Rebecca Blöcher and Frédéric Schuld collaborated on the short animation MAMA MICRA, an emotional tale based on true events from Rebecca’s mother’s life.

The moving stop-motion animation, told through figures crafted in wool and other materials, has already gained awards and a special mention at film festivals.

In this in-depth interview, T-Port’s Jess Sweetman finds out more about the moving story behind the film, the production process behind the texture-rich stop motion animation, and what it feels like to share such a personal tale.

MAMA MICRA appears on T-Port courtesy of our partners at AG Kurzfilm. Professional Subscribers can watch the film here.

Hi Rebecca and Frédéric, can you tell us a bit about yourselves?

Rebecca: I’m originally from Bremen. MAMA MICRA is my fourth movie. I have also co-animated other films by Fabian&Fred and I draw, make (animated) video installations and analogue animation things (like flipbooks).

My first movie was finished in 2013. I actually came to animated film via figure-making. My first attempt at animation was a super-short puppet animation that I turned into a flip book. I actually studied illustration, but I love animation because of all the possibilities in terms of technique and material, different forms and speeds of movement of the images and their effects. In each of my films so far I have combined different animation techniques. I love beautiful material, things that are sweet to touch, that have interesting haptics and surfaces.

Frédéric: With a background in graphic design, radio, and photography, I went to film school to become a filmmaker. After graduating, I felt stuck with live-action and VFX, but I discovered animation by accident and taught myself the techniques.
I worked on several films, and on two of my own, I was lucky to collaborate with Rebecca as an animator, thanks to producer Fabian Driehorst introducing us. I was impressed by her work, especially her latest film at the time, Lickalike.

Rebecca: MAMA MICRA feels like a deeply personal film that doesn’t shy away from the sometimes difficult relationship between you and your mum. Why did you decide to make such a deeply personal film and how was the process of making and distributing it for you after?

The film is based on the interview I conducted with my mother, which turned into a very personal conversation. I spent a week with my mom and asked her about her life. Even though our relationship was complicated, we’ve always been very direct with each other and I think we don’t shy away from conflicts or feelings.

I actually find it much more amazing that my mother opened up to me like that, even though there was this microphone between us and she knew that I wanted to make a movie out of it. Unlike me, she had no control over what happened to it and trusted me to handle it sensitively. That was also one of the biggest challenges for me, to make it an honest film and to make the complexity of the situation and this woman, my mom, comprehensible.

I’m also always most excited when there’s a person in the audience who was close to my mother, because I hope that how my mother is portrayed in the movie does her justice as a person. The movie definitely helped me to have an honest interest in her person and not to judge and evaluate her.

Everything about the film’s visuals are sculpted from incredibly textured materials – how did you decide upon this look and feel for the film?

Rebecca: That was actually the result of the characters. There weren’t that many options for the kind of characters I had in mind.

I wanted fine facial features. The puppet doesn’t speak in the movie, but I wanted it to be able to have different facial expressions. She also needed hands that were as fine and flexible as possible.

I don’t like latex as a material, so wool was the obvious choice. I also made a test head with Supersculpy, but it looked super-weird and didn’t feel right either. The mountain landscape was one of the first drawings I did for the movie. In the meantime, they were glued onto cardboard in the set.

When it became clear that it was possible in terms of time to build everything, I didn’t really ask myself whether I would also make the other things out of wool. I just followed a certain logic for myself, namely that everything that is organic will be made of wool. The other things can be made from other materials. Sophie Bach helped me with that.

The music plays an important part, especially in the emotional side of the film. I’m thinking of the slide guitar version of ‘Amazing Grace’. How did you decide to create the soundscape in this way and what was the process like?

Christian Goretzky, one of the two composers/musicians, answers this question:

Christian: For one thing, I’m a big fan of Ry Cooder’s soundtrack to “Paris, Texas”, where he worked a lot with this kind of sound,it’s a road movie, and in a way Mama Micra is too, so it was a good fit. “Amazing Grace” in particular also has a deeper meaning: I played it at Rebecca’s mom’s funeral and we really liked the idea of using the song. She loved the song very much and often sang it herself.

The rest of the music came about very organically, Alex and I tried to make the emotions that can be seen audible, we think we succeeded quite well, a lot of it came naturally, essentially in two long sessions.

I love the world you have created through the film, especially the beautiful and harmful falling snow. It feels very realistic – what did it take to be able to create these landscape and film them so that they appear so real?

Frédéric: Working closely with Rebecca on the world’s development, I was amazed by the felted wool material she chose. This material started with the characters but extended to all the handcrafted organic elements in the film. The way it interacted with the lighting I used was unlike anything else. To maximize this effect, we built as much as possible in one set.

However, due to limited studio space, parts of the world were prebuilt, scanned, and digitally multiplied in 3D. For most shots, I arranged these scans as background layers displayed on screens behind the set, recording them “in-camera.” This preserved the material’s original handcrafted look, even in scanned form, and largely eliminated the need for a green screen, which would blur the fine details of the felted wool texture.

The clouds at the beginning of the movie were all re-modeled from the scan of a single handmade wool cloud. A similar process was used for the snow, which was originally handmade from real felted wool fragments, then scanned and animated in 3D software.

What is the significance of representing yourself as a crow?

Rebecca: At the beginning of the movie, I say that my mother asked me why I was wearing this costume and that I look like a raven in it. Since this really happened this way, she basically decided it.

What were the biggest challenges you encountered during making your film?

Rebecca: About a month after I was with my mother for the audio recordings, she was admitted to the hospital. Her health got worse and my sister and I had to find a place where she could stay and have good care. She could hardly move, could only lie down and couldn’t even turn on her own. She was in constant severe pain. It got worse and worse. It was a really tough time.
At the same time, I started working on the movie, so I also started digging around in my own family history. I think I had underestimated what it meant to deal with these family issues. I tried to understand the relationship with my mother, to understand myself in this relationship and to bring it naturally and somehow into a comprehensible story and at the same time I had the real life in the present, my mother, who might not live much longer.

It was quite an emotional chaos and extremely challenging. There are lots of drawings from that time. When I see them, I also see the inner turmoil I felt at the time. It went on for a few months, I ran out of money and didn’t really get anywhere with the movie. I talked to my sister on the phone a lot during that time, and I’m very grateful to her for that. This time brought us very close together.

My mother then died.

During the time she was living in her car, she had put all her furniture and things in storage.
When we were clearing out the storage unit, I found lots of old photo albums. There were all the faces from the stories she had told me.

I also found the letter that is read out in the movie.

The letter went so well with the text on the backside of the photo at the end of the movie, which I already had put there in the very first cut storyboard version, without knowing exactly why. That was kind of an “aha-moment”, all of a sudden I had the feeling that this might perfectly pull together what the movie was about.

What was something that you learned while making MAMA MICRA?

Rebecca: I really learned a lot from this movie in terms of filmmaking, but also in terms of life. Spontaneously I would say: Trust the process and trust your own way of working.

If you could go back in time to pre-production and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be?

Rebecca: This does not apply to pre-production in particular, but in general: to stand up for myself

What’s next for you?

Rebecca: At the moment I’m writing a treatment for a Animated Documentary film and working with Christian on an audio/video installation.

I would also like to visit as many film festivals as possible where my film is being shown

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