The Gloaming Surfaces with nObrain

This week French directing collective nObrain finally released the full-length version of their short film, The Gloaming (above). Holding a screening of the film last year at Framestore's cinema, it's been a long time coming and the work has since been put through its paces at various film festivals around the world.

The 15 Badgers and Cosa directors' weird and wonderful take on the "gloaming of humanity" shows how a man wakes in an open desert space to find a whole new world in the palm of his hands with entertaining activity that will intrigue and arouse you as the 11 minutes play out. Here nObrain offer their thoughts and insight into the project and how it grew.

Where did the idea for The Gloaming come from?

The first version of the film was originally meant to become a music video. One day, with Nicolas Schmerkin [producer], we decided to do a short film and started to think about what we could do together. We decided to transform a music video concept we had into a short film. From the beginning of the writing we realised this idea was far stronger in this format and we started looking for ways to finance it.

What made you want to make the film?

At the time we were working on a lot of projects with 'mini worlds' full of characters and the idea to do this on a much bigger scale was very exciting for us. We were also really excited about using this mini-world to make a really bad-ass caricature of humanity. Animation gives you freedom that traditional movies can’t have with some crazy ideas.

From our early beginnings we loved to mix different techniques and we decided to challenge ourselves and mix them all. The film uses stop motion puppets, miniatures, 3D, handmade 2D and live footage. This was a nightmare to produce but gives a really unique look to the film.

But we mainly did the film to raise questions about who we are as human beings and how we behave. The main theme of the film is human behaviour and its consequences.

How did you finance the film?

This is where the nightmare began! Initially we had support from the CNC (French cinema committee) and Arte channel. But soon, we realised that the project was too demanding for the money we had so we had to put it on hold for almost a year until new producers started to inject some money. Sabotage studio is the main reason this film exists today.

This company we created a few years ago is now completely detached from nObrain. Sabotage gave us what we needed to finish the film, helped by [French production company] Irene during the latter stages. Cosa helped us to record the music with Joseph Arthur in NYC and Kouz Production did the soundtrack. This film has only seen the light of day because of those companies.

How long did it take to complete?

Because of all the problems we had to finance it, it took something like six years to achieve. Of course all the techniques we chose also made this adventure really complicated and demanding in terms of time. We first did an animatic of the whole film in really rough 3D. After that we started to do it with all different techniques. For sure, the handmade animation was the main issue. For some shots with crazy camera movement we did them first in 3D, with really detailed modeling. Then, everything was handmade and redrawn frame by frame. Looking back on what we did we think we were a little bit crazy to try that.

You’ve entered The Gloaming into a host of short film festivals, do you think there are enough outlets for showing and appreciating short films?

There are a lot of interesting festivals all around the world. This film is quite easy to show anywhere because there is no real dialogue in it. For this reason the film will be able to touch every kind of audience. We decided that really early on, thinking that a film about the human condition should be understood by any human being.

How do the four of you work together; are there specific divisions of labour?

Usually we split the work. When we receive a project we first think about it all together but then when it comes to go deeper into it, only two of us will follow the project from A to Z. On a shoot for example we are always two and no more, because it could become quite a mess to direct a shoot with four directors! Actually it has helped us on some projects where we could split the shoot into two teams at the same time. For each project, our different backgrounds and feelings decide who takes care of what.

You were initially partners in Sabotage, a Paris-based post production house, what made you want to move from that into directing?

We began as a post studio, with the name nObrain, but soon we came to directing music videos and commercials. So as our work as directors started to be quite heavy and, as we did post for other directors, we felt the need to have two distinctive entities: nObrain for direction then Sabotage studio for the post. This made it clearer to everyone, especially when working with other directors because people could get confused when we did post production for someone while being directors as well.

What is a gloaming?

This is the last moment of light on a sunset. In the film this is more about the gloaming of humanity.

And why are you called nObrain?

This name comes from the early beginnings when we were starting to work for other directors building the post production team. nObrain was the name of the main server we were using on our network. After that we started to direct and we were looking for a name and a director we were working with told us that we should use this name. We loved the idea of the name because it’s the reunited four who bring the personality of our work. So there is no brain, no boss, no one leader.