NEWS

Sign me up: Amy Engles

Amy Engles made our hearts melt a couple of years ago with her beautiful, emotional 3D film Nora. Emotionally engaging and 3D are not two words that often sit easily with each other, but Engles manages to merge a quirky warmth with her technical wizzardy in a way that we could happily watch her films for ever. We finally pinned her down to find out what’s she up to and where’s she heading.

http://vimeo.com/16086378

A lot of your films have foreign references – apart from outer space, there’s Japan and India. Have you lived in these places?
My first memories are from Hong Kong where I grew up. Although it was home to me, my parents would always refer to England as home. It was a kind of mythical place. We finally moved back to England when I was twelve, and it felt so foreign. Every aspect of life was different.

In HK most evenings had been spent at the beach or playing outside with a pack of friends being left to do pretty much what we wanted. In England, life felt so isolated and controlled. Kids would have to organize seeing friends in advance, so like every one else, life after school was usually spent sat in front of children’s TV.

My parents seemed to slot back in very easily and I began to doubt my life prior to England had ever existed. I went through an odd phase of secretly calling my friends in Hong Kong but would hang up the phone when they or their parents answered as for some reason just knowing they were real seemed enough. It was only after having spent over a year and half making ‘Nora’, that I saw where the story came from, and noticed this reoccurring theme that has kept popping up.

‘Pondicherry’ was made in India. I’d stayed for about 5 months on my way home from Tokyo where I had been teaching English. It was the first film I made, and was shot on the street outside the flat I was staying. I was really inspired by the way that people’s perceptions of their reality were so intertwined with these incredible myths and stories. The myths seemed to soften the hardness of people’s reality. Even in quite a practical sense of there being a deity related festival every week!
I created a story involving some of the people I’d see every day and filmed a couple of seconds of their movements, looped them and cut them out of their backgrounds and transported them to another landscape, similar, but brighter and softer than the original.

Do you have any desire to shoot more stories in live action like you did in Bingo?
It depends on the concept and what fits.
The ‘Honey Pine Dresser’ video live action fitted the song, as did having the focus on the singer the focus of it, but for the ‘Erland and the Carnival’ video it was quite a folky song and it lent itself well to animation. The reason I started making animations as a mechanism for short films, was that the stories I wanted to make were all based in fantasy. Animation seemed the best route to be able to create anything.

There’s a great mix of animal and other worldly creatures in your videos – do you have an infinity with animals or are these characters all straight out of your imagination?
The ‘When I found the knife again’ video with all the animals was a continuation of a film made for the Knifes first album. The second album, Silent Shout was a bit darker, I wanted to take the thread from the first video so continued the use of the Rabbit as the protagonist but changed its look, so used a dead rabbit scanned in from a butchers.
I took the other characters from the stuffed animals in the Natural History Museum and gave them human features like feet and eyes. Nora’s design was based totally on her functions as a character. She had this pregnant looking belly, which as she was a robot, just served very functional purposes, as in it could be removed to make a helmet, and carry things in (she was a service android). This design of her belly was perhaps linked with my own fertility issues that I was concerned about at the time.

How do your characters come to life?
I’m not sure they ever really come to life in any of the films I’ve made. I quite like the half life state that most of them inhabit and they’re generally striving to find something that will perhaps bring them to life, or make them more complete. I find dreams very inspiring. I often remember stories in dreams but generally I don’t think people really say a lot in them. Even in Bingo where I’m dealing with real people you still get a feeling that they’re occupying a state that isn’t actually living.


Do you prefer working alone or part of a team?

Definitely with a team. I’ve ended up working mostly alone recently, because I haven’t had the budget to get anyone in. I’d really liked the songs so wanted to do the projects but it can be quite difficult to sustain momentum. Working in a team there is more energy and it can be quite exciting. With Nora the initial producer wanted it to be made remotely with a huge team each doing a tiny bit in their spare time, so of course nothing was getting finished. It was incredibly unwieldy and chaotic. Once we’d got things down to a studio with four of us in it, things started happening really quickly and the process became suddenly really enjoyable.

When did you first pick up a camera and realise you wanted to make films?
My first love was really stills photography. My brother and his mates would make videos of themselves clowning round or skating but I wasn’t that interested in capturing what I could already see, with photos I felt I could create more of a fantasy with the lighting and shadows which I couldn’t get on a camcorder.
My dad had a Canon SLR, which was his most treasured possession. I really liked taking photos, but having a solid record of losing things borrowing it always took a lot of persuasion. I also loved pinhole photography and would use the bathroom sink to develop photos.

What are you currently working on and where?
I divide my time up between working in house at various places doing after effects and Cinema 4D animation which finances taking time out to do short films.
At the moment I’ve just finished a long stint of freelance work so am in short film mode. I’m currently working on putting the pieces in place to start on a dance-based piece. They’re used as molecules, in their own surroundings. Everything that surrounds them will be made from them. It’s at an embryonic stage though.

What is your ideal five-year plan?
I’ve been very happy with combining freelance work for the past couple of years as the two are a nice balancing act. But I would like to make films with a team which are sustainable on their own. My ideal five-year plan is working towards that and enjoying the process.

View more work: http://www.englesindustries.co.uk

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