All language subtitles for Flow 2024 2160p UHD Blu-ray Remux SDR HEVC DTS-HD MA 7 1-CiNEPHiLES_Commentary by director Gints Zilbalodis [English] (SUBRIP)

[Zilbalodis]
Hello, this is Gints Zilbalodis

and I'm here to do the commentary of Flow.

Flow is my second feature film.

This is the first film
I've done with a team.

So this film has an actual budget,
and for that reason,

you're gonna see all these logos at first
because for an independent film,

especially made in Europe,

you'll often see
all kinds of production companies.

Flow was done in three countries,
in Latvia, France, and Belgium.

And each of those have
their own companies,

including Dream Well, which I founded.

But you also see various distributors.

You see the sales agents.

And it takes a lot of people
just to make this film.

It's quite funny to see this in a theater.

You can get some laughs
of these endless credits.

But, yeah, we actually had to fight
a little bit to not make them even longer.

Sometimes after these logos,

you would have basically, like,
credits designed in the style of the film

and that would mean you would have

to basically mention
all of these companies twice,

but I had to kind of push
to only have this version.

Because we were trying
to make this film not too long.

We were fighting for every frame
to make it as lean as possible,

and then we added all these logos

and that was kind of
a little bit frustrating

but also funny for me
that, yeah, these things add up.

So, yeah, Sacrebleu, Take Five,
and Dream Well are the three companies.

And we did pretty much everything
in Latvia at Dream Well,

except character animation,
sound and some rigging,

which were done in France and Belgium
in Sacrebleu and Take Five.

So we're gonna just jump into the film.

There's no fade in, there's no intro.

We see the character immediately.

And there's no music,
there's nothing to kind of hold your hand,

and we have to kind of find our own way
to attach to these characters.

And we'll come back to this,

but the first image was
the cat looking at itself

in a reflection in a puddle through water,
which is an important visual motif.

And we will see how these characters
change once this motif is repeated.

And, yeah, so this is the second shot

and this was the first shot we animated.

I wanted to test out the look

and the style of animation,
just to see if it works.

In the script, actually,
there were no cat statues here.

There was supposed to be a human figure.

And once I was doing the animatic,

I realized
that it's not really that interesting.

And I replaced them with cats

and moved that human statue
to a later scene.

Because I needed the cat statues
to convey the anxiety

that the cat feels in a later scene
when the flood is rising.

So I think
this shot is over a minute long.

Which is quite complicated in terms
of just managing all the assets

and for animators to work on a single shot
for many weeks sometimes.

And for the lighting to work.

It's very complicated,
even though it's animated

and we can hide the lights.

So I guess it is easier than live-action,

but still we needed sometimes
to animate the lights,

to move them,
to dial them brighter or lower,

so that even though the frame changes,

the lighting just looks good
or interesting

in all these moving frames
within the frame.

And, yeah, this is also the first cue
of the music we hear.

♪♪ [peaceful]

But it was one of
the last ones that was written.

I start writing music very early
while writing the script.

And I create a lot of material.

In this case, I wrote over eight hours
of demo tracks.

And in the end,
we only used about 15 minutes.

And I also create a bunch of variations
and try things.

And I'm not really writing them
for specific scenes.

Oh, here's a boat in a tree,

which some people don't notice
on their first watch.

This film has kind of a circular
structure where the opening image

and the closing image
kind of reflect on each other.

And also in the end,
you'll see a boat in a tree.

And so this is kind of again repeating.

In high school, I made a short film
inspired by two cats I had at the time.

The short film is called A qua.

And, yeah,
it later went on to inspire Flow.

I've been asked
if I'm a cat person or a dog person,

and I've had both cats and dogs,

and we only see one cat in this film,
but we see a bunch of dogs.

And so it's not really fair
that we see all these dogs

and how some are better than others.

But we only see one cat,
so maybe I should do a dog film next,

just to show that I like dogs as well.

[dogs barking]

This dog is inspired
by two dogs I had growing up.

The cat in this film is kind of
on a journey of being very independent

and learning how to trust others.

And the dog is the opposite,
where it starts out being very trustful,

always looking for someone
to tell them what to do.

As it is here, following the other dogs.

But throughout the journey,
the dog learns to be more independent,

so I wanted to show the positives
and negatives of both of these ideas.

I really like these shots
where the cat is running

and the way that the camera moves.

I'm very happy how it turned out.

And this is one of the longer shots.

I really like these long shots

because I think it really creates
a sense of immersion.

I think every time you're cutting,
at least subconsciously,

the audience are reminded
that they're watching a film.

But with these longer shots,

you're kind of hypnotized
and drawn in into the action.

This hare that the dogs end up chasing,
that was a fairly late addition.

In the script, it was a deer.

Also, in the first shot,
it was supposed to be a deer.

But later I decided
to change it into a hare,

so as not to just mix up
the kind of metaphors

and the associations that
the cat has with the deer,

which usually appear before the flood.

So that's why I kind of added
a hare in that scene.

I thought a cat would be
a great protagonist for such a story,

which starts out being
very independent and introverted

and trying to avoid others,

and then it can go
on that journey and learn things.

When doing these kind of longer takes,
I try not to pan unnecessarily.

I try to only kind of pan 45 degrees.

Or if it's a 180 turn,
then it's supposed to be jarring.

It's supposed
to kind of put you on the edge.

This is like a crowd scene.

In my previous film,
I would try to avoid crowds

and have as few characters as possible

because that can be very complicated.

But, actually, we ended up
getting a pretty good result

by just repeating a fairly simple loop
of animation for the deer.

And it was quite complicated,

as all waters in any type of film,
whether animated or not.

But we had to do all these, I don't know,

dozens and dozens of simulations

just to find the right physics
and the right look.

In every scene, the water requires
almost a new set of tools to be designed.

Because a river is very different
than a lake and an ocean or a puddle.

So everything required new tools.

Here we don't hear music.

[cat crying]

It's a fairly tense scene,
and I think it's more tense

because there is no music and we get
a very kind of dimensional sound

from all around you.

Also, as the cat is afraid of the water,
it's also afraid of these other animals,

and these two fears it has--

They're kind of in sync.

So, also, in the opening image,
the puddle is trembling,

kind of showing
the anxiety that the cat has.

And later it will calm down.

But here, the cat is also not being
very friendly to the dog,

and the water is also very unfriendly.

So it's kind of a way for me
to express what the cat is feeling.

[dog barks]

So, here,
the dog doesn't have anyone to follow.

So it will follow the cat.

I like this next shot.

Yeah, this one.

I like the lighting in this shot

where it's only lit
across the path that they walk.

And I have these kind of pools of light

with which I can kind of very precisely
direct the eye of the spectator.

I like how the cat turns
its ears in this shot.

It doesn't even need to look around,

but we can express
a lot through the movement of the ears.

I also learned that cats don't really
look around with their pupils.

They tend to look around
with their whole heads,

which really adds to that kind of anxious,
nervous character,

which we also needed
for the cat in this film.

[dog barking]

I wanted to create
some kind of movement in this scene,

so we added the kind of falling leaves,
which I think add a lot.

And I tried to add wind in the grass
and the leaves to kind of...

make it kind of feel alive.

And some of these things
are quite complicated.

The wind in the trees
is especially complicated.

It's much easier to create still trees.

I really love the animation
of the dog in this scene.

It's very funny, I think.

And here we'll see kind of
a moment of nothing really happening

and just there's no plot being advanced,
there's no character development.

But I want to have
these quiet moments in the film

which allow us
to reflect on what's happened

and allow us to take a breath,

so that when the intense moments begin,

we have kind of relaxed
and we've let our guard down,

and I think that makes them more intense.

This is a fairly complicated shot
with the reflection of the cat's face.

It was quite hard
to just find the right position.

And for the animators,

they had to, like, animate
with the reflection in mind.

But this also allows us
to kind of frame this shot

and see both what the cat sees
and seeing its reaction at the same time

without cutting back and forth
or panning back and forth.

♪♪ [mysterious]

In my original demo of the music,

there was no music in this moment,

but Rihards, my co-composer,

who took my initial ideas and then kind of
developed them and expanded,

suggested that we should start earlier

and also we will end later
than I had originally planned.

So this cue was originally
just a few minutes, like two,

but Rihards expanded it,
I think, to about five minutes,

which was, I think, a very good decision.

[dog barking]

This is the boat
we saw in the earlier scene

that was up in the tree.

And here there's quite a lot of editing.

In a lot of the other scenes,
the shots are very long.

But I try not to have
the technique be in charge of the story.

Like, it's also not the story being
in charge of the technique,

but I think
they should kind of work in tandem.

So, in this scene, I think it benefits
from doing all these quicker edits

and seeing these multiple moments
from different perspectives.

But in other scenes,
I want to kind of really stay with the cat

and not to cut to things, just to allow us
to be very kind of connected with the cat.

These statues are basically
the same cat rig I took

and just sculpted a little bit

to make them a little bit
more bulky and more rounded.

The house that the cat lives...

Originally,
there was no kind of backstory to it,

but as I was developing the animatic,

we decided to make it into a place
where a sculptor must have lived,

with all these tools.

Kind of suggesting that the sculptor
has been obsessed about cats,

and maybe it's this very same cat,
or they've had multiple cats.

But it's kind of similar to me
making a film for many years about a cat.

This shot, I'm quite happy about.

It's kind of like a drone shot
with the camera turning around the cat,

and the statue almost becomes a character
and we see the statue's point of view.

The image of the cat

is actually the only piece
of concept art for the cat that I drew.

All the characters,
or at least the main characters,

were designed directly in 3D.

And, to me,
it was just faster and more intuitive

to kind of design them directly
in the 3D environment.

This water line.

It's much easier to render water
if it's just above or under the surface.

But when you have that transition,
there are many complications with that.

So these statues of the cats
really kind of represent the cat's fears,

and it sees what's happening
to the other statues

and it's suggested that it will happen
to our character as well.

So the whale originally was supposed
to be just a real whale,

but as we saw it in this scene,

we were not really afraid of it

because I think whales are so peaceful
and calming that...

we couldn't really get
into that subjective point of view

of the cat who is supposed
to be afraid of it.

So we changed the design
to make it more mythological and scary.

And we only see glimpses of it at first
and it's revealed gradually.

It's kind of representing
the fear of the unknown.

And as the cat learns more about it,
it starts to trust it.

And this glass sphere
that we saw multiple--

These spheres in the house,

it's kind of reminding the cat
of the things it's lost.

The house that is lost and--

The glass sphere, it'll come back later
and it will save it in a tough spot.

In most of these shots,
the water is basically procedural,

which means
that it's not really simulated.

Which makes it play almost in real time.

And there are some close-ups
where we do need to simulate it

and that's way more difficult.

But we developed these tools
which allowed us

to render most of these scenes
very quickly.

And the whole film is made in Blender,
which is a free open-source software.

And we rendered everything in EEVEE,

which is its built-in,
real-time render engine,

which allows us to see the lights
and see the textures.

And we don't have to wait
for the rendering to happen.

And this makes the creative process
a lot more fun

and exciting and intuitive,

and allows us to make these films
on a smaller budget and do them quickly.

And this is really exciting, I think.

Each of the characters in the film
are chosen based on the theme of the film.

They're not just randomly
showing up there.

They all kind of represent the idea
of the individual versus society.

Each of them are on
a different spectrum of this idea, but...

it's also about kind of trust
in others and...

accepting your fears
and not running away from them.

And capybara is like the ultimate example
of not being afraid.

These characters have their own journeys.

They learn certain things
or change throughout the story,

but the capybara is the only one
that basically stays the same

and doesn't really have a character arc.

It's kind of a mentor figure
to everyone else,

kind of teaching them
how to compromise and how to...

just not worry about everything.

And it's my aspirational figure.

I really identify
with the cat in this film.

I have these anxieties,

but I really wish
I could be like the capybara.

In a lot of the films I've--

I think pretty much
all the films I've made,

there is at least one scene with rain.

And this allows me
to kind of play with the sounds

because you can express a lot
with different sounds of the rain.

It can be very peaceful, it can be scary,
it can be harsh, or it can be soft.

And often when writing,

I even try to consider the sounds
and what ways we can use them.

Earlier, we saw these lights up in the sky

and I just wanted to have
this short glimpse of them at first, so...

If we would only kind of see them
in the end of the film,

I think that might be too jarring.

So if we kind of set them up
somehow earlier,

I think that can make them
believable in some way.

And here, again, I think
I'm really happy with the sound.

[banging noises]

Our sound designer, Gurwal,
would actually record sounds

in a boat
under this kind of little roof it had.

So it's kind of hard to fake this
with kind of effects.

So he had to actually
record some of these sounds

from a very specific angle.

[lemur chittering]

And the lemur as well,
it's collecting these objects,

but the reason it does it

is because it also is looking
for a place it belongs

or it wants others to like it.

And it's kind of silly and kind of lame,

but I think we can still relate to that,

even if we can kind of laugh about it.

But I think we can see ourselves
within these characters.

And this is the longest shot in the film
and I think it was one...

Yeah, it was the last one that we finished
rendering just a few days

before the premiere
in Cannes Film Festival.

Just finishing the last water simulations
and that was very stressful for all of us.

Because, in these longer shots,
it's really hard to make the light work

from all these angles,

and for the camera to go
in and out of the water

and, later, up in the air.

It's very complicated.

You see these--

The light kind of being reflected
onto the boat and the cat,

that was kind of a challenge
to figure out how to do it

in this kind of stylized rendering style.

[cat meowing]

Actually,
in an earlier version of the script,

this bird we see here,

and later, the leader of the bird group,
was a single character.

It had kind of, like--

It would change depending on the moment.

In some scenes, it would be
very kind of aggressive and harsh,

but in other scenes, it would be
very kind of soft and friendly.

And I thought it would be interesting
to have this character

with kind of multiple personalities.

But I couldn't figure out
how to make it compelling and interesting,

so in the writing process,
I split it in two characters.

And we see how their point of views clash,

and later this bird
and the leader of the group would fight.

[cat meowing]

This shot was already
designed in the animatic,

but during one of the test screenings,
it felt too abrupt and fast,

and we didn't really get
to soak in the tension.

So I had to expand it
and add a few of these moments.

But it's really complicated
when all these things

are already kind of created
to add a moment within a longer shot.

You can't just insert it
in the editing timeline.

You have to, like, almost completely
remake the whole set.

When you do a single adjustment
in a longer shot like this, there--

It's like a domino effect that disrupts
so many different things.

So just to add a few extra seconds
in a shot like that,

like, required almost just a few days
to fix all these problems that it caused.

And I really wanted
to stretch this moment quite long,

so that we also see this in real time.

And the whale is kind of obscured
in the underwater kind of fog.

I thought there would be also foliage,
kind of these seaweeds,

to, like, obscure the whale,
so it's more mysterious,

but I couldn't figure out
how to make it work.

And throughout this five-minute-long shot,

there is no music,
which is a very long time.

Especially in animated films,
there tends to be music all the time,

kind of holding your hand
and pushing the emotion.

But I really tried to have
a very long shot without music.

And I think with these longer takes,
it even kind of makes sense to do that.

It creates this very naturalistic feeling
that you feel like

these are real animals
and you can sense all the elements.

[cat meows]

This was quite tough
for our sound designer, Gurwal,

to kind of maintain the intense
kind of feeling and not to be repetitive.

He couldn't hide behind dialogue
or even music,

so he had so much responsibility in this,

but I think he pulled it off.

[capybara grunts]

There's a lot of, like,
light bloom in many of the scenes,

which makes the image softer.

Maybe there is some influence
from video games,

like from Fumito Ueda.

And, like,
in these early 2000s video games,

there was a lot of these effects used,

but it's also influenced
by cinematographers like Janusz Kamiński

and Vilmos Zsigmond,

who would put
all these diffusion filters on the lens

just to soften the highlights
without really affecting the shadows,

which is a look
that I really like and I miss

and I wish more filmmakers
would use this nowadays.

These towers that the cat sees...

it's a necessary way
to kind of convey the character's goals.

I think in a dialogue-free film,
to make it compelling and clear,

all the characters should have
very clear motivations.

And in this case, this...

I think, iconic design of the towers

kind of always
reminds the cat to reach it.

It tries to reach that goal
as quickly as possible

because it thinks
it will climb up the towers

and escape from the flood,
which is the highest place it can climb.

So they needed to be very big,

so that they can be visible
from any vantage point.

Of course, we're adjusting
the size of them in every shot

to make it look right,
but it's suggested that they're visible

from anywhere in this world.

♪♪ [upbeat]

The difference between the short film
I made in high school

and Flow is that,

in Flow there's a big cast of characters
which were not in the short film,

and I wanted to kind of create
an ensemble story,

which I'd never done.

This was also a very complicated shot,
I think three and a half minutes,

and the water is constantly rising,
which makes the boat move,

which would make also shadows move,

and for the camera also to go
from being inside the boat,

being attached to it,
and then now being attached to this floor,

and then going back into the boat
as it's moving.

That was quite complicated
to figure out the choreography

of what's the right speed
for the water to rise

and how fast
the boat should move forwards.

[lemur chittering]

And this was a very complicated moment

to do the simulation
because also the objects are moving.

With the cat and the dog,

we really try to stay
as grounded as possible

because we really
kind of know cats and dogs very well.

Most of us have seen them very often.

But with the lemur and I guess the bird
and maybe capybara,

we can push them a little bit further.

They can have slightly
more exaggerated personalities.

But still we try to look at
as much references as possible

to make them feel like real animals.

[capybara grunts]

I've heard a few times
Flow being referred to

as being a silent film,

and I think a more accurate description
would be dialogue-free.

Because the sound and the music play

an even greater role in this film
than most films

because it has to convey the things

that would be typically
conveyed through dialogue.

And this was very complicated to do.

The timing of this reaction,

we had to send our animator
who did the shots.

There were so many revisions
that needed to be done,

and usually we only have two revisions
that I can give.

But somehow the shot--
Like, if you have one frame more or less,

it's either funny or not,
it can ruin the whole reaction.

So we had to just go through
so many tries,

but I'm very happy with the final result.

Writing is the hardest thing for me,
and music is the most fun, the most easy.

So when I get writer's block,

I tend to do music
because I just enjoy it.

I would do that just for fun,
even if not working on a project.

We see, like, banana plants here.

And we see all kinds of
different types of foliage

and also different types
of architectural styles

and different biomes
in a seemingly small space.

So I guess it doesn't make
exact scientific sense,

but I wasn't too worried about that.

It was really just,
maybe these characters were all in the zoo

and they escaped from a zoo,

so that's why
they're in this single space.

And maybe as the water is rising,

they're kind of
also changing the altitude,

so that could explain why there are

these very different types
of plants growing.

I think we can, like, have
the cat be not entirely sympathetic.

Like, the cat can behave
in a very kind of grumpy

and ungenerous way,

and we can forgive it
and we can still follow it.

I think if it would be a human character,

we would have a harder time
to connect with it.

But because the cat is so cute,
I think it's almost like cheating for us.

We can get very immediate kind of
connection for the audience.

And the cat is constantly
climbing up something.

At first, it would climb up its house
and wait for the flood to go away.

And now it's climbing up
the mast of the boat.

Because it doesn't want
to kind of deal with everything

that's going down
with all the new characters in the boat.

It's just ignoring problems, basically,
burying its head in the sand.

Later, it will climb up
these giant cliff towers

and that's like the furthest up
it can climb.

But sometimes when cats climb up a tree,
they get stuck there

and can't get back down,
so this is something I wanted to explore.

This behavior of reindeer actually
happens in real life

that they walk
in these circular kind of patterns.

And I thought this kind of
circular kind of symbols and spirals,

I tried to interweave them
whenever I could.

I wish I could have done that more,
but I think it's quite a striking image

that we also have in our studio logo,
Dream Well Studio.

It's kind of tricky to do dream sequences.

It can be kind of either too direct
or too vague,

or dreams often
don't really have logic to them.

And sometimes
that can be very interesting,

but this dream sequence,
I think we could have taken out,

like you can still follow the story.

And it's not really advancing the plot,

but I think it's necessary
for the end of the film,

when we see the deer again.

It makes the emotion at the end
a lot more clear,

which we would otherwise not feel.

This was the first time
that I used Blender.

And when I started using it,
there was a big update

which made it a lot more user-friendly

and industry-compatible.

So I think it's really exciting

that these tools that are being used
to make feature films

shown in theaters around the world
are available for free.

And this will allow voices
from around the world

to share their stories

who might otherwise
not have had the chance

because they don't live in a place
where there is a big industry.

And this will allow a greater variety
of not just stories being told,

but how they are told,
the techniques that can be explored.

When I'm designing the scenes,

I'm kind of trying to simplify
the design of the elements,

so we could have done, like,
multi-color flowers in the scene,

and I could have had
all kinds of variety in the plants,

but having these white dots on green,
I think, makes it more interesting.

This was a very complicated thing
to design

when the cat is walking
in the shallow water.

It's not really walking on ground,
we had to do a lot of cheating

to make sure that
the fish are visible through the water

and the cat is not too deep

and sometimes
it's floating above the water.

It doesn't look right from other angles,

but from this specific angle,
it looks right.

So in all of the scenes,
there are a lot of cheating being done

where, yeah, things are kind of floating

or the size of things is adjusted
for specific moments

because it looks right from that angle.

[cat meows]

That's why I've been asked

if we could do, like,
a virtual-reality version of this film.

And I think it wouldn't really work

because everything only works

from this very specific angle
of the camera.

And if the audience could look around,

it would really look very broken.

[bird squawks]

So this bird's leader
is the closest, I guess,

we have to an antagonist or a villain.

But, still, I think
even if we don't relate to it,

we can understand that it wants
to protect the smaller bird.

And that was important,

that at least we understand
these characters.

And the bird is the only other character
that the cat looks up to.

It's really not interested
or doesn't like everyone.

And the bird kind of also sees
the cat following it in its footsteps,

kind of doing similar things,

and it doesn't want the cat
to end up where it does.

And later that we'll see the bird

trying to make the cat not make
the same mistakes.

Our budget was fairly limited,
so we could only afford to design

and create the assets
that we see in the frame.

So we tried to put every cent
of the budget on the screen.

So the way I designed the scenes is,

I just roughed them out with basic shapes

and designed the camera.

And once that is figured out,

we only put the detail
where it's really noticeable

from the camera's point of view.

So if you would look around
within these scenes,

the parts of the sets
that are outside of the frame

look quite broken and unfinished.

In this shot, actually, the whole set
is scaled up twice as big

as every other shot in this sequence

because we needed it to be long enough
to fit with the tempo of the music.

It was already kind of edited

so we couldn't extend
the length of the shot,

but to make it fast enough,

we figured out that we could
just make the whole set

twice as big
while keeping the characters smaller.

And this next sequence
where the birds are fighting

was also originally designed
as a single shot.

[both squawking]

But it didn't really
have the aggressiveness

that I tried to convey.

It felt very distant...

and kind of cold,

so I didn't want just to do a long take...

just to look cool.

And I decided to kind of split it up
in these multiple quicker edits,

and in this case,
it makes it more intense.

In other cases,

just extending a single shot
can create suspense,

but also editing can be a very great tool.

This shot with the bird breaking
the wing of the other bird,

I was really impressed

and quite shocked when the animator,
Veronique, who did this shot,

she made it a lot more brutal
than I had expected it would be,

but it felt right and we didn't want
to kind of soften it.

[bird squawking in pain]

And I left it as she did.

I think we end up really connecting
with the bird because of how far it went.

There's many ways
you can express emotions.

I really think
flight can be so expressive.

You can feel exhilaration and joy
and also sadness

and being lost and falling.

And this is something I wanted to explore
with the bird character as well,

that it loses the ability to fly
and that's how we connect with it as well.

The sound designer of Flow
is Gurwal Coïc-Gallas,

and I learned from him
that often less is more

and sometimes you can convey
a lot more through silence

or by exclusion of sounds
and just focusing on one thing at a time.

Gurwal also works kind of similarly to me

that he wants to be very involved

and he basically designed
all the sounds himself.

There wasn't a big sound team.

And because he wanted to be so hands-on,

he had to start very early,

before even
any of the animation was started.

So he had to imagine a lot of things.

This musical cue will be heard again

when they actually reach the towers
and climb up.

And so when I'm writing the cues,

I'm not thinking
of specific scenes or characters,

I'm just exploring ideas

and basically trying to score the moment,

to make sure
that the moment is not compromised

and it's as effective as it can be.

But when Rihards,
the other composer, came on board,

he made sure that these themes
are developed throughout the film

and they work as a cohesive whole

and they're not just individual pieces.

So he would take a melody
written for a scene where the cat appears

and he would treat it basically
as the cat's theme

and he would put it in other scenes

and have them develop throughout the film,

which I couldn't do on my own.

So we see the characters kind of
being able to navigate the boat,

which probably real animals couldn't do.

But it was important
that these characters have agency,

that they're affecting the story.

If they would just sit in a boat

and couldn't really affect
which way it goes,

then we couldn't have
these moments of conflict

where they have to argue which way to go

or whether to let these other characters
in the boat or not.

And because there's no dialogue,

we learn about the characters
through their actions and their decisions.

So in the writing process,
I'm trying to find

as many moments as I can
where they have to make decisions.

So that's why we made our decision
to have them able to steer a boat.

But because we got used to them

as being real cats and dogs
from the beginning,

I think we can gradually accept this

and it doesn't really
put you out from the story.

- [cat meows]
- [water splashing]

[bird squeaks]

Again, we see some shots
which don't really advance the plot,

but it was important
to have these moments

to kind of let us understand
the characters...

and see their relationships
with each other.

Here, the animation,
the acting really does a lot of work.

It's really great comedic timing, I think.

This kind of subplot with the other lemurs
was a fairly late addition.

I think it also wasn't in the script,
this scene.

It was added after the first edit
of the animatic was finished.

And I wanted
to introduce the lemurs earlier,

to have us understand
the lemur's motivations

so we can connect with it earlier.

♪♪ [upbeat]

When I find an idea
that is about a plot, that's not enough.

And, also, when I find an idea
when it's just abstract

and it's just emotion,
that's also not enough.

But when there's something that kind of
is in sync with these two ideas

and that they can express each other,
then I get excited about the story.

This shot is meant to imply the image
of the whale in the reflection.

I tried to have more moments like that,

but there was no other opportunity,
really, to have that image.

[bird squawks]

This musical cue is kind of
different from what we've heard earlier.

♪♪ [inspiring]

There's brass instruments
which we haven't heard before.

I want it to feel like it's kind of
unpredictable where it's gonna go

and there can be some unexpected turns
quite late in the film.

But at the same time, it had
to feel kind of part of the whole...

and it's kind of a tricky balance.

But the whole city sequence
was really complicated

because it was originally built
as one big set...

for me to figure out the layout
and the blocking of the scenes.

And that set got super heavy
on my computer

because of all the heavy assets,
which were not really optimized.

I tried to work as quickly as possible

and just put the assets in there,

and it just took many, many minutes
to open this file every time.

And it would crash just to open the file.

The action, what we see, is--
It's not that dynamic,

but the music is kind of really
driving the scene.

And I kind of like that
when the visuals are fairly understated,

but music and visuals can work
on kind of different layers.

And I like when music is kind of
saying something different

than the visuals and it can evoke
something more interesting.

The world in Flow isn't really our world.

We wanted to make something
you haven't seen before,

to create that sense of adventure
that everything is new.

Because the cat is seeing
these things for the first time.

So we made these new places,
which are inspired by real places,

like the architecture in Southeast Asia
or Central America or Europe.

But we combined them
and made something new.

And it was also important
that it feels kind of timeless.

There are no skyscrapers or cars.

So there's kind of like
a fable-like aspect to it.

The sound designer, Gurwal,

he knew in which scenes
the music would be used

and in which scenes there is no music.

So the sound
and the music are not competing.

They're collaborating.

And so there isn't a scene

where there's the music dialed up to 11
and also the sound is very heavy.

So when the music is very active,

Gurwal would step back
and let the music take care of the scene.

This was complicated,
with so many characters within the frame,

just to make sure
that as the camera is moving

that they're all kind of
framed and visible,

and there's enough time for each of them.

- [lemur chittering]
- [dog barks]

Just to figure out
the layout of this shot,

this was, like, way more complicated
than most of the shots.

But I think it's interesting

that it's not
a bunch of close-ups and inserts,

but we can see everything
within the wide shot,

and everyone can look around
at whatever they chose to look at

and almost become an editor themselves

by deciding what's
the most interesting thing to look at.

In the animatic, there was a deleted shot,
which was never animated,

that included the fruit that fell down.

And it was about
how the lemur couldn't manage to eat it,

and it was just about
the capybara helping it.

It was just character development,

as the lemur allowed others
to slowly support it.

But it wasn't really necessary.

[cat meows]

The environment is really there

to convey what the characters are feeling,

so it's not there just to look pretty.

I always kind of start
with the emotion I need to convey

and then build
the environment around that,

kind of reverse-engineering it.

And because it's not a real place
that we're trying to replicate,

I think I have more freedom
to design what's needed

specifically for this scene
rather than just replicating a real place.

Again, here's the kind of circular,
spiral-like motif,

which I tried to use as much as I could,

similar to the deer running in circles.

- [capybara grunts]
- ♪♪ [lighthearted]

The cat is underwater for a long time,

not really taking a breath.

But I think we can believe it

because we're following the story,
hopefully.

A cat being afraid of water

is something we don't need
to explain with dialogue.

It works visually and everyone
understands it across cultures,

so I think it's a very strong concept.

But, yeah, it's really--
I'm more interested in the idea

of the cat being afraid of others
than the water.

The next few shots
with the whale leaping out

required the simulation
to be very, very detailed,

and these were the heaviest files we had.

Each frame had many,
many gigabytes of data for the water.

[music continues]

In the whole city sequence,
the light is very overexposed.

And I kind of like that pastel-like look

of overexposed film photography,

which I tried to replicate
in this digital render

where it's a very soft fall-off
of the highlights.

It's kind of hard to convey smell
through images and sounds,

and I think with the flies
I think you can smell them.

Our animators work in passes.

They first design the rough blocking,
which is just the key poses.

And there's no kind of smooth movement
between these poses.

And then they do the spline pass,

where it's more smoothly morphing
between these poses.

And, finally, they do the polish pass,
where you add these finer details.

I really like the cat's reaction
and the voice it had.

That wasn't in the animatic,

that was something our animator,
Francis, suggested.

So sometimes I would design these shots
and have a fairly clear idea,

but we tried to have animators
be able to suggest things.

If it doesn't completely
make us redo the whole layout,

there are some subtle things
that animators suggested

that really made a huge difference
and added to the film.

And sometimes that's very complicated.

Like, it requires me to adjust the camera
or redo some things.

But because the team is pretty small,
they can send me their files,

and I can make adjustments
to the camera very quickly

and send the files back to the animator.

And it takes just an hour or so.

But in a bigger production,
it would have to go through many meetings

and department heads.

And on a smaller team,
you have kind of more flexibility

to move more quickly
and try some alternative ideas,

and I think that's the benefit
of a smaller team.

♪♪ [upbeat]

To me, the image
of a cat swimming is quite striking.

It's something we are not used to seeing
and it can be very expressive as well.

It's almost dance-like.

I think we can express a lot
through movement,

which is something
that I'm always looking for.

How to express things
with movement rather than dialogue.

This sequence is not just edited
to the tempo of the music,

but within the shot, the cat would jump

or look around on the beat of the music.

So this was really helpful

that the music was written
in pre-production,

so the animators could use it.

We didn't need to use temp score
from other films

and then have it be replaced
by original music.

We could use the original music
from the get-go and animate it.

There are a little over 300 shots
in the whole film. I think, 309.

And the average shot length
is about 14 seconds.

And were it not for a sequence
like the one we just saw,

which had many shots which were, like,
a second long or half a second,

those make the average shot length
a lot shorter.

I think, without this
and two more sequences,

the average shot length would be,
like, 30 seconds, which is quite a lot.

[dog barks]

[dog barks]

I made the fish really bright and shiny,

almost like a light bulb,

but it had to be very clear.

So, yeah, it doesn't really make sense,

but it had to be, like,
a very clear moment.

This is the other longest shot,
almost five minutes long.

And, again, there's no music
in this shot as well.

And this entire shot was animated
by our director of animation,

Léo Silly-Pélissier.

He did all the characters.

In many of the other shots,
there are multiple animators,

each of them doing one of the characters,

and sometimes even two or three
doing just a single character.

But in this case, Léo did everything,

and it's very complicated and very hard

to do so many characters
in such a long shot.

[dogs barking]

But as I said,

we understand the characters
through their decisions.

And I think it's interesting
when both decisions are good

or both decisions are bad,

and there are no easy answers.

And so we can understand
why they want to let the dogs in the boat,

but we can also understand
why the bird is against that.

And I think that makes
more interesting storytelling.

We treated the voices of the characters
basically the same as dialogue.

Our re-recording mixer, Philippe, said
it wasn't really any different for him,

and it didn't feel like a different film

than what he's used
to working with typically.

Here, again, it was complicated
to avoid panning as much as possible.

So it was decided
to kind of have the dogs, like,

move from one side
of the tower to the other

and to have
the boat kind of rotate around it,

to make sure that the camera is not
being rotated as much as possible.

So, to me, kind of designing the set
and designing the camera and the lighting,

it's all one process
that I can't really separate.

It is kind of listed as separate things,

as cinematography and editing
and art direction.

But, to me, it's really one process
where decisions are made kind of in sync.

The set has to be built to work
with this specific camera move,

and that's something that, for me,

is hard to explain to others.

That's why I kind of designed
the animatic myself

because there are
so many kind of decisions

depending on each other.

I'm not able to convey this to others,

so it's just easier for me
to design the shot myself.

[lemur chittering]

Some of the gestures
that the lemur does here

are the most cartoony.

[all making noises]

That's something we try to avoid

in many of the other scenes,

to make them feel really believable
and naturalistic,

but sometimes you also need
to break those rules.

And, in this case, it worked better

to kind of push the design
a little bit further.

I spent a lot of time and energy
on this location,

this prop, the boat,

which most of the film takes place
in the boat.

But it's not like a confined space

because it's always moving and it's open.

And I wanted each of the scenes
to be very different,

and there's a variety of things we see.

So even though
it's like a single location,

it doesn't feel claustrophobic.

I didn't go to film school,
and I also didn't study music.

I learned music
for my first feature film, A way.

At first,
I opened this professional software

which had so many buttons you can press.

But then I decided
to try using an app on the phone,

which made things a lot more simple,

so everything you press will be in key.

And this made me learn the basics.

And then when I opened
the professional software again,

I realized you don't need
to press all the buttons.

But, yeah, music is really
my favorite process

of the whole filmmaking journey

because it's so fast
compared to animation,

and it has such a big impact
in the final experience.

♪♪ [dramatic]

There's a lot of fog and a lot of clouds

and atmosphere in the whole film.

And it's important to create
the sense of depth and scale, of course.

But it's also helpful
to hide certain things

and to kind of guide the eye
of the audience of which way to look at.

And so, yeah,
that's something I use a lot.

It's really kind of
a cat-versus-nature story,

so we tried to make
the nature kind of scary,

which I think allows us to develop
the characters and flesh them out,

rather than have
the characters drive all the conflict.

This is nature being very scary.

The camera gets very close
to certain elements.

There are some very extreme close-ups
with wide angle lenses,

which can be tricky to make sure

that it looks of a piece...

with the rest of the set

because they're, like,
different levels of detail.

[cat meows]

It is somewhat easier
to kind of create a more graphic art style

with longer lenses,

but I wanted to have
these very wide lenses

to be very intimate with the characters.

[cat cries]

To make us feel like
we are inside this world

and we are these characters.

So maybe there was some compromise

with the look of the film
or just the visuals.

But, to me, it was more important

to create that connection
with the characters.

Yeah, I was willing

to kind of compromise
the textures, I guess.

This scene was really
kind of influenced by the music.

I knew that they would be heading
towards this destination

when writing
the initial idea for the script,

but I couldn't figure out
what would actually happen

when they get there.

And when I had this piece of music,
it opened up a lot of ideas for me.

It's both kind of melancholic
but uplifting at the same time.

♪♪ [dramatic]

And I like that,

when there are kind of
multiple ideas clashing

and creating something different.

And it builds for quite a long time.

And had the music been written later,

maybe it would've just cut to the point
where it quickly is up on the tower

and there wouldn't really be
this longer build-up.

But I think it's really important
to create that sense of anticipation,

to stretch out the suspense.

I had used some electronic instruments
in the piece I had written,

and this really gave me the idea

to kind of use
this cosmic imagery in this scene.

So it was really
the music kind of guiding the scene.

♪♪ [inspiring]

And I always get asked about what happens

and what's the explanation,

but, like, even when I was making it,
I wasn't really able to articulate it.

I had the piece of music
and it felt right.

It felt like there was a strong emotion.

[music continues]

And it was something that...

It's impossible to convey
this experience with words.

Maybe you could adapt it into something,

but that's the reason why I make films,

is to express things
that I can't with words.

And I think it's enough
just to experience things

and to have an emotional reaction.

And maybe ideas might be more interesting

when they're not explained.

They might lose something
if they're overanalyzed.

So music and film are more similar.

Music doesn't need to be explained,
it either works or it doesn't.

So I think films should also be treated
in a similar way,

that there shouldn't always be, like,

a definitive kind of explanation
for everything.

[cat meows]

Again, there's
that kind of spiral visual idea.

The music in this kind of last moment...

♪♪ [ethereal]

...we used glasses
which were filled with water,

and they're played with the finger
on the top of the glass.

And, again, like,
glass and reflection kind of...

suggest also this visual idea.

So maybe what happened was real,

maybe it's all in their heads,
maybe it's magical realism.

And either way,

the cat and the bird were up
in their fantasy, basically.

What they imagine, rather than, like,
facing the problems of reality.

So the cat has to literally
climb back down into reality

and jump into the cold water.

Otherwise, it will stay there alone.

And, yeah, maybe it escapes
all the bad things,

but also it escapes the good things,

and so it doesn't want
to do that at this point.

[cat meowing]

I tried to make the water
very kind of inky, black-looking

and kind of express
through the texture of the water

the kind of desolation that it feels.

But, yeah, in our case, we really had
to, like, find ways how to prioritize

the most important things
that really matter to the story.

I can't give, like,
infinite amount of notes

because we have our schedule
and we need to get things done.

So I have to really figure out
what notes are important

and what are not so important.

This was also kind of tricky,

to have the film slow down
after a very climactic moment,

where you usually have
a moment like that at the end of the film,

just for the pacing to make sense.

But we also needed for the cat
to feel kind of hopeless in that moment.

So, yeah, it was very tricky
to find the balance,

what is fast or slow enough.

Here is a very complicated shot

where a lot of things happen
within a single shot,

and there's nothing
to kind of hide behind.

It's very wide and turns around 360.

And we see the water really receding.

It would be a lot easier to do this
in many close-ups

or just static camera movement.

♪♪ [mysterious]

When I designed the shot,
I tried not to limit myself

because I thought
that would be someone else's problem,

to figure out how to do it.

And, in many ways, it was.

And we had amazing, like, artists
working on this,

but I was really kind of upset with myself

that I didn't make it easier.

Because people don't really care

whether it was difficult
to be made or easy.

They just care for the emotional impact.

And sometimes something
is extremely simple and quick to do

and has a huge effect...

and no one really cares
if something took months.

That can even be distracting,
that you think about how difficult it is.

That is something I would just suggest

for, like, first-time filmmakers
without a big budget,

to try and figure out things
that are easier to do,

whether in animation or in live-action,

to kind of find your strengths
and weaknesses and use them creatively.

That's what I tried to do
with my first film, A way,

where I tried to design the story
around things that are simple to do

and avoiding complicated things.

So these kind of limitations
can actually be very interesting

and give you original ideas.

This shot was also
one of the heaviest ones

and crashed my computer a lot

because there's a lot of foliage.

And there's I-don't-know-how-many dozens

of millions of particles
of these moss and plants.

In terms of my background,

I think maybe the beginning of the film
where we see the cat's home

could resemble Latvia
and the nature of it.

Unfortunately, we don't have
the giant cat statue yet,

but maybe there could be one.

But I think
what represents our culture is,

I guess, the character
and specifically the cat.

But it's really more a personal story

rather than kind of conveying
an entire culture.

But I would say the Latvians,

I know many of them
are maybe relatively introverted

or might seem kind of distant at first.

But once you get to know us
and we become friends,

we get really attached
and become kind of friends for life.

So I guess the journey of the cat

kind of represents
part of Latvian culture, I would say.

♪♪ [lighthearted]

I really like the lighting in this scene.

There are, again, these pools of light.

It's not just like a single sun
that illuminates everything.

There are many, many lights
and objects casting shadows,

just to make sure that these images
work from all these different angles

as the camera moves.

There was originally planned to be
a longer sequence

of the cat just wandering
around the forest, being lost.

And it really needed the momentum.

So it was shortened a lot.

And now we see the lemur basically
coming to the cat right after.

But, originally, there was the idea

that the cat would be lost
for a few minutes...

and feeling very hopeless.

[lemur chitters]

♪♪ [upbeat]

This whole kind of
sequence after the flood

was kind of inspired
by a place in Madeira, Portugal,

their Fanal Forest,
which is high up in the mountains,

which is often covered in clouds,
which looks like fog.

And there's these very old, ancient trees
covered in moss.

And I went there just to be inspired
while making this film.

[dogs barking]

This sequence with the boat in the tree,

again, was quite complicated.

And while I was writing this scene,

I would do, like, a very rough model
of the boat in the tree,

to figure out the various angles
that it needed to be,

to make sure that it makes sense.

That it needed to be, at first,
too high for them to jump out,

and later,
it's the right amount of distance.

Later, it's too low again,

and I wasn't even sure
if it would make sense.

So I had to, like, basically design
this scene in a 3D model

before the script was written.

And that's kind of helpful as a writer,

to be able to do
these kind of mock-up models

to figure out
what could happen in the scene.

So often, while writing,

I'm also kind of developing the look
and the layout of the scenes,

which can often also give me ideas,

which I wouldn't have come up with
if I would just be writing on the page.

[capybara grunts]

I was considering various characters

who could be the last one
who is stuck in the boat.

At one point, it was the golden retriever,
or it was all of the dogs.

But, yeah, I came to the realization
that it should be the capybara.

We really care about, and, again,

the film kind of returns
to where it started,

as the capybara being the first one
in the boat in the beginning

and now the last one to leave it.

I still don't play any instruments.

I write the music on my laptop,

moving the notes up and down,
and reacting to them as I listen to them.

I think because I didn't study music,

maybe some of the choices
I make are unexpected

and make the approach more interesting

because I don't know the right way
or the wrong way.

I thought there would be water
down in the gorge.

It would be scary that there would be
these scary waves crashing against rocks.

Again, water is, like,
what the cat is afraid of.

But that was
just too complicated to pull off,

and we ran out of time and budget.

And so we made it into this just fog
where the boat disappears,

and we don't even see it
crashing anywhere.

But I think it actually works better
than having water.

And when writing the film
and also developing the shots visually,

it took me a long time to convince myself

that this ending makes sense and it works,

and that we understand
what the cat is thinking.

Because it's kind of hard without dialogue
to convey these things.

So that's why it's not just the acting
of the characters,

it's not just the voices,
but it's the whole structure of the story.

That's why we needed
the deer in the beginning.

That's why we needed that dream sequence

to kind of convey
what the cat is feeling in this moment.

So it's really about the context,
how we reveal the information.

♪♪ [dramatic]

And the cat is running away

because it's implied
that there might be a flood,

but it's also running away
from the other characters.

It's running away from intimacy.

We've seen it kind of overcome
some of those fears,

but it was important
to show that, despite everything,

as we evolve as people
or as they evolve as animals,

that still, there's some things
we can't change about ourselves.

And maybe that's okay,

and we have to learn how to accept that
and allow others to support us.

So that was important to show,

that there isn't, like,
a simple solution to everything,

that you can just become brave
and everything is perfect from now on.

I think,
as everyone kind of learns things,

that, yeah, life is more complicated.

But that doesn't mean that it's hopeless.

But this felt just more honest,

that it's not like
a simple happy ending or a sad ending.

Hopefully, there's a bit of both.

[music continues]

And in the beginning of the film,
the water was trembling.

And it's still trembling,

but it will calm down
when the other characters join the cat.

And I thought it would actually return
back to its home near the house

where we started the story,
but it didn't make sense.

It's just too far.

And when I realized that it's enough
just to have an image like this,

of them looking in the reflection,

that's actually a lot more powerful

than just returning
to the same place geographically.

[music fades]

♪♪ [dramatic]

And the credits are pretty short.

They're, I think,
about two and a half minutes,

which is not a lot for an animated film.

But, yeah, when the film
was pretty much finished,

I had to figure out
what to do with the credits,

so as not to have
just a plain black background.

And I thought that I could put
some images of underwater.

But then, quite late,

I decided to kind of have
the camera emerge from the water,

which we'll see,
but it felt kind of empty.

And it was very late
that I decided to add that extra moment

where we see the whale again.

That wasn't in the script,
and all the team had left.

We couldn't just ask an animator
to create something new,

so I decided to reuse some animation
from an earlier scene.

But because it's a very different angle
and it's quite far, it worked.

But, yeah, there isn't really,
like, a clear logic to it.

It was a very kind of spontaneous decision
that, again, I couldn't explain myself.

It just felt right, and it might be
what's happening chronologically,

what happens next.

It might be a memory of something
that the whale had.

It might be a different whale.
We don't know.

But it just felt right to leave

on what could be a hopeful moment
for some characters, but also quite...

the opposite of that for others.

But no matter what I think...

Even if there is another flood,

I think these characters will find a way
to make it through

after what they've gone
through before, so...

Thank you for watching, and...

I'm quite happy with this film, like--

Of course, there are some things
that I wish I could improve, but...

it's quite rare, I think,

when you can make something
that you're pretty happy with.

[music fades]