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My name is Ginzel Balodis and I'm the director of F.L.O.W. F.L.O.W. is an animated film about a cat who's very independent and one day there's this big flood which destroys the cat's home and the cat ends up in a small boat which he's sharing with a group of other animals and the cat has to overcome two of his fears. One is the water and the other is kind of working together with others. It's quite a personal story actually because the first time I'm working with a team myself I used to do films just by myself and I also had to learn how to work together in a team just like the cat's kind of a story about making the film itself. This is a lot more complicated film with a lot of water, a lot more characters, a lot more complicated effects and a bigger scope so I couldn't do this myself and I knew while I was making away that I didn't plan to work like that forever. My intention was to make a film myself to try everything, all the techniques and all the processes so I could learn the basics that was kind of my film school making that film but I planned to work with a team and I thought if I do everything myself then it will be easier for me later to work with a team because I've done these things. I found it maybe more difficult working on this bigger scale because when I was working alone I could work at my own pace but this time I have a big team and a big responsibility and people are asking me hundreds of questions every day. Yeah it was quite stressful for me but in the end it was also very rewarding. Basically in the story and all of the characters are in conflict, they're arguing a lot but actual making of the film was a lot more smooth and we didn't argue, we all worked together on the same film basically, we didn't try to do different things. I think it's good when you're working in a team that you have to explain things then they are more intentional. Everything is there for a reason because when you're working alone you can be more instinctual and I didn't want to like polish it too much. I think some big films because the team is so big they might lose some of those imperfections, some of those rough edges which I like. You can feel that they're handmade so I wanted to have this balance where yes things are intended, everything is intentional but also there are some moments where it's pure emotion. It's something that you can't really explain, you just have to feel it and experience it. We wanted to have this naturalistic style. It's not realistic but we looked at reality but we interpret it. The animals are behaving like animals so we looked at references for everything, for every small moment even just when the cat is turning its head a little bit and find some references on YouTube or the animators would film their own pets and use that as reference. I think with the animals they can be also quite expressive with body language, how they move and so all of the character was just shown by the way they walk by these micro movements in the eyes. We spent a lot of effort making sure that the eyes are really well done. Dreamwell is our studio in Latvia which we established for this film and that was also a big new challenge for me because I never worked in a studio, I've never worked in a company and now I had to start my own company and I had to figure that out but I think maybe because I didn't know how things are typically done we found some unique ways and maybe that helped us to make something more different. I knew that we couldn't do this film just in Latvia because there's not as huge as an industry as it is in France, there are not that many animators especially 3D animators, there are more 2D animators and so we had to teach some of these artists in Latvia as well and go through a long training process but in France there's a huge animation industry and I knew that it would be very helpful to work together. So basically in Latvia we did most of the things, the sound and the character animation were done in France and Belgium and in Latvia we did the pre-production, the editing, the animatic, the concept art and the post-production, the lighting, the modelling, colours, music. We had the French team in a studio in Marseille but we also had the team from Belgium who were working remotely but I also went many times to visit the studio to meet the animators and to make connections because I think it's important so that we trust each other but I had to also be in our Latvian studio because I also had the team there but I found it very easy and they could send me videos and I could draw on them and send notes and also the team was quite young, again we didn't have a huge budget so we had to find creative ways so a lot of the team for them it was one of the first projects they've done and I think that helped also the film because the team was very passionate. For me it was also less intimidating, we were all kind of at a similar age I didn't feel kind of afraid of working with these established professionals. We didn't have a big budget, we had to be very precise how we spend the resources so we don't have any deleted scenes. It was important that when we go into production we don't change it afterwards because sometimes in animation they keep changing things. I did the animatic myself and we didn't do any storyboards, I would just create the animatic directly in 3D. We didn't do a lot of concept art, we only did the things that are really necessary. Basically when I'm doing the animatic I create a rough version of the environment, very simple and I explore the environment with this virtual camera and I look for ideas and find shots, I discover things. I know that some artists and some filmmakers they can really visualize the scenes in their head but I don't have this ability, I have to discover them and once I have figured out the camera we only do the concept art later and we design the things that are really visible in the camera so we don't spend any resources on things that will not be in the frame and we put detail only on things that are in the foreground, we don't design something that's far away. Everything is designed from the point of view of the camera and I think that also kind of helps us to save resources. Also I think it helps us because the look of the film it's not realistic, we only put detail where it's necessary. I think it helps us in terms of the resources but also creatively and visually. We didn't change any of the scenes while we were in production, there were some small adjustments but we didn't change the story, we just changed some camera and when the production started I didn't see the very first version, Leo checked everything and then once it was approved and I gave some notes and it was really nice, it's like he's very intuitive in a way, it's like very creative. Yeah when you're working on a product production also it's important that it's easy to communicate with the team, it's not just the professional ability but the human aspect as well which is very important and for us it was very smooth and easy. For me it wasn't important to tell this long exposition of this world or how the flood happened or where the humans, for me that wasn't that interesting, it was more important to focus on the characters and their journeys, how they change throughout the story so everything is built around all the environments, everything is there for storytelling purposes to kind of reveal what what is inside the character's head, especially the cat, because we don't have dialogues, we have to use the environment, we have to use the camera, the lighting to all express these emotions. Even though we leave some things ambiguous about the world, I think it's important that it's very definitive what happens to the characters, how they change, how they learn, everything was built around that cat's journey of not just overcoming its fears of water or fears of others but kind of learning how to live with these fears and accepting them because I didn't want to have this didactic simple message that being independent is bad and working together is good because we also have this dog character in the film who is on this opposite journey as the cat who in the beginning is very trustful of others and always wants someone to tell them what to do, the opposite as the cat is in the beginning and throughout the journey the dog learns how to be more independent so it was important to show that the truth is somewhere in the middle. I wanted to give some hints about the past, what happened, where are the people but I'm not explaining it, I'm asking the audience to participate in the storytelling. There's a lot of environmental storytelling, you have to look and pay attention and I think if you pay attention you will be rewarded, you will have a fuller experience because I don't like to spoon feed the audience and explain everything. There were some challenges but overall I think it was quite smooth I guess because of my previous film Away even though it wasn't like a huge financial success but it was still a financial success because the budget was so small so it was still made back its budget because of the festival success I think the producers really trusted me maybe they thought if there's a big catastrophe and we run out of budget I might still finish the film myself in some way still it was a pretty small budget then it's less risky for the producers. What helped us to get the funding was always we had a lot of visual material, we had the animatic which we could show the financiers and the producers. I think what was quite scary for everyone including me was that we only had the finished look and the finished scenes quite late, we did some tests but they were still a lot more simple and didn't have everything figured out so only very close to the premiere everything kind of came together. We just finished Flow like literally days before the premiere in Cannes and I'd never seen it with an audience and that was like a big relief to see it in Cannes and when people were laughing at the right places and responding correctly so it means that not just they understand the film but it's a more personal feeling that they understand me because it's like a personal story about my own experience and it's a very good feeling to know that you're understood. We were the only animated film in our program in Cannes, it's very rare that they select animation so that was a big honor for us and very quickly we found distribution in many countries around the world and for Latvia it's a huge deal because I think this will be the most widely distributed Latvian film maybe because it's animation maybe because it's no dialogue it helps us to really like transcend some cultural boundaries and the distributors are happy that they don't need to spend money on translations and Nanasi was amazing as well because it's a crowd of animators of young and passionate people and that was also very emotional. Before with Away I was just traveling myself and going to the stage myself and that can be kind of intimidating to be alone on the stage but this time we had the team and it's really nice to share the stage with them so it's been quite a lot. I'm still kind of processing the reaction because I'm going from festival to festival and doing a lot of interviews and traveling and so I'm still in in the middle of the storm in a way but I'm very inspired as well to work on my next films. I'm writing my next project while I'm traveling if I have some free time and so it's another animated feature film but it's a little bit different than Flow because I will have some dialogues for the first time ever but it's not a lot of dialogues it's only when it's necessary I will work with actors for the first time and but I still want to do it kind of independently I don't want to work with a huge studio and because I think with the smaller independent project we can tell more personal stories and tell them with more creative techniques and looks and cinematic languages so I want to kind of stay in this independent world. I can't tell you much about the story because I'm still writing it but it's a fantastical story. It's about people not animals. There are some animal characters as well but again it's quite personal story to me about my own experiences and my fears and doubts and what I've learned. The technique will be a little bit different and I think it's something that's never been done in animation which I will not reveal yet but it's a very ambitious and technically complicated technique.