interview

Oscar nominee and Indo-

Canadian animator Ishu
Patel tells Nikita Banerjee
about how his growth as an
artist, his craft, and his love
for doing animation frame
by frame beneath his eight
feet camera

Tell us about your background

I grew up in an agricultural village and my
parents were simple farmers. There was no
electricity, no radio. So going to the National
Film Board of Canada was not a childhood
aim as I would have had no way to know
that such a place existed! In my childhood no
one ever imagined leaving the village, much
less leaving India and traveling out into a
wider world. So no, there was no question
of wanting to be an animator. First I would
not have known what an animator was, and
secondly, farming would have been my ex-
pected future.

Animation as a career is now being accept-

ed in India. When you decided to become
an animator? How did your family react?
Deciding on animation did not come till late
in life. I was an independent adult by then, so
Pictures: Courtesy Ishu Patel and NFBC

Drawing from founts deep within

my parents really had no say in the matter. I
had left the village after graduating from High
School to study at the Faculty of Fine Arts in
Baroda for four years. After that I began a ca-
reer at the newly opened National Institute of
Design in Ahmedabad, first as an apprentice
in Graphic Design, and eventually as Head of
the Visual Communication Department. It was
only at NID that I was exposed to international
film animation.

Many of the shorts we screened were from the

National Film Board of Canada. They inspired
me because I could see that an experimental
animated film was something that could be
executed basically by one person, by oneself.

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One didn’t need to be a cog in the wheel of
a huge studio, like Disney or Hanna Barbera.
Animation could be an artists’ medium. Since
I was very good in my ability to illustrate and
since I loved photography and design and I
was very technically astute, and since I dis-
covered that all of these abilities were utilized
in conceiving and making an animated film,
it became my passion. All my energy was
devoted to animation filmmaking, and learn-
ing. There was no formal training available.
But by experimenting, shooting many tests,
watching animated films, I taught myself
and began to understand the medium, us-
ing whatever equipment and materials were
available at NID.
How would you describe the journey so
far?
Well, my journey took me to Canada and
twenty-five years at the National Film Board
of Canada – an extraordinary privilege. In
1970 I had received a Rockefeller Foundation
scholarship to study animation in America.
With it I managed to secure entry into the
NFBC for a year, where I was allowed to make
my first “student” level film. The NFBC is not
a school, but a production studio. There I met
many other filmmakers, including Norman
McLaren who had inspired me so much in
my student years in India, and who now was
encouraging me one-on-one. It really was an
amazing time and place. It was a life chang-
ing experience.
In 1972 I resigned from NID and returned to
Canada to join the NFBC and have made my
home and career in Canada. The twenty-five
years at the NFBC was a time of directing my
own films, producing other people’s films,
mentoring young filmmakers, and conducting
animation workshops throughout the world. I
interview
feel very lucky to have been at the right place at
the right time and to have had the stamina and
passion to make the best of that opportunity.
While you were studying animation which
style of animation did you specialize in?
As I said, I did not study animation. Formal
animation schools and courses did not exist
in the 1950s, 60s and early 70s – and not
only in India, but in the West as well. Early
animators were generally artists and illustra-
tors who ended up in an animation studio,
learning and developing as they went, and
becoming great, either as cartoonists or as
independent animation filmmakers. Formal
animation schools, programs and courses
are a relatively recent phenomenon, as ani-
mation has grown into a global industry.
I created my own styles and developed or
invented my own mechanical techniques ac-
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 interview
cording to the theme or concept I was devel-
oping at the time. Each concept needed an
appropriate technique to express it fully.
Your film The Bead Game won you an
Oscar nomination. It involved animating
thousands of beads and is considered to
be a ground breaking film. Please take us
through the process of how you arrived at
the idea of making a film like this?
I had been living for a winter up in the High
Arctic at Cape Dorset operating an animation
workshop for Inuit artists there. I was teach-
ing them about moving objects under the
camera to create the illusion of movement.
When I returned to Montreal again, India and
Pakistan were at war and the thermo-nuclear
threat of the Cold War was always pervasive.
I had these haunting ideas about aggression,
especially after the peaceful escape in the
stillness of the High Arctic winter. The women
artists there had been using seed beads to
decorate some articles of their sealskin cloth-
ing, and I had experimented with them under
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animation reporter
the camera. After circu-
itous thinking processes
I managed to merge my
worries about man’s
aggression with the fact
that beads in a Line can
be moved as a Line, the
Line can be broken, re-attached, scattered –
and suddenly I had a film underway! Techni-
cally, as usual, I had to work out each and
every problem and shoot many tests, and find
the music and adapt my visuals to the timing.
And it all worked out.
Please describe the animation process for
the film, The Bead Game?
As I said, I found that by lining up these tiny
seed beads under the camera I could create
a moving line. The beads are about as wide
as a 6B lead in a drawing pencil, so they are
pretty small. By pushing each bead within the
line – using an extremely fine Sable brush and
a steady hand – the “bead creatures” could be
slightly moved and reshaped between each
exposure of the
film. Rather than
drawing thousands
of “in-betweens”
on sheets of pa-
per, I could simply
move and shape
the lines physically under the camera be-
tween each exposure. The lines could be bro-
ken, re-attached, scattered, they could grow
and shrink, and I could use different colored
beads to enhance the look of the “creatures”.
I researched visual references of animals and
made hundreds of preliminary “line draw-
ings” of creatures both fantastic and real,
all of which could eventually be rendered in
that “linear style” by the lines of tiny beads.
These were pre-computer days. I worked on a
35mm. Oxberry animation camera stand.
The “stand” consists of a tall column which
carries the animation camera up and down
for zooming in and zooming out. Below that
is the “animation table” with movable east/

west north/south peg
bars for filming pans.
Because I would not
be making any pans
I was able to dispense
with the “animation
table” from under the
animation camera, and to replace it with a
solid, smooth surfaced worktable, painted
“camera black” so there would be no reflec-
tion, and no greys.
As usual I shot lots of preliminary tests and
in this way learned how best to animate the
beads, what field sizes and exposures to use,
and what my big challenges would be.
I tested music with the technique as well, and
when I was convinced that I could solve my
technical problems, and create a good film
technically, visually and in terms of the sub-
ject, and then I committed to doing it and had
to turn my attention to actually planning the
film precisely.
What were the chal-
lenges you faced
during the making
of this film and how
did you overcome
them?
There were a few ma-
jor challenges that I had to resolve and test
well, before shooting the first frame. The big
questions were how best to “technically” re-
inforce this difficult “theme”. The theme had
become “the long evolution of aggression
leading, unchecked, to its natural and fatal
conclusion for humankind”. To reinforce the
sense of evolution from small single-celled
life forms escalating to larger and more
complex organisms, with ever more power
and destructive consequences, implied a
“crescendo” – visually, musically, and “plot-
wise”. Everything would go from small and
inconsequential to large, powerful and fatal.
How could I most dramatically imply that
crescendo of power and fatality? I decided
on a continuous, unbroken zoom outward to
interview
an ever increasing field size, accompanied by
an unbroken rising music track. I decided on
drums because they have been the instrument
of war since the dawn of humankind, and be-
cause they can beat out a rising crescendo.
Choosing to create the animation in a con-
tinuous, unbroken “zoom out”, from small
to large, meant that it would be a film that
wouldn’t allow me to alter from my path once
I had begun the filming process. I had to
solve everything up front. Filming would be
continuous, day after day, with only a very
few cuts and no editing. So everything had
to work.
I had made many line drawings of animals
and fantastic creatures until I had a general
idea of which images I wanted to use in order
from small to large. I chose to begin the film
using a small Field 7 and a single bead, and
to end the film at a large Field 24. Between
those two field sizes I planned to evolve and
“grow” my images in size and complexity.
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 interview
That is how I would
get to my statement on
Man, his massive vio-
lence and his ultimate
military destructive
power.
To accomplish that
the challenge was to
raise the camera (by
hand) upward on the zoom column, exactly
one increment after each frame was exposed,
over the period of one year, creating a kind of
invisible zoom enlarging the Field from 7 to
24 (to make room for the armies and cities).
During that process, I wanted to make as few
cuts as humanly possible and wherever cuts
were necessary, I had to somehow keep them
imperceptible. I figured out a way to do both
those things without messing up.
The next most important technical challenge
was finding that perfect uncut sequence of
music I needed to reinforce that sense of un-
broken escalation. I needed to find drum mu-
sic rising in an unbroken crescendo, and then
to work up an exposure sheet permitting me
to animate to the various escalating beats.
Obviously an Indian tabla sequence from a
raga would be the answer, and I was lucky to
find exactly what I needed on a Jnan Prakash
Ghosh [renowned tabla exponent and teach-
er] of the album. We acquired the rights to
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animation reporter
this music track.
I worked up the ex-
posure sheets based
on the tabla music
of Ghosh. I used the
exposure sheets only
to time the movement
with the music. That
was very important. I
needed to accomplish a
move within the beats allowed by the music.
That is all I used for a storyboard – I made
a rough plan. I simply visualized where I had
to be to keep in line with the music and the
evolving from creature to creature, from action
to action. Without a storyboard I was free to
manage my images, their evolution from one
to another, and their timing so that they would
all have arrived at the right place by the end
of the film. Sometimes I might have planned
to move to a specific “next creature”, but by
following a new line, some other image would
suggest itself to me. I was working mostly eye
to hand, instinctively, but within the framework
of the music.
The beads were the elements that formed the
line drawings, and their incremental move-
ment created the impression of metamorpho-
ses – or evolution - from one to another. I
found that a controlled “scattering” of the
beads, frame by frame, gave the impression
of destruction and I used this throughout the
film. The “bead transitions” were tightly ani-
mated and synchronized to the drumbeats,
racing toward a powerful resolution.
What was the duration of making the film?
I spent about three months on pre-production
and a year actually animating. I worked the
same hours daily, at least seven days a
week. Because I did all my thinking ahead
of time, solving the technical problems and
testing them and re testing them before I ac-
tually started the film I really didn’t run into
any problems, and when I saw the rushes,
they were always good. I was a young man,
very energetic with good stamina, so I could
pull it off.
What was the kind of impact you wanted to
deliver through the film?
Because the film is about violence and its
seeming “inevitability”, I wanted it to be in-
tense and powerful, maybe frightening. To be
those things it had to be packed tight, escalat-
ing, and ending powerfully. I think it worked
because there is no slack; the visuals follow
the music in a rapid-fire kind of crescendo.
The few necessary cuts are invisible so there
is no distraction from that drum beat march
to the future, and the terrible message it con-
veys, and its sudden end.
Tell us more about the different animation
styles in your films Afterlife, Top Priority
and Paradise.
Afterlife began because of a book I read by
Elizabeth Kubler-Ross. She had been study-
ing the memories of many victims of “near
death experiences” when “dead” people were
revived from drowning or from death on the
operating tables in hospitals, etc. She found
that similar memories were common to all the
subjects she studied. The shared memories of
dying were of images of passing into tunnels
of light, etc. I thought this would have inter-
esting visual possibilities and an interesting
mood, and Death was certainly a universal
theme. I read The Egyptian Book of the Dead,
Tibetan Book of the Dead, etc. and decided
to pursue it. I needed a technique that would
evoke a spiritual, unearthly quality.
I accidentally discovered the luminescent
quality of Plasticine when the setting sun

shone through a smear of it, which I had
stuck on the window pane of my studio for
safekeeping. I marked it with my pencil and
found that the thinness or thickness could
control the light or darkness needed to make
images. I experimented on a sheet of under-lit
glass and finally achieved the technique that
would allow the mysterious and shifting qual-
ity needed in this kind of mystical film.
Top Priority, was based on an African short
story published by CIDA, the Canadian In-
ternational Development Agency. I used the
same plasticene technique from Afterlife, ex-
cept that I applied plasticene to a translucent
white, rather than transparent, Plexiglas sur-
face on a light box. The white Plexiglas was
left exposed where appropriate to give the im-
pression of the bright white heat of drought.
As with Afterlife, the camera was above the
art work and I carved each image into the
plasticene with a variety of tools to vary the
movement of fabric, textures and edges, in
order to move subjects around.
Paradise was based on a cautionary tale
that my father told me as a boy. The film was
ambitious in that I had a crew of ten people
working with me on it. I used multiple-pass
opticals, travelling mattes, pin holes, under
lighting, and staggered mixes to achieve
many of the effects. There was a tremendous
amount of work involved to create the thou-
sands of pieces of graphic artwork, and to
figure out the technical in-camera processes
used to create the dances of illusion and
transformation within the Palace, etc. It was
a big project.
You are known to choose philosophical and
abstract themes for your films. What crite-
ria do you use when choosing the themes
for your films?
I always have my antennae up to catch an
interesting thought or idea or story or subject.
I dwell on it to be sure that it speaks to me,
that it is universal, that it has the potential
for deeper development, and that it can be
interpreted in some interesting way visually
and musically. If it meets all those criteria I
research, looking for lots of visual references
in books, magazines, etc.; I make lots of
sketches, shoot camera tests, listen to music,
and then if it all looks
promising and excit-
ing, I decide to go
ahead and I begin to
invent a technical way
of making the film
which will uniquely
facilitate the mood of
the subject - the par-
ticular feelings I wish to invoke.
Is there an influencing factor for selection
of your themes?
My childhood memories from village-life in
an agricultural environment in India during
the 1950s offers thousands of ideas and vi-
sual images: no electricity, scary pitch black
nights in the village with only tiny fires burning,
fantastic stories, superstitions, deaths, births,
marriages, birds and animals, foliage and
flowers, farming methods, folklore, travelling
puppet theatres, music, colour, life, etc.
What is animation to you?
For me it is a medium that requires all my
abilities – a multi-disciplinary art form, in-
cluding sound, music, colour composition,
movement, rhythm, story-telling, technical
challenges, photography, lighting, etc. I love
the challenge, the creative and the technical
processes of pulling it all together in one har-
monious entity.
As an artist and an animator, who have been
interview
your influences?
Lots of people – many
of my peers have in-
fluenced me, includ-
ing my fellow anima-
tors around the world.
Specifically Norman
Mclaren inspired me
at the NFBC, but also
Frederic Bach, Yuri Norstein, Gulio Gianini,
and many Russian and Yugoslavian anima-
tors.
Of the films you have made, which is your
favourite and why?
I don’t have a favourite. I like each of them
differently, for different reasons. Each one is
loaded with fantastic memories – both pleas-
ant and hard memories, including memories
of the people who worked with me on each
film.
Your films have music ranging from Clas-
sical Hindustani to Western Jazz. How do
you select the music for your films?
I prefer the music of a single instrument. I
choose the instrument to enhance the visual
subject (Japanese koto in Perspectrum; pan
pipes for Paradise; tablas for Bead Game, flute
for Afterlife).
Once I make my pre-production sketches and
drawings, I look for an appropriate instrument
combined with music of a certain tempo and
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 interview
mood to support the film. Sometimes, as in
Bead Game, I’ll select the music first and then
create the visuals and movement. No matter
which way, I must start the film with a strong
music track. As far as I’m concerned 50% of
the value of the film is about the music track.
Does the music influence the story or is it
the other way around?
It goes either way. They are inseparable. Bead
Game is perhaps the clearest example of this.
The acceleration of human evolution - and it’s
“survival of the fittest” violence - rides on the
acceleration of the tabla’s rhythms, velocity
and volume, culminating abruptly.
Who is your favorite music artist?
I have no favorite musician. I select music ac-
cording to my themes and visuals. At the end
of the film I do work with a music composer
who helps me edit and mix additional bridge
music and sound FX as required completing
a rich sound track.
What according to you is the most impor-
tant thing for an animator to do?
I continue to teach at University level, and I
advise my students with the utmost respect to
simply: “Work hard. Talk less.”
Do you think reading literature on anima-
tion helps improve the art?
If you mean reading “books about anima-
tion”, then possibly yes. It’s good to know
other people’s processes; it inspires and in-
forms the whole animation community.
If you mean does reading literature (i.e. lit-
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animation reporter
erary fiction) help an animator develop as a
story teller, then absolutely yes!
Do you watch animation films being made
now-a-days? Which one of them is your fa-
vourite and why?
I don’t have a favourite animated feature film,
or short. I like a variety of animated films. Be-
ing an animation filmmaker myself, I know
how much hard work people put into a good
film, therefore for me to reject outright any film
is very hard. I appreciate all the effort people
put into their films.
Please give five tips for animators.
Personally, I still love the mental, aesthetic
and hands-on process of putting together an
animated film. The pleasure of working with
35mm. film is now a thing of the past for con-
temporary animation filmmakers, as the world
is digitized. I continue to work under my eight-
foot high Oxberry camera on 35mm.film, but
I have the rushes digitized, edit them digitally,
and finish the project at a digital post house.
That way I maintain my organic control of the
movement and images, and still end up with
a digital “product” in the end.
I continue to do a lot of teaching in universi-
ties and the reality is that animation students
study and train in order to earn their living
in the industry, in studios or large production
and special effects houses – and not to make
personal films.
Finding the spare time and resources to make
their own personal independent films is most
often extremely difficult. However, for those
who are determined to go forward on their
own, I would give the following suggestions
when making a personal, experimental, inde-
pendent film:
1. If you plan to create your personal film us-
ing only software, avoid being “used” by the
limits and look of the software, and instead
put together original organic images using the
software solely as the digital vehicle, much
as celluloid film was used as the “vehicle”.
In other words, protect your creative process
from the pre-determined results of a powerful
piece of software. Lots of animators are now
creating “under-the-camera” animation using
SLR still digital cameras mounted above the
artwork to capture the images. Appropriate
software then makes it possible to pull it alto-
gether as a film. The results are stunning.
2. Put your maximum effort into pre-produc-
tion concepts, visuals, story boards, and
make many animation tests before commit-
ting yourself. Don’t fall in love with your first
efforts, re work it all, and often.
3. Don’t be satisfied with making a “thin”
film, strive for richness, for levels. Push the
boundaries of your music and sound ideas,
your visual ideas, and even the concept itself.
Completing a film is such a massively long
and painstaking project, that you want it to
be brilliant when it is finished.
4. Don’t be influenced by recent trends, soft-
ware capabilities, TV shows, cartoon charac-
ters, etc. Go to the Primary Source – your own
experience, thoughts and instincts.
5. When you are in production, turn off your
cell phone, put up a firewall against intrusion
of any kind and finish a full day’s work at
one time, rather than interrupting your day
to run errands. Be your own watch dog, be-
cause no one else will be. No multi tasking.
As I mentioned above, your mantra, written
above your work table, can be, “Work hard.
Talk less.”
Tell us about your upcoming projects.
I have a few “irons in the fire” and I generally
don’t talk about them until I am in production
or finished.
What would Ishu Patel be if not an anima-
tor?
I would be a very happy farmer. Even today
gardening and landscaping is my passion.