[INTERVIEW] ‘Caries’ Animator, Aline Höchli (Sundance Animator Spotlight Series #6)

Next up in our series interviewing the Sundance animators, we have a conversation with Aline Höchli  animator of the short Caries. 

How did you get into animation?

It was an odyssey, to be honest, with many deviations. In short, the animation class with Basil Vogt in the foundation course at the Lucerne University of Arts was the crucial factor. I was truly enthusiastic by all the workshops and disciplines in the course that we were taken through in speed. The way Basil introduced us to animation seemed like a great possibility not to have to choose just one of them and on top to be able to work narratively. During my studies I learned that animating not only brings a lot of freedom, but also demands a lot of work. Looking back, it was fortunate that I didn’t see this coming.

Where did you get the idea for Caries?

I find it terribly difficult to answer where ideas come from. They seem to linger in the air, you get infected with them, they mutate, enter the neural pathways, and are eventually flushed into your brain, where they latch on and take over control. That’s how it seems to me at least.

The work process itself began during my last film project out of a need for variety—and a new income, I suppose. The story for Caries changed several times in the process. I remember submarines were an element of it at one point. The idea for the world was there before the plot: that’s not the case with all my films, sometimes a character or a story is the starting point. I tried different things, and it took me some effort to choose from the many possibilities of what could happen in the mouth. In the end, the due date for the production dossier was just around the corner. The money had completely run out, so the deadline was non-negotiable. The story as it is now, was the result of two very intensive weeks of work and – although it contained many things I had in mind – it was very different from what I had expected: One of those strange moments when the story takes over.

What was the process like animating it?

I animated Caries with gel pen on paper. Straight-ahead is the approach I used, where you draw the movement in a flow just as chronological as it would be made. Because I was animating a lot of it alone – which I thought was a good idea at first because I have trouble organizing teams—it took me years to finish the animation. I promised myself never to do it that way again and chose a different technique for my current project. However, I already find myself playing with the idea of another hand-drawn film. Is this stupidity or resilience?

How did you come up with the world of the mouth and what it would look like? The different terrains? 

One inspiration for Caries were certainly the stories my father told us children to get us to keep our mouths open while he was brushing our teeth. The mountains—that are close to where I live—and old advertising posters for vacation resorts there have certainly also influenced me. I usually work according to a pleasure principle: I daydream where I would like to travel or concentrate on aspects that fascinate me, such as the folds of gums. I associate freely and then try to bring everything into a larger context so that it is externally comprehensible, while I’m still able to “keep my darlings”.

What I’m only just realizing now is that I said before that the idea for Caries came about when I needed a change from my film “Why Slugs Have No Legs”, but I still chose another setting in which something small—like the insect world or a mouth cavity—is shown larger than life. I seem to like to zoom in.

What was it like getting the music for the short?

Samuel did the soundtrack for my first movie after graduation and I’ve tried to work with him whenever possible ever since because not only do I appreciate his music and sound design immensely, but also how little I have to explain the details and nuances in my stories to him. The music was originally created by Samuel [Schranz] for my animatic of said production dossier—for a sketch of the movie so to say before anything is moving: He visited me in Stefan’s very ancient house where I was allowed to live at the time, brought suitcases full of instruments and drum machines and scored the animatic while I was writing the budget and revising the texts for the dossier at the last minute. Four years later, when he was supposed to create the soundtrack for the finished film, me and Stefan—the co-producer and additional animator—had become already so attached to his music from back then that we practically forced him to painstakingly recreate precisely the old sound file.

Do you have any advice for animators hoping to get into Sundance or make a short?

I certainly do recommend finding a good distributor.

Apart from that I struggle to find a general one. I try to be genuine with my projects and draw as honestly as possible and tell what’s going on inside me. To express what I truly like and what interests me, what thoughts drive me or what colors haunt my dreams: That’s not necessarily what I’ve been taught to do in life—to follow my own intuition—and it feels very vulnerable. Often, I would rather hide behind a great technique or another way of doing something “the right way” to protect myself from criticism. But it’s a lot of your lifetime concentrated in an animated movie. Continuously controlling yourself so not to reveal the mess of being alive would take a lot of energy. And I suspect that in the end the result would probably not touch anyone in particular. So I guess my advice—if I can give anyone any advice at all—would be not to be afraid of yourself.

That wraps up this interview. If you get a chance to see ‘Caries’ at the Sundance Film Festival, let us know what you think.