Channel Frederator Blog

Animator/director Brandon Ray turns his love of Russian literature into the very interesting (and creepy!) short film “The Deal”.

Channel Frederator: Where did you get your animation education?

Brandon Ray: I received a degree in film from The University of Texas in Austin. But all my animation know-how comes from many late nights with my sketchbook and computer.

CF: Who or what has influenced your work the most?

BR: I love Dostoevsky’s writing, especially The Brothers Karamazov, but always had a hard time reading the part of the book about The Grand Inquisitor, the one who turns Jesus in (I actually skipped most of it). I’d always wondered what significance this character had to him, since he rambles on and on about it. I read somewhere Dost himself had a religious epiphany midway through his life, and some serious Orthodox guilt that followed as well. I started thinking of guilt and damnation, and the images of Bosch’s paintings came to mind.

CF: How did you develop the concept for this film?

BR: Well, I decided to take it easy on the facts and instead let my imagination take over. Next thing I knew the ominous Grand Inquisitor had taken the shape of a harmless looking little rat. I saw Dost going mad, repentant for his sins, but it was too late… the little rat was turning him over to his Fate of Eternal Damnation (FED). But I felt a fair exchange had taken place… because what if the Grand Inquisitor himself after sacrificing Dost decided to write his final literary masterwork, The Brothers Karamazov, in exchange for the writer’s soul? I’d call that a pretty sweet deal. And that’s the deal.

CF: In the film did you use “people’s eyes” on Dost’s face? Sort of like the compositing they did for Madame Tutli Putli?

BR: Yes indeed.

When I originally came up with the idea, I made myself sit in a dimly-lit room with a candle flickering in front of my face… this made my eyes look more intense and manic, since the flickering candle made my eyes gleam and glisten. I smeared some ashes around my eyes to make the whites of them be in starker contrast to the rest of my face. Next, I got out my camcorder and pretended to be Dostoevsky in front of the camera (just a typical Friday night you could say, ha ha).

CF: Can you can tell me a little bit about making the film from a technical standpoint?

BR: Sure. After musing over my ideas and playing dress-up (described above) in front of my camcorder, I took the footage of my face and stacked it a few times in Final Cut Pro, playing with the composite modes and blur effects (to boost the contrast and to smooth out some of the pixelation from my consumer camcorder). When it wasn’t quite as digital-looking anymore, I desaturated it and took it to After Effects where I cut out the various parts of my face I needed (eyes, nose, and mouth). Here I shrunk and elongated certain facial features as well. Next I added hand-drawn ears, hair, and facial hair to integrate my composited video footage into the hand-drawn backgrounds I’d already created of Dost’s room and St. Petersburg.

Hopefully, this gave everything a somewhat unifying style. And I made my lights in AE flicker as well to compliment the flickering candle light from my camcorded footage.

CF: Neat. Are you working on any new projects you can tell us about?

BR: My work-flow is pretty temperamental, so if I mention too much about my projects, I might not finish them. But I will say my next short involves AT LEAST one of these four things- beards, mental illness, friendship gangs, and/or fishing.

Thank you, Brandon!

You can watch Brandon’s film, “The Deal”, right here on Channel Frederator!

-Bailee DesRocher