialogue, music plays a bigger role in the storytelling. Szabo explained that in season one they used mostly French songs from the 19th century while season two included more Russian music.
They wanted the film to be adventurous and epic, so music was used throughout the story.
“We want the music to be another lead in storytelling. There’s Russian music like ‘Peter & the Wolf’ by Prokofiev,” Szabo said. “Each character has its own theme.”
In addition to the soundtrack, an array of sound effects is a highlight of the film. Near the end, a scene where flies are chasing the ladybug is reminiscent of a car chase from an action film, as the insects make the sounds of motorcycles and engines.
Giraud revealed that she actually created the signature sound made by the ladybug herself, while Szabo did the sound made by the flies.
“We blended the sounds from many places, including planes, motorcycles and animals. I put them together and it’s like creating a new language,” Szabo said.
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