Interview with Joshua Frankel - filmmaker and animator

2009-09-15 15:36:45

“[Joshua Frankel – filmmaker, animator, and visual artist] spent most of his youth listening to hip-hop and trying not to let anyone take his lunch money.” This sentence belongs to Frankel’s brief biography on his website and made me instantly favorite his ‘bio’ amongst all the other ‘bios’ I’ve read. After watching Frankel’s videos, I noticed that there was something strikingly honest, real, and witty about his work.

Frankel may be an expert in creating animations and visual effects for TV commercials, but his artistic vision can be better seen and understood through his personal work. From Bicycle Messengers, a short film about New York City bike messengers that brings together animation and live action footage, to Milk, an experimental and perhaps metaphorical (for me, at least) film about something as simple as our ‘first’ beverage, Frankel produces intriguing and unique work. Also let’s not forget that he created videos for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign and worked with Mel Brooks! Here he is…



F.A. How did growing up and living in New York influence your work as an artist?

J.F. My experience growing up in New York City is a driving force in my work. Walking from one place to another in the city has always been one of my greatest joys. Most suburbs in America are designed to be experienced from a car moving at a high speed. Buildings and signs are big and simple so they can be read even while blurred at 55mph. When you step out of your car and walk around there is very little detail and this is unnerving. New York is designed to be experienced on foot, which is more natural. The density of detail and constant determined movement one experiences on the street in New York City is imprinted in me and is present in my work.


F.A. You have quite an eclectic work background in terms of the projects you worked on and the people you collaborated with. I see you’ve done visual effects for TV commercials, and you also have several short films of your own. What kind of effect did your previous jobs as a visual effects artist have on your personal projects?

J.F. I love how film can be used to represent stylized and impossible versions of our world. So I find my visual effects background very useful when creating a film, both during its conception and during its realization.

Working in visual effects and animation was initially just a scheme to make cool stuff and get paid to do it. I felt like I had gamed the system - I had a job that was creatively, aesthetically, and technically challenging, and it paid decently. I thought life wasn't supposed to work like that, at least not for someone in their twenties.

Up until this point my art had been mostly drawing, printmaking and the occasional public art piece. But as I spent more time in visual effects I became attracted to the filmmaking process and decided that I wanted to make my own motion pictures.

Eventually I quit that first job in order to give myself more time to pursue filmmaking. This work experience left me with a fluency in the digital post-production pipeline; so for my own short films I have the advantage of being able to do most of the post work myself.


F.A. How did you get involved in making videos for Barack Obama's 2008 presidential campaign? And how much freedom did you have in the creation of these pieces in terms of artistic direction and choosing the messages conveyed in the videos?

J.F. My wife and I drove across the country for our honeymoon in the summer of 2008. Though it hadn't occurred to me before the trip, by Montana I couldn't imagine not spending the Fall working on the campaign. I told everyone I knew that I wanted to do this and eventually discovered that a friend of a friend knew the deputy director of the New Media Department. I sent in my work, he dug it and hired me.

Every short I made for the campaign came about in a different way. MAKE HISTORY, the short about people giving themselves reminders to vote, was something that I conceived and directed. DON'T LET UP, the clip of the cyclist celebrating a few yards from the finish line, falling off his bike and losing the race, which I doctored to humorous effect, came out of a collaborative process, which began by a staffer emailing the original clip around the office just for fun and general internal motivation.


F.A. Speaking of “getting involved,” your short animation ‘Just in Case’ focuses on the subject of global warming. In your opinion, to what extent do films and videos about social responsibility change the way people think and behave?

J.F. Our society watches a lot of motion pictures. If a few of them contain messages of social responsibility, then that helps keep these issues on everyone's mind. Not all of these films need to be AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH. Maybe some people saw THERE WILL BE BLOOD and realized that they need to be more compassionate.

I'm not sure a film can ever change a person's mind on its own, but it can be part of the larger struggle. If a viewer is in just the right mind-state, a film can be that fly that lands on the ice in just the right place to start the avalanche.

It's important to me to spend a portion of my time using what skills I've developed to try to be helpful. Though there will also always be projects that I'm working on without a greater purpose beyond that fact that there's an image or sequence of images in my mind that I just feel like making for the fun of it.


F.A. What about working with Mel Brooks and Susan Stroman? Can you tell us about that experience and how working for theater differed from working for the screen?

J.F. Working with Mel Brooks and Susan Stroman has been wonderful. They are both really good at what they do and have really high standards. I have learned a lot by just being in their general vicinity. One of Susan Stroman's many strengths is the attention she puts into her transitions: they are often meaningful, complex and very quick which really helps keep the audience wrapped up in the action. Some of my favorite projection work that I've done for her has been in the service of these transitions.

Creating projections for the theater is complicated by the fact the performance will be slightly different every night. If the audience laughs longer than usual at a joke, then the projections need to hold for the laughter, just as the actors will be doing. So the imagery needs to be broken up in a variety of cues with each section able to extend itself if necessary while still capable of making a seamless transition into the following moment. The machinery of running a live performance - from the pulleys to the computers to the people operating all of it - is a very beautiful thing. I'm not at the show every night, but I need to design my work so it fits into this system and there's something very satisfying about that once my work is complete and it all fits together aesthetically and technically.


F.A. What was the idea behind your short film ‘Milk’? Did you want it to be a plain visual experimentation, or is there a deeper meaning in it that you wanted the viewers to discover?

J.F. My film MILK includes fire, growth, transformation, destruction and a delicious and nutritious beverage. What more could anyone ever want out of cinema?


F.A. In your opinion, what is the biggest challenge for animation filmmakers today?

J.F. I'm not an economist, but I suspect that animation is actually a much bigger industry now than it has ever been. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more jobs for animators than ever. So this is helpful. However out of this success grows a challenge: having a full-time job prevents you from making your own art. I know a lot of animators who work in advertising and on feature films and have a very hard time carving out time for their own work. Paychecks are seductive and giving them up is a scary thing.

For the past few years I've been working freelance - I work for The Man for a bit, stock up the fridge and stash something away for a rainy day, and then take off for a while and make a new art project. It's a good balance, but at any given moment I'm usually concerned that I've been tipping too far in one direction or the other.


F.A. How much do you use the Internet to promote and distribute your work or just to spread the word about them? Do you think online distribution is or will be profitable for your field of production?

J.F. I put my work on my website. I like having my own website because I can control everything about it. I use an email list to out send updates about my work, usually no more than every six weeks. By keeping the frequency low I figure people are more likely to read what I write.

I've made a small amount of money through a few short film distribution channels on the Internet. It's not reliable enough or substantial enough to base a business plan for a film upon, but getting a little unexpected something can always help with the next project coming down the pipe.

THREE THUG MICE, which I love, is an example of a weekly short animated film series, with episodes sent through email. I have no idea if the project has been profitable.

For now short films just don't generate much money in any distribution medium, so the Internet isn't really out of step on that front. For a feature film, (something I haven't attempted yet), the Internet can be an extremely powerful promotional tool.

The best part about the web is how easy it makes it for people to see your work. I've made valuable contacts by way of someone stumbling upon one of my films on my website or elsewhere online.

If everyone really trades newspapers for the Internet, it seems to me that eventually the going rate for ad space on the Internet could go up significantly. Hopefully some of this income will trickle down to content creators and the Internet will become a more reliable source of rent money for filmmakers.

For me, I'd say my biggest challenge with respect to the Internet is how distracting it is when I ought to be getting work done.


To find out more about Joshua Frankel and watch his animation 'Just In Case', visit his Film Annex page at http://www.filmannex.com/JoshuaFrankel

Interview by Eren Gulfidan