Channel Frederator Blog

Michael Fallik, creator of “Heart Collector”, wrote such an intriguing email about his creative process, I couldn’t have said it any better myself. So I won’t try.

Says Fallik, “I wrote the Heart Collector as my final project on my third year in Camera Obscura School of Arts. The main inspiration came from a song that I heard called ‘The Heart Collector‘ by the band Nevermore.
The contents of the song (as much as I love it) have nothing to do with the film; when I heard the title - an image popped into my head. This was an image of a tall skinny man wearing a cloak and a straw hat who comes out of a fire place and collects hearts in jars. I took this image and developed it into a story about a man that discovers emotions for the first time, but finds them to be a “double-edged sword”.

Two years later I enrolled in the classical animation course at The Vancouver Film School. It was there where the idea for the Heart Collector finally locked in and “clicked”. Who knows why, but that’s just how things work. I find that when I have a million ideas flying in my head, one of them just pushes itself forward and takes over my brain.
So I put paper to pencil and began designing the concepts. I put together a little production book to show my mentors what I wanted to do. I think at the time, they were very skeptical whether or not I could finish the project in the short five months period that were given to do our films.

I wanted the backgrounds of the film to be 3d animated so that I could move the camera more freely, yet I wanted to keep the 2d pencil look that I love so much. Achieving a nice homogenized look between the two animation styles proved to be difficult; especially with the limited knowledge I had in 3d. I learned a lot as I progressed. I wasn’t even sure how I would do the scene with all the hearts flying out of the jars. I had some ideas, but didn’t have time to implement them until the last days. Eventually,after much frustration and very little sleep, the movie was completed on the absolute final second.

One of the great things about finishing a movie like this is when it is screened in festivals. ‘The Heart Collector’ has screened at different festivals around the world including Texas, France, California, Louisiana, Australia and New Jersey. Seeing the movie with an audience was a real treat for me and an incentive to keep making more films.

Looking back today, I am still surprised that I managed to pull it off, and I keep wondering if I could ever do it again.”

We certainly hope that you can, Michael. Such a great film!

Melissa

To subscribe to Channel Frederator, click here, or visit iTunes!