The history of the development of the spot of Filmtettfeszt

It was a real challenge to rethink the 2012 spot of Filmtettfeszt, the excellent animation created by Attila Bertóti, for this year’s special edition of the festival. I also feel honored, as the Faculty of Film Hunters (a transcript of the Faculty of Hunters of the Hobo Blues Band) has been my favorite of all the festival spots so far (actually two slightly different versions of it were created in 2012 and respectively in 2014).

When the planning and brainstorming started, it was not yet certain whether the festival would be held at the usual time, so the organizers had to choose the mid-September date in order that it could be shown outdoors if necessary. Consequently, the whole creative process had to start in August, when various members of the team were on holiday every week. Nevertheless, thanks to the main organizer, Bálint Zágoni, all the threads were well coordinated: writing the lyrics, recording the choir, and then making a film on which the whole image of this year’s festival was based. The latter was developed together with Bence Makkai and the Vizualitas Studio.

As usual, the creative process started with brainstorming. Due to the circumstances, unfortunately, the team members never had the opportunity to meet in person. This, of course, led to a slight sense of deprivation, but it also had the advantage that people from different cities and even countries could work together. Some ideas came from the organizers, three of which we developed into a rough synopsis. We definitely wanted to keep the birthday theme, but we also wanted to reflect on the fact that this year is not only extraordinary because of this. The choice fell on the Faculty of Film Hunters of 2020, and as a result the spot turned out a little longer than the previous versions.

A lot of things have come to our minds about this topic, and several times we had to consider how risky or stale a joke would be in connection with the coronavirus. In the end, the ideas left in the script were the ones we thought would not get annoying after repeated views (of course, this aspect always subjective, especially when it comes to a delicate, divisive topic; however, we started from the premise that this is, in a sense, our own medium, and we are not addressing an unknown audience).

The biggest challenge was adapting the film both in terms of content and graphics, without trying to imitate the original. At the same time, we wanted to offer some sort of reference to viewers who remember the previous version (which is why, for example, the rattle of chips was included, which is now omitted from the text). In terms of visuals, we chose a new, more characteristic, collage style. We kept only the character of the Yellow Foal (who not only appeared in the singing spots, but also became a permanent feature of the Filmtettfest’s image), but of course, we also reworked him into the visual world of paper-cut animation.

The first step in the workflow was to create the storyboard as usual. This does not include the visuals yet;it is just a sketch that allows us to see how we imagine each composition. The next step is the animatik (when the images of the storyboard are cut to the sound so that the rhythm of the film can be predicted – i.e. the exact duration of showing each image, which determineshow much detail needs to be worked out).  In music clips this step is essential, but this time we waited until the graphics were finalized, and the animatik was created using the final visual elements. In the meantime, Bálint organized the recording of the song, the backstage film of which can be viewed here. 

After the visual elements came to life with Gyopár Buzási’s drawing, our work continued along 4 threads: Bence Makkai prepared the printed materials, and three of us created the spot. Judith Vicsi synchronized the singing lips to the musical base, which we later applied onto every character. In the meantime, I put together a composition that includes all the elements (since there is no cut in the film, I had to place everyone into a single space and calculate who would sit where and at what distance, so that everyone would enter into the picture at the right time, and then everything would be in place in the long shot, and the camera would be able to move smoothly as well. At that time we did not add the camera shifts to the film, in order to slow down the program as little as possible.

Gyopár then created the character animations and the small movements, adding the singing mouths correlated with the rhythm of the music. In the end, the project came back to me again, and the virtual camera and the lights were included in the composition (these also had to be played with so they would always focus on the character the song is about and not to kill the next joke). Finally, the sound design was completed, which brought the animation to life. After some technical difficulties (, here, we would like to express our thanks to Attila Bertóti for his feedback), we finally managed to export the last version.

We hope you will enjoy out creation 🙂

The staff:

Text: Zsolt Attila Papp

Song: Tamás-Tibor Zágoni, Tamás Kún, Zsolt Kis Gellért, Sámuel Sógor, Dávid Nagy

Conductor: Katalin Adorjáni

Recording: József Lénárd “Yogi”

Animation: Zoom Studio (Gyopár Buzási, Réka Kassay, Judith Vicsi)

Sound design, orchestration: József Iszlai

Kassay Réka