As you sit in a movie theater watching a slasher prowl through alleys or a tidal wave gather on the horizon, it’s a fair bet that the suspense swelling in your stomach isn’t out of concern for the nameless terrified masses on the sidelines. As a moviegoing public, none of us pay much attention to the anonymous casualties of Hollywood destruction – that is, until now.
“What happens to the bystanders?” asks sophomore Ryan Naylor, who wrote and co-directs Northwestern’s upcoming animated film Bystander, the recipient of this year’s Studio 22 Special Projects grant. “This film really takes that question and brings it to the forefront.”
The film, which centers around a complacently bored single dad whose career suddenly forces him to move with his daughter to an alien-infested, disaster-riddled dystopic vision of New York, is slated to complete its production this spring. And did we mention that Naylor’s brainchild is – wait for it – animated?
Bystander will be created by a team of 34 animators to bring traditional 2-D animation back onto the radar in a world of CGI-mania. Using a style of animation called “digital ink-and-paint,” three background artists, six compositors, nine animators and 10 digital painters will begin the arduous process of drawing each frame by hand, scanning them into a computer, and using computer software to color them, position them correctly and then edit the frames together.
“The style is similar to any classic Disney movie you’ll see, because a lot of our crew really like that style and are channeling it,” says sophomore Neil Lokken, the film’s co-director.
“At Northwestern, there’s really not much animation being done, especially not traditional, 2-D animation,” says Robbie Stern, a sophomore and the film’s producer. “So one of our goals (is) to show a little bit of the old style.”
While the team is passionate about the art of animation, few have extensive experience in the craft. Bystander is truly a teaching-and-learning production, in that the creators will be teaching the animators the craft along the way.
“A lot of people [on the crew] couldn’t exactly draw, but they just wanted to get involved. But most did have artistic experience,” Lokken says.
Neither Lokken nor Naylor are veteran animators; each are simply self-taught drawers with artistic backgrounds. Lokken says his first-ever animation was an “eternally jogging cyclops” drawn out of boredom in the summer before freshman year – perhaps a visual precursor to the “three-headed monster” that appears at one point in Bystander. Despite their relative newness to the field, both Lokken and Naylor are excited and determined to learn the craft of animation.
“I really want to be an animator for Pixar,” Naylor says. “That’s kind of my dream.”
Naylor had been harboring this script idea since high school when he ultimately approached Lokken in the spring of last year, asking for his help in developing and co-producing the film. Looking to get better at animation, Lokken agreed. When it came time to generate interest in the Department of Radio, Television and Film community to choose a crew for the film, the team was met with more enthusiasm than they had expected.
“It was surprisingly easy to generate interest,” says Stern. “The animation community at Northwestern is people who enjoy it, and we’re providing an outlet for them. I like to think that we’ve assembled the community into this project.”
Bystanderjust started animating last week, when the animators started learning how to work with the digital-ink-and-paint process. Actual animation will begin next week.
“We really aren’t sure how long it takes to animate,” Naylor says. “We’re just going to start out and see how long it goes.”
Most in the RTVF community have worked on numerous film sets, but the production of Bystander will be an entirely different experience for those involved. “It’s more of an assembly-line process as opposed to isolated days of shooting,” says Stern. “We’ll be doing this 12 hours a week from now through the end of the quarter.”
“Most other films take place in one or two weekends and are very intensive, but we’re not just going to finish within two weeks,” adds Lokken. “But we’ll be very comfy during winter days when it gets colder, which isn’t always the case with outdoor film sets.”
With an arduous yet rewarding process ahead, the film isn’t projected to complete production until Spring Quarter. Until then, the team is focusing on generating interest for the premiere and is undergoing fundraising efforts, which include a page on Kickstarter, a fundraising site for nonprofit projects.
“We also have a blog and a Facebook page,” says Stern. “We’re pretty shameless.”
Says Lokken, “Now all we need is a Twitter: ‘Just finished drawing frame 13,540!'”
– Maggie Gorman
