‘The Brown Dog’ Directors Take Us Along the Creative Journey of Their Award-Winning Short

A despondent night watchman named Nobody goes in search of a mysterious dog in the evocative short The Brown Dog, co-directed by Nadia Hallgren and Jamie-James Medina. The short, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this year, has qualified for the Academy Awards by winning the Grand Prize at the Indy Shorts International Film Festival in Indianapolis. The short, which features a haunting voice-over by the late Michael K. Williams, is produced by Steven Buscemi. Hallgren, Medina and Fons Schiedon (design and animation) answered a few of our questions about this powerful 2D-animated short:

 

Animation Magazine: Can you tell us a bit about the history and source of inspiration for the short?

Jamie-James Medina: The Brown Dog was written as a short story by W.E. Beal, a writer and musician from Chicago, Illinois. On paper, the story is told through a series of security logs — shift by shift, hour by hour, Beal details his work as a night watchman during a particularly brutal winter. Cold and alone, Beal’s protagonist (who signs each log as “NOBODY”) dreams of a better life — a freer, more fanciful life that he imagines is led by a brown dog that haunts the perimeter of his beat.

Beal distributed the story himself at local libraries, independent cinemas and bookstores and this is how I first encountered The Brown Dog — as a xeroxed pamphlet, hiding in the philosophy section of Chicago’s Myopic Books. Shift work is hard work, but Beal wrote so beautifully about those dark winter nights, I couldn’t stop thinking about NOBODY and the brown dog. From there, I produced The Brown Dog as a radio drama, adapting the original text and casting Michael K. Williams as the lonely night watchman. Those recordings became the basis for our short film.

Nadia Hallgren: I am a documentary filmmaker and my work is connected to the natural world and how we, as people, fit into it. Animation was not our natural medium. But Mr. Williams had given us such a moving and interesting vocal performance in the radio drama, I could see NOBODY as an on-screen character. Michael K. Williams is best-known for his portrayal of Omar Little, the shotgun-wielding stickup man in The Wire. When he passed away in 2021, animation became the natural way forward.

 

 

How did the team come together?

Nadia: To tell this story, we put together a brilliant team of collaborators: Tyshawn Sorey, the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, scored the film; Spencer Campbell edited the film, carving the narrative out of Mr. Williams’ dialog; and Fons Schiedon built the entirety of what you see on screen. We could not have made this film without those core collaborators, with whom we had all worked together on previous projects — on short films, music videos, commercials, etc.

 

How long did it take to make and which animation tools were used?

Fons Schiedon: The actual production took about a year. Some designs were made in an early development stage, but most of the look was achieved within the viewport inside Blender, which meant it didn’t need much, if any, compositing. This simplified the workflow significantly. The scenes were then conformed in Davinci Resolve, where a little more grit was added, as well as color tweaks made. The character animation is a mix of performance capture and keyframe animation. I acted the scenes out wearing a Rokoko suit to get a basis for character performance. That movement was then stylized and simplified. Most other elements, such as the brown dog or a plastic bag are keyframe animated. Textures, posters, logbook pages were painted or drawn in Clip Studio Paint.

 

 

Now that the short has received a lot of acclaimed on the festival circuit, what are you proudest of?

Nadia: The Brown Dog presents an emotional combination of firsts and lasts — our first work of fiction and the last featured performance from Mr. Williams. The Brown Dog illustrates the desperation of living on the margins in an increasingly hostile America — a point made even more prescient with the passing of Mr. Williams. To do all of that using animation is something I’m incredibly proud of.

 

What were the biggest challenges during the making of this short?

Jamie-James: Obviously, making the film without Mr. Williams was a challenge. During the edit, there were limits to where we could take his character. But listening back to the performance we captured, the real challenge was getting the visuals to match the depth and humanity that he brought to his character. I believe we rose to that challenge and I am proud of that.

 

Tell us about Williams’ and Buscemi’s involvement please.

Jamie-James: Mr. Williams was the first person to join the project — we built this film around his voice. Steve Buscemi came on last. Mr. Buscemi’s character — The Host — was not in the original text, but the Nobody character felt so alone and so insular, we added a small transistor radio and the new voice became his companion during these night shifts. Obviously, Mr. Williams and Mr. Buscemi starred together in Boardwalk Empire. We approached Mr. Buscemi in the hopes that he would be keen to act alongside his friend again — and he was.

 

 

What about this story made it a good fit for animation?

Fons: The Brown Dog works as an animated film because Nobody’s imagination takes him to abstract places that are not quite real, not quite fake. The film is trying to have an abstract relation to realism. Does the brown dog really exist? But the main character spends most of his time idling or just observing the world, which might feel more native to live action cinema or documentary, or even graphic novels. In that case, the film draws from Matz and Luc Jacamon’s The Killer and Paul Schrader’s Man in a Room trilogy, which all use waiting as a form of suffering.

 

Can you talk about the visual style of the short?

Jamie-James: So much of the look and feel of this film was written into the script: Chicago, winter, nighttime, Nobody sitting in his security booth, alone in his head, alone in the world. We start by hearing his thoughts in Mr. Williams’ unmistakable cadence. And then we watch as he slowly comes undone. In one such encounter, Nobody conjures a conversation with a cardboard Calendar Girl, only to be rejected when he realizes the calendar is out of date. We needed a visual style that illustrated the character’s growing despair and drew from classic noir films — a gritty world of shadows and contrast. That’s how we landed on the saturated yellows and dead-of-night blacks and hand-drawn characters.

 

What do you hope audiences take away from the short?

Jamie-James: At its core, The Brown Dog is about loneliness. As we share the film with the world, we hope that it serves not just as a celebration of Mr. Williams, but as a reminder to us all about the importance of human connection. That might be a tall order for a short animated film, but we know this medium is limitless and that’s why we make this stuff.

 

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Learn more at thebrown.dog. 

You can watch the short below: