Cinema fans know husband-and-wife filmmaking team Jared and Jerusha Hess for their popular live-action comedies such as Napoleon Dynamite and Nacho Libre. But this year, the duo is making waves in the animation scene with their new short, which pays a a heartfelt tribute to the five senses, delivered by a death row inmate with limited time to enjoy life. We recently had the chance to interview the Hesses about their beautifully crafted short, Ninety-Five Senses, which is qualified to be considered for the animated Oscar race:
Animag: Can you tell us how you found the inspiration for your short? How did the project come to be?
Jared and Jerusha Hess: Ninety-Five Senses is the life reflection of a man whose time has run out. He’s reviewing the highs and lows of everything he’s experienced through his five senses. So it starts out as a series of sensory memories, then takes a surprising turn.
The project actually began as a contest. We live in Salt Lake City, and we’re pretty involved in the local filmmaking scene. One organization we’ve worked with is MAST, it’s a nonprofit program of the Salt Lake Film Society that nurtures up-and-coming animators. MAST asked us to help with an international animation competition called “Voices Seen,” where the winning artists would all contribute to a single short film. We chose six animators (or animation teams, in some cases) from a huge number of submissions. Then we brought in our screenwriter friends, Chris Bowman and Hubbel Palmer, to come up with a script that would highlight these six different animators.
Chris and Hubbel kept coming back to these videos they’d been watching as research for another project. A series called “Execution Watch” made by prison-reform activists. Long interviews with death-row inmates in the Texas state penitentiary. Each prisoner was given time to talk about whatever was on their mind — sometimes the day right before their lethal injection. So the concept became: What if it’s a condemned man bidding farewell to each of his five senses?
Did you always know it was going to be an animated piece?
Yes, absolutely. The script was conceived to be animated from the very start. It’s the kind of story that can only be served through animation. As our main character reminisces, we show his past, present and future. We needed a variety of different animation styles to convey his different senses and emotions.
How long did it take to make and how many people worked on it?
From the time that Miles David Romney and Tori A. Baker – the MAST founders – reached out to us, till the day the short debuted at its first festival… it was almost three full years. The pandemic had a lot to do with that timeline. All together, about 35 people worked on the film. That’s counting producers, sound engineers, everyone. And about a dozen of those were animators.
Where was the animation produced and which tools were used?
Everyone worked remotely — because of COVID, but also because of the nature of the project. It was a long-distance, multinational collaboration, so it was always going to involve Zoom calls, e-mails, file-sharing.
Daniel Bruson is based in Brazil. He’s responsible for all of the “Coy” character monologues. He did the line animation in Animate, then added shading and texture in Photoshop and composited and color-graded in After Effects. For the final sequence, where Coy considers the fate of his soul, Daniel actually printed and hand-painted each frame with ink on white paper. Then he photographed those painted sheets back to digital. Super painstaking process, but he wanted those brushstrokes to feel really alive and expressive – especially when the flames consume the garage.
Dominica Harrison (“Sight”), who’s from Moscow but lives and works in the UK, uses screen-printing and risograph techniques in her work, which give it that distinctive texture. Scott McHenry assisted on those segments.
Dallin Penman and Jared Mathews animated “Smell.” They’re based in Utah. They wanted to take an old-school approach, so they drew every frame from scratch on digital tablets. Toon Boom Harmony was their go-to software. Dallin and Jared’s sequence ends with young Coy being scolded by his grandma. As she yells, this darkness collapses in on him and scribbles him out. To achieve that effect, they photographed actual charcoal marks on paper. They just couldn’t get the same grit from digital images.
Michael Grover animated “Hearing,” and he chose to basically plunge the viewer into Coy’s ear canal and travel back to his childhood. He says he was inspired by zoomquilt.org. It’s this animated piece, if you haven’t seen it, that just keeps infinitely zooming through a painting.
KC Tobey is another Utah-based, 2D animator. He had a lot of fun with “Taste.” It’s probably the most playful chapter, and it has to be – it’s our reset button after some pretty heavy stuff.
Gabriela Badillo works in Mexico with an incredibly gifted team at her Hola Combo studio: Adriana Arvizu, Tamara Cruz, Melissa Lopez, Cristina Lugo, Ruben Morales, Enrique Sañudo. For the “Touch” segment, they really emphasized fluidity. Gabriela set out to use the fewest number of objects possible to tell the story, each one morphing into the next. That minimalism somehow makes it even more impactful.
What did you love about the experience?
Working with our group of international animators has been totally inspiring. They are some of the most talented and dedicated artists we know. We’re thrilled with the attention their work is receiving at festivals. They were given broad freedom in how they wanted to visually depict their sequences. Six totally unique interpretations of the script.
Collaborating with Tim Blake Nelson was amazing. He voices the main character, Coy, which is actually the only voice we hear in the film. Tim is phenomenally talented, deeply insightful and has a huge heart. He’s been very supportive of the short from the beginning. He joined us a few days ago to attend a screening hosted by Phil Lord and Chris Miller. During the Q&A Phil said something to Tim like, “Your performance really helps the audience. No matter how awful the things are you’re discussing, something about the quality of your voice tells us everything is going to be okay.” And we completely agree.
Our festival experience has been wild. Ninety-Five Senses has screened all over the world. We had no idea what to expect coming into the project, with some of our animators being right out of film school. We wanted to created something that showcased their amazing talents. But we never anticipated the success and emotional response it’s received at festivals. The project was funded by a small nonprofit organization in Utah that depends on local donors and volunteers. We’ve had to call in favors and hold fundraisers just to cover the cost of submitting to festivals. So to be mentioned now in the same company as these huge Oscar contenders made by major studios is not what anyone expected.
What were your biggest challenges?
It was very difficult managing six teams of animators on three different continents during a global pandemic.
A lot of that was just logistical. As far as creative challenges, there are a couple places in the film — one big one and a few subtler ones — where we shift from comedy to tragedy, or vice versa, and we knew that the change in tone might be jarring. We were worried that viewers might not follow us, but they do. (There’s one moment in the film where you can just feel everyone around you thinking, “Oooooooh, should I have just laughed at that?”)
A big part of why it works is John Hancock’s lovely score. He’s another good friend and frequent collaborator. John’s music conveys the gravity of Coy’s actions, but in the next scene gives us permission to feel hopeful again. It really carries the audience through the piece.
Did you draw on specific influences for the short?
The script really set the tone for everything, so we threw this question to the screenwriters, Chris Bowman and Hubbel Palmer. Here’s what they said:
“We remember back in college watching Frédéric Back’s adaptation of The Man Who Planted Trees. That always stuck with us as an example of how profound an animated short could be. Richard Linklater’s Waking Life was something we referenced, in terms of accommodating multiple animation styles. Carson Mell’s ‘Bobby Bird’ animations were probably rattling around in our brains too. It’s a lot edgier than what we’re going for here, but we always loved those twangy, rambling monologues.
And there were a lot of other influences on the story structure. Everything from the sad twist in Ambrose Bierce’s ‘Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge’ to the awesome comic-book story ‘How to Draw a Horse’ by Emma Hunsinger, published in The New Yorker a few years back. The idea of a simple lecture revealing painful personal secrets.”
What do you hope audiences will take away from the short?
In our experience, viewers walk away inspired but also slightly unsettled about Coy’s fate. We hope it raises questions about the death penalty. Why are we still practicing eye-for-an-eye justice in the 21st century? Is it ever justified? The short has also sparked conversations at screenings about disability, and specifically the role it plays in wrongful incarceration.
Most of the films we’ve made are about outcasts. And Coy is an extreme version — someone who was literally removed from society. And viewers can debate whether he deserves to be cast out, given his mistakes.
Our hope is that in some small way the film helps people enjoy the present, look back on their past with maximum forgiveness, and have a sense of serenity as they await the future.
You can watch the trailer below:
For more info, visit maststudio.org
