Every picture tells a story

By television convention, an animated documentary is an oxymoron. One of factual television’s key advantages is shorter production times and lower budgets than scripted. Animation, on the other hand, can be expensive and takes a lot longer. By animating docs, you could be giving up one of the genre’s key attractions. And yet, as technology such as game engines and artificial intelligence (AI) bring animation lead times and costs down, so more and more projects are emerging.

Orion Ross, Disney EMEA’s VP of animation, told C21 at last year’s Annecy Animation Festival that the company’s factual execs were increasingly looking at opportunities provided by animation.

“You wouldn’t normally expect a documentary person to come to an animation festival, but actually there have been a number of really brilliant animated documentaries,” Ross said at the time.

“Animation is becoming part of so many different kinds of productions; there may be an animated section to it, or it may be something you don’t have the footage for, or a documentary subject that’s sensitive and you can tell a very personal, intimate story in a way that doesn’t feel as invasive as if you did it in live-action.”

If you can make the budget work, the advantages are clear. First, it gives you a chance to tell a story when cameras weren’t around and archive doesn’t cameras werent doesn t exist. Tom Hanks recently unveiled How to Rig an Election: The Racist History of the 1876 Presidential Contest, an animated documentary collaboration with Jeffery Robinson, founder and executive director of The Who We Are Project

No archive available, plagued with rights issues, struggling to attract a young audience? No problem, simply animate your documentary instead. By Clive Whittingham

In 2021, Danish animated doc Flee became the first film to be nominated for an Academy Award in the three categories of Best International Feature, Best Animated Feature and Best Documentary Feature. The film, directed by Jonas Rasmussen, tells the story of a man’s escape from Afghanistan to Denmark which, understandably, was not filmed at the time.

Danny Gabai, chief content officer at Vice Studios, grew up dreaming of working in animation at Pixar and Aardman and had been looking for an animated project to get involved with through Vice, so brought the company on board the complex international coproduction.

“The premise of all factual being quick and cheap compared with other art forms isn’t necessarily true,” he says. “I’ve had doc projects cost more money than scripted films with A-list stars, I’ve had docs that took seven years and I’ve had projects that were turned around in six months and were incredibly inexpensive. It’s never a consideration when taking on a project.

“Jonas decided to do it as an animated film for a variety of reasons. You could have had a storyteller tell it, but there was no footage. How you bring it to life when there is no archive opens up all sorts of creative questions. The thing about animation and why you might use it is of reasons You could have had a there are no walls in terms of the universe – if you want to be able to create and represent stuff and not be limited by the boundaries of visual resources, then animation can become a great form. There are no walls in terms of the physics of what you’re trying to do.

“Jonas had a background in radio docs and a world where he worked primarily in audio. The bones of the doc were interviews, which you could layer over the animation to bring it to life. It was a bold move.”

Vice got on board after seeing the project pitched at festivals looking for further funds. “If we had been pitched the story of Flee without the animated component we probably would have passed. We would have regarded the importance of the story, but the animation was a key component,” Gabai says.

Another advantage is getting around rights issues. Netflix’s documentary Losers, telling stories of famous sporting failures, uses animated clips of the disasters where rights to the footage were not available. And, of course, animation naturally appeals more to a younger demographic that documentaries can sometimes struggle to reach.

In France, a project called Behind The Beats made use of both these plus points. Commissioned by YouTube Originals Kids & Family in coproduction with public broadcaster France Télévisions, the 26x5’ series goes into the rooms and recording studios of legendary music artists whose work was the origin of genres such as rock ’n’ roll, reggae and electro pop.

Craig Hunter, the global head of kids and family originals for YouTube at the time of the project’s launch, said it “hits a sweet spot for family coviewing, filling a gap for parents who want to watch something together with their kids that they actually will enjoy.”

Corinne Kouper, senior VP of production and development at the show’s producer, TeamTO, says: “It was pitched to us as an animation and we loved the concept. It removed the question of trying to find videos and secure rights because it was animated. With animation, you’re free to create encounters you know existed but we have no images of.

“We discover the lives of these young artists when they were starting out and often very poor. They didn’t have cameras to film themselves but they wrote a lot and spoke a lot about their first steps in life and influences so we can recreate these scenes.”

“Real images of people like Elvis Presley are often very old and black and white, so it brings a cool approach and graphic design to the audience of today. I’m looking for other ideas on new subjects that could be done as animation. Could it help us bring young audiences to important topics like climate change, for instance?”

Another French indie, Ikki Films, is carving a niche specialising in this form of doc, such as the awardwinning short film Granny’s Sexual Life Producer Alejandra Lopez, who is in charge of documentary development for the Tours-based firm, says: “Directors and producers must be aware using animation will be both expensive and time consuming, so you need to be sure that it is what the film really needs. Depending on the length of the animated sequences and the technique, you need to come up with a financing plan that can tackle this, and sometimes estimating the length of your animated sequences is the hardest part when doing a hybrid film.

“One thing technological advances are achieving is making animation techniques much more accessible to a large audience. We’re reaching a crossroads where documentary filmmakers are more open to experiment with animated techniques and animation filmmakers are willing to explore documentary subjects with interesting propositions.”

Katie Bench, senior sales executive at Londonbased doc distributor Dogwoof, says there is “definitely a broadening use of animation in documentaries, as a vehicle for the filmmakers’ artistic vision, rather than just necessity.” The firm has been shopping 2022 Sundance film My Old School, which mixes interviews with the protagonist and his former classmates with animation.

“Documentary makers have been using animation as a mode of storytelling for years – for example, Waltz With Bashir from 2008, which was and still is a

“It was rarer previously when it was used more to tell historical stories where no existing footage was, or where a film team couldn’t access. Now, we are seeing more documentary films that use it to create a distinct visual style that gives a film its edge.

“For example, My Old School saw director Jono McLeod choose to animate the testimony of his subjects and used actor Alan Cumming to act as the protagonist. The style of the animation was to mimic the beloved TV animation Daria, which fitted the setting of the original story and created a strong sense of time and place.

“Flee propelled interest in animated documentaries, and here it served many purposes: to provide anonymity for the subject, to document his memories visually where no footage existed and, thirdly, to create the film’s mood, which ranged from joy to intense jeopardy to deep sadness.

“Documentaries can be far more visceral with animation and actors’ voiceovers rather than talking heads and archive, which are always going to be valuable in documentary but can be used poorly and leave an audience unengaged.”

For veteran documentary analyst and critic Peter Hamilton, however, the varying strategies of commissioners will keep this genre on the niche side of the business.

“The streamers’ successful format for unscripted is built on the trifecta of unique access to highstakes stories about irresistible, real characters. Think Elton John and Bernie Madoff. No animation needed there,” he explains. “Character-driven series dominate the shrinking pipelines of pay TV networks. Meanwhile, legacy pubcasters favour traditional curated docs that feature live experts and witnesses, often with programme hosts.

“The big takeaway? Fully animated storytelling will remain a rare sub-niche in the documentary genre.”