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The Overcoat (animated film)
Encyclopedia
The Overcoat is an upcoming animated
feature film
that has been the main project of acclaimed Russia
n director and animator Yuriy Norshteyn
since 1981. It is based on the short story
by Nikolai Gogol
with the same name.
Around 25 minutes were completed by 2004. The unfinished film has been shown publicly in several exhibitions of Norshteyn's work around the world and clips of it have been included in a few documentary films about Russian animation and culture.
On March 13, 2007, Norshteyn stated that he planned to release the first 30 minutes of the film with a soundtrack into theatres by the end of 2007. However, as of August 2011, this has not yet happened.
.
By 1981, when work on the film began, Norshteyn had been working at Soyuzmultfilm
(the main Soviet
animation studio) for 13 years and had worked on some 40 films and directed or co-directed six. Progress was slow, with many interruptions (Norshteyn estimates that only about three years of work were actually done). Norshteyn says that Viktor Tinyaev (Виктор Тиняев) helped him during this period. In 1986, with only 10 minutes of the film completed, Norshteyn was fired from the Soyuzmultfilm studio in which he had worked. This was despite the fact that his films had gathered many international awards, and Tale of Tales had been voted the best animated film of all time by a large panel of international critics in 1984.
With the help of Rolan Bykov
, Norshteyn managed to set up his own animation studio in his home. There, he and his team continued to slowly work on the film. Funding has been sporadic and has come from many different sources, including the Savings Bank of Russia
(Sberbank) and TNK
oil company. A few minutes were shot under the Soros Fund before 1999. Norshteyn has been known for refusing funding from certain sources. He refused to accept money from Mikhail Shvydkoy, the Russian Minister of Culture, saying "one cannot take money from those who don't care about you." He also refused help from Nick Park
's company Aardman Animations
, accepting from them only a few boxes of lightbulbs.
Production came to a temporary halt on November 17, 1999 with the death of cinematographer Aleksandr Zhukovskiy (Александр Жуковский). The loss was crippling for Yuriy Norshteyn — he said of Zhukovskiy that he was the only person who ever saw exactly eye-to-eye with him both as an artist and as a friend. Nevertheless, by 2001 production had resumed with a new cinematographer — Maksim Granik (Максим Граник), one of Zhukovskiy's students. Production soon halted again — this time for three years. Norshteyn spent a year and a half making a 3-minute animation for the introduction to Spokoynoy nochi, malyshi!, a popular Russian nightly show for young children to watch before they go to bed (his segment was taken off the air in the summer of 2001; the show moved to another channel while the copyright for the sequence stayed with the old one). He also spent nine months working on a 2-minute sequence for the Japan
ese collaborative film Winter Days
(released in 2003
). Norshteyn said that this sequence required as much work as a 10-minute film, and that his work on it influenced The Overcoat and vice versa (the sequence contains a scene with Bashō
searching for tick
s in his cloak which is similar to a scene in The Overcoat).
In a July 4, 2004 interview, Norshteyn said that 25 minutes of The Overcoat had been shot.
The studio stopped working on the film for nearly a year while Norshteyn worked to release his two-volume book, Snow on the Grass, released on August 10, 2008.
To this day, Norshteyn is still working on the film—his ardent perfectionism has earned him the nickname "The Golden Snail". Although he has been offered chances to leave Russia, Norshteyn believes that finishing his film in "circumstances approaching comfort" would be impossible. It is also possible that The Overcoat could surpass The Thief and the Cobbler
s record of the longest production time for a motion picture in history if it will still not be finished sometime in 2012.
Most recently, it has been confirmed via IMDb
that The Overcoat has completed filming and is currently in the post-production
phase as of May 2011
.
There is not expected to be much dialogue in the film. Norshteyn originally wanted Aleksandr Kalyagin to play the main role. However, he has said that his idea of the main character has since changed, and that he is not yet sure who the final voice actor will be.
Norshteyn uses a special technique in his animation
, involving multiple glass planes to give his animation a three-dimensional look. The camera is placed at the top looking down on a series of glass planes about a meter deep (one every 25–30 cm). The individual glass planes can move horizontally as well as toward and away from the camera (to give the effect of a character moving closer or further away). Some scenes required a different approach, as can be seen in the image on the right.
The animation used is cutout animation
, a type of stop motion
.
Norshteyn refuses to use a computer in his work, and says that even watching computer-animated films makes him ill.
The film is being shot in black-and-white film. Due to the closure of Moscow
labs that develop black-and-white film, Norshteyn's team is currently being forced to develop it themselves.
's The Overcoat
. However, Norshteyn has said that "the cinematographer should not be interested in that which is described in detail - he should look to that which is skipped, to that which is implied but is not explicitly written. The break in the text is the most promising, the most alive place for cinema."
Russian
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
feature film
Feature film
In the film industry, a feature film is a film production made for initial distribution in theaters and being the main attraction of the screening, rather than a short film screened before it; a full length movie...
that has been the main project of acclaimed Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n director and animator Yuriy Norshteyn
Yuriy Norshteyn
Yuriy Borisovich Norshteyn , or Yuri Norstein is an award-winning Soviet and Russian animator best known for his animated shorts, Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales...
since 1981. It is based on the short story
The Overcoat
"The Overcoat" is the title of a short story by Ukrainian-born Russian author Nikolai Gogol, published in 1842. The story and its author have had great influence on Russian literature, thus spawning Fyodor Dostoyevsky's famous quote: "We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'." The story has been...
by Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
with the same name.
Around 25 minutes were completed by 2004. The unfinished film has been shown publicly in several exhibitions of Norshteyn's work around the world and clips of it have been included in a few documentary films about Russian animation and culture.
On March 13, 2007, Norshteyn stated that he planned to release the first 30 minutes of the film with a soundtrack into theatres by the end of 2007. However, as of August 2011, this has not yet happened.
History
Upon finishing his film Tale of Tales in 1979 Norshteyn decided that the next project for his small team (consisting of himself as the animator and director, his wife Franchesca Yarbusova as the artist and his friend Aleksandr Zhukovskiy as the cinematographer) would be an approximately 60-minute-long film based on Gogol's short story The Overcoat. Norshteyn has said that he considers The Overcoat to be as important a work of literature for him personally as one of the chapters of the BibleBible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
.
By 1981, when work on the film began, Norshteyn had been working at Soyuzmultfilm
Soyuzmultfilm
Soyuzmultfilm is a Russian animation studio based in Moscow. Over the years it has gained international attention and respect, garnering numerous awards both at home and abroad. Noted for a great variety of style, it is regarded as the most influential animation studio of the former Soviet Union...
(the main Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
animation studio) for 13 years and had worked on some 40 films and directed or co-directed six. Progress was slow, with many interruptions (Norshteyn estimates that only about three years of work were actually done). Norshteyn says that Viktor Tinyaev (Виктор Тиняев) helped him during this period. In 1986, with only 10 minutes of the film completed, Norshteyn was fired from the Soyuzmultfilm studio in which he had worked. This was despite the fact that his films had gathered many international awards, and Tale of Tales had been voted the best animated film of all time by a large panel of international critics in 1984.
With the help of Rolan Bykov
Rolan Bykov
Rolan Antonovich Bykov was a Soviet and Russian actor, film director, script writer, poet, song writer. He was awarded People's Artist of the RSFSR in 1973 and the USSR State Prize in 1986.Rolan Bykov was born to a Jewish family in Kiev....
, Norshteyn managed to set up his own animation studio in his home. There, he and his team continued to slowly work on the film. Funding has been sporadic and has come from many different sources, including the Savings Bank of Russia
Sberbank
Sberbank Rossii is the largest bank in Russia and Eastern Europe. The company's headquarters are in Moscow and its history goes back to Cancrin's financial reform of 1841...
(Sberbank) and TNK
TNK-BP
TNK-BP is a major vertically integrated Russian oil company. It is Russia's third largest oil producer and among the ten largest private oil companies in the world. TNK-BP is Russia's third largest oil company in terms of reserves and crude oil production...
oil company. A few minutes were shot under the Soros Fund before 1999. Norshteyn has been known for refusing funding from certain sources. He refused to accept money from Mikhail Shvydkoy, the Russian Minister of Culture, saying "one cannot take money from those who don't care about you." He also refused help from Nick Park
Nick Park
Nicholas Wulstan "Nick" Park, CBE is an English filmmaker of stop motion animation best known as the creator of Wallace and Gromit and Shaun the Sheep....
's company Aardman Animations
Aardman Animations
Aardman Animations, Ltd., also known as Aardman Studios, or simply as Aardman, is a British animation studio based in Bristol, United Kingdom. The studio is known for films made using stop-motion clay animation techniques, particularly those featuring Plasticine characters Wallace and Gromit...
, accepting from them only a few boxes of lightbulbs.
Production came to a temporary halt on November 17, 1999 with the death of cinematographer Aleksandr Zhukovskiy (Александр Жуковский). The loss was crippling for Yuriy Norshteyn — he said of Zhukovskiy that he was the only person who ever saw exactly eye-to-eye with him both as an artist and as a friend. Nevertheless, by 2001 production had resumed with a new cinematographer — Maksim Granik (Максим Граник), one of Zhukovskiy's students. Production soon halted again — this time for three years. Norshteyn spent a year and a half making a 3-minute animation for the introduction to Spokoynoy nochi, malyshi!, a popular Russian nightly show for young children to watch before they go to bed (his segment was taken off the air in the summer of 2001; the show moved to another channel while the copyright for the sequence stayed with the old one). He also spent nine months working on a 2-minute sequence for the Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese collaborative film Winter Days
Winter Days
is a 2003 animated film, directed by Kihachirō Kawamoto. It is based on one of the renku in the 1684 collection of the same name by the 17th-century Japanese poet Bashō....
(released in 2003
2003 in film
The year 2003 in film involved some significant events. Releases of sequels took place with movies like The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, 2 Fast 2 Furious, Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle, The Matrix Reloaded, The Matrix Revolutions, Pokémon Heroes, Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines,...
). Norshteyn said that this sequence required as much work as a 10-minute film, and that his work on it influenced The Overcoat and vice versa (the sequence contains a scene with Bashō
Matsuo Basho
, born , then , was the most famous poet of the Edo period in Japan. During his lifetime, Bashō was recognized for his works in the collaborative haikai no renga form; today, after centuries of commentary, he is recognized as a master of brief and clear haiku...
searching for tick
Tick
Ticks are small arachnids in the order Ixodida, along with mites, constitute the subclass Acarina. Ticks are ectoparasites , living by hematophagy on the blood of mammals, birds, and sometimes reptiles and amphibians...
s in his cloak which is similar to a scene in The Overcoat).
In a July 4, 2004 interview, Norshteyn said that 25 minutes of The Overcoat had been shot.
The studio stopped working on the film for nearly a year while Norshteyn worked to release his two-volume book, Snow on the Grass, released on August 10, 2008.
To this day, Norshteyn is still working on the film—his ardent perfectionism has earned him the nickname "The Golden Snail". Although he has been offered chances to leave Russia, Norshteyn believes that finishing his film in "circumstances approaching comfort" would be impossible. It is also possible that The Overcoat could surpass The Thief and the Cobbler
The Thief and the Cobbler
The Thief and the Cobbler is an animated feature film, famous for its animation and its long, troubled history. The film was conceived by Canadian animator Richard Williams, who worked 28 years on the project. Beginning production in 1964, Williams intended The Thief and the Cobbler to be his...
s record of the longest production time for a motion picture in history if it will still not be finished sometime in 2012.
Most recently, it has been confirmed via IMDb
Internet Movie Database
Internet Movie Database is an online database of information related to movies, television shows, actors, production crew personnel, video games and fictional characters featured in visual entertainment media. It is one of the most popular online entertainment destinations, with over 100 million...
that The Overcoat has completed filming and is currently in the post-production
Post-production
Post-production is part of filmmaking and the video production process. It occurs in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, advertising, audio recordings, photography, and digital art...
phase as of May 2011
May 2011
May 2011 was the fifth month of the current year. It began on a Sunday and ended after 31 days on a Tuesday.- Portal:Current events :This is an archived version of Wikipedia's Current events Portal from May 2011....
.
Cast and crew
Yuriy Norshteyn is the writer, director, and animator for the film. His wife Francheska Yarbusova is the main artist responsible for the characters and backgrounds. Other artists who were working on the film as of 2004 were Larisa Zenevich, Lena Sharapova and Valentin Olshvang (who earlier worked with Norshteyn on the Spokoynoy nochi, malyshi! sequence). Aleksandr Zhukovskiy was the cinematographer until his death on November 17, 1999. A student of his, Maksim Granik, has been the cinematographer since 2001.There is not expected to be much dialogue in the film. Norshteyn originally wanted Aleksandr Kalyagin to play the main role. However, he has said that his idea of the main character has since changed, and that he is not yet sure who the final voice actor will be.
Technique
Animation
Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...
, involving multiple glass planes to give his animation a three-dimensional look. The camera is placed at the top looking down on a series of glass planes about a meter deep (one every 25–30 cm). The individual glass planes can move horizontally as well as toward and away from the camera (to give the effect of a character moving closer or further away). Some scenes required a different approach, as can be seen in the image on the right.
The animation used is cutout animation
Cutout animation
Cutout animation is a technique for producing animations using flat characters, props and backgrounds cut from materials such as paper, card, stiff fabric or even photographs...
, a type of stop motion
Stop motion
Stop motion is an animation technique to make a physically manipulated object appear to move on its own. The object is moved in small increments between individually photographed frames, creating the illusion of movement when the series of frames is played as a continuous sequence...
.
Norshteyn refuses to use a computer in his work, and says that even watching computer-animated films makes him ill.
The film is being shot in black-and-white film. Due to the closure of Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...
labs that develop black-and-white film, Norshteyn's team is currently being forced to develop it themselves.
Plot
Based on Nikolai GogolNikolai Gogol
Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol was a Ukrainian-born Russian dramatist and novelist.Considered by his contemporaries one of the preeminent figures of the natural school of Russian literary realism, later critics have found in Gogol's work a fundamentally romantic sensibility, with strains of Surrealism...
's The Overcoat
The Overcoat
"The Overcoat" is the title of a short story by Ukrainian-born Russian author Nikolai Gogol, published in 1842. The story and its author have had great influence on Russian literature, thus spawning Fyodor Dostoyevsky's famous quote: "We all come out from Gogol's 'Overcoat'." The story has been...
. However, Norshteyn has said that "the cinematographer should not be interested in that which is described in detail - he should look to that which is skipped, to that which is implied but is not explicitly written. The break in the text is the most promising, the most alive place for cinema."
See also
- History of Russian animationHistory of Russian animationThe History of Russian animation is very rich, but is so far a nearly unexplored field for Western film theory and history. As most of Russia's production of animation for film|cinema and television was created during Soviet times, it may also be referred to as the History of Soviet...
- List of animated feature films
- List of recent films in black-and-white
- List of stop-motion films
Other animated movies with long production histories
- The Thief and the CobblerThe Thief and the CobblerThe Thief and the Cobbler is an animated feature film, famous for its animation and its long, troubled history. The film was conceived by Canadian animator Richard Williams, who worked 28 years on the project. Beginning production in 1964, Williams intended The Thief and the Cobbler to be his...
, in production 1964–1995, released hastily finished. - Le Roi et l'oiseauLe Roi et l'oiseauLe Roi et l'oiseau is a 1980 traditionally-animated feature film directed by Paul Grimault...
, a French animated film, produced in two parts (1948–52, 1967–80), initially released in recut form, eventually finished as per director’s wishes
External links
- http://www.pbs.org/weta/faceofrussia/timeline/quicktime/overcoat1.html, - a couple of short, low-resolution clips that have been made available to the public
- Pictures of Norshteyn at work on the film
Russian
- Peoples.ru profile (several articles and interviews)
- Fan page with several more interviews
- Online group dedicated to Norshteyn's art - has news on any public showings of his work
- Comments about the unfinished film from those who've seen it: 1, 2
- September 2006 interview