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Event Spotlight
SIGGRAPH: Spotlight on the 2022 Prize Winners Best in Show: The Seine’s Tears Director: Yanis Belaid Pôle 3D, France
P
aris during the events of October 1961, when French police brutally repressed Algerian protestors, is the backdrop of the powerful short The Seine’s Tears, directed by Yanis Belaid. The director, a graduate of the French digital and creative school Pôle 3D, recalls, “We were inspired by the short music video In My Heart by Pedro Conti, and also used the acclaimed 2016 movie Ma vie de Courgette (My Life as a Zucchini) as a reference for stop-motion rendering. For we had references from live-action cinema. We used an on-board camera and wanted it to be an entire character in the film. We analyzed how Films like The End of Watch or The Blair Witch Project used that camera style to recreate it. We wanted the viewers to feel like they are in the protest with our characters, to have the point of view of the Algerians and of all those people who came to demonstrate that night.” Belaid and his team of eight began work on the short in September of 2019, and it took
them about two years to finish their project. All the animation was done in Maya. “To create this stop-motion look, we did some animation research and, after some tests, we finally chose to develop a script that copies at 80% the previous key,” explains the director. “This way, the movement stays fluid so the motion blur can be calculated, but it still has this jerky quality .We also had a tool to reuse the foreground animations in the crowd, mostly in the second part of the film in the stadium. It helped us create density without having to animate everything.” The director points out that he wanted to cast light on the tragic events of October 1961 in Paris. “These events are still quite misunderstood in France,” says Belaid. “We wanted to get viewers to learn more about them after the screenings. Putting the spotlight on this historic event was the very point of our project.” He also says he remains positive about the future, despite the fact that the subject of the short is quite eye-opening. “We try to give hope for the future,” he says. “Therefore, I like the second part of the short best because it is way more festive and colorful! We wanted to make a contrast be-
tween this festive act and the violence and sadness of the first part of the film. In a short film we don’t have much time to develop the narrative aspect. But what’s interesting is to find the writing techniques that are the most effective. We spent a lot of time thinking about what we deeply wanted to say. This process of thinking, research and creativity stimulated us during the whole conception stage of the film.” Looking back at the experience of making the short, Belaid calls it “a human adventure.” He adds, “To put it all in context, we made this short during our final two years of school. It allowed some people in the group to discover themselves, professionally speaking, or to solidify their professional desires for the future. Personally, it definitely validated my desire to be a director.” Belaid mentions Pixar’s Toy Story and Bruce Timm and Paul Dini’s Batman: The Animated Series as two of his biggest animated favorites. “As a kid, my hero was Batman from the TV series. I’m still a big fan, and the credits still make me dream today. The animated film that rocked my childhood was Toy Story. Even to this day, I find this movie so well written and intelligent.”
The Seine’s Tears
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august 22
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