Alex Abreu: If I have a blank piece of paper and I draw a red figure,...

I have the feeling that I didn't make it by myself, but that I was conducted by feelings that were completely different from those in my previous work. When I start making a film I don't know what I'm doing.

Alex Abreu

film different feelings

We discovered this halfway through the process. When we started making the film there were some lines of dialogue in Portuguese, but we then changed our minds. The film started from very specific issues in the world, in particular Latin America, but halfway through the journey we felt the necessity to have more universal ideas that were not so specific.

Alex Abreu

journey latin america

The entire time I was following the feelings experienced by children, so the feeling of not understanding what adults say was very important to put the audience in this frequency to understand the world through his eyes.

Alex Abreu

understanding eye children

I feel that joy is the basic emotion of life and of human beings. It's what supports everything. We are here to be happy. We are to enjoy "alegria."

Alex Abreu

support emotion joy

"Airgela" is "Alegria" backwards and "Alegria" means "Joy" or "Happiness." This is a fundamental word in this film. It's very important. Symbolically "Alegria" is crucial word in the creation of this project. Although it wasn't present from the beginning, as we were working on the music it became symbolic.

Alex Abreu

important joy mean

Is as if the music is another character or as if it was a part of this great opera. I also through about this project as a structure or as a sculpture made out of colors, rhythm, characters, and brush strokes, but with every single one of these always supporting one another.

Alex Abreu

sculpture color character

We thought that using rap would draw a parallel with the protest music from the 60s and 70s that we found through the research for animadoc. When we thought about rap, Emicida immediately came to mind and we decided to call him to create this song bring the audience back to earth and put their feet on the ground. Emicida's song is the only one that has lyrics in actual understandable Portuguese.

Alex Abreu

rap feet song

That was a very natural process because as I was creating the animatic I added music clips as reference of the kind of music I wanted in the film. These were from musicians like Naná Vasconcelos and Barbatuques, the body percussion group.

Alex Abreu

creating groups musician

I always told my team, "You have to believe that you are not in front of a computer, but that your canvas is a piece of paper. You have to believe this even if you have a computer in front of you."

Alex Abreu

pieces team believe

I draw things on the paper very freely but believing there is meaning to them already. There is already meaning in the colors, I don't need to be guided by words. I draw them and the meaning comes after. Every time we would start a new sequence we would change everything.

Alex Abreu

color believe needs

From what type of software could help us make a movie faster to everything else regarding the textures. Some might think, "It's probably very easy to make a film with those textures," but it's much more difficult than what it appears to be. We had to discover a faster process because otherwise it could have taken us 10 years to make it.

Alex Abreu

taken years thinking

It's a film made in a very radical creative manner. It was possible because we didn't have to pander to capitalism. I think the film is also a humanistic cry for help for animation. It's a film [Boy and the World] with sensitivities completely opposite to what the market wants to sell.

Alex Abreu

opposites boys thinking

The film [Boy and the World]gave me the possibility to create a new language. Animation is a very rich medium but hasn't fully been exploited by artists. Often artists are trapped by words.

Alex Abreu

artist boys world

Films are born from screenplays and they are guided by words. They are born very limited and there is no space for real creation: graphic creation, pictorial creation, or audiovisual creation. If we really want to use the art of animation with all its strength, we have to rethink the processes by which it's made because the medium is the message.

Alex Abreu

space real art

The way a film is made tells you about its message. The processes are the same as the products. We made the film starting from processes that allowed us to find these complex ideas.

Alex Abreu

messages way ideas

Director and producers have to take all the risks they can. We developed this film with the possibility to create departing from a blank page and to discover things as the process went along and as we understood the things that at first we couldn't understand in words.

Alex Abreu

risk directors firsts

Each film has its processes. It doesn't mean that all animated films have to be like "Boy and the World," but creators have to have total freedom. There are films that are born with the purpose to sell. They are still admirable films with great artists and great visuals, but we wanted to use a more radical approach to create art. That's what we tried to do.

Alex Abreu

boys mean art

During the entire process of making this film I never thought about whom I was making it for. I always thought that the film was for me, but I didn't think of any of that. I just did what I thought I had to do. I didn't think, "This is what children are going to think" or "This is what adults will understand."

Alex Abreu

adults children thinking

At the end of the process we called a market research company to find out whom the film was for or what was the target audience. We didn't have a lot of money to release the film, so in order for it to play in cinemas, which are dominated by films with much larger marketing budgets, we had to discover whom the film was for.

Alex Abreu

target-audience play order

On another level this film talks about that. We had tremendous freedom while making this film. We never thought about marketing. It wasn't a film made to sell merchandise or products or to reach millions of people around the world. It was a film made to say what I really felt.

Alex Abreu

marketing people world

If I have a blank piece of paper and I draw a red figure, immediately this brings sounds and shapes to my mind. I tried to make a film in which every component supports the others while giving each other space and stimulating the creation of what's yet to come.