Directors Daniel Ojari & Michael Please On Their Stop-Motion Marvel ‘Robin Robin’

Robin Robin feels like a landmark animation entry for Netflix. The Best Animated Short nominee tells the charming tale of a bird who is desperate to prove herself to her family of mice, and it is an important lesson of loving one another’s differences. With voice work from Richard E. Grant and Gillian Anderson rounding out the cast, Robin Robin is a winning fable of acceptance and perseverance.

Directors Daniel Ojari and Michael Please have created a gorgeous film. Robin Robin opens by plunging us into the world of forest creatures, and they instantly know how to give the audience the perspective of its characters. We are witnessing the world just below our feet or over our heads, and the richness and textures of their film would be a fantastic win for the category.

Awards Daily: I love stop-motion animation so much. Why was this medium the best way to tell Robin Robin?

Daniel Ojari: From early on, we kind of fell in love with the magic trick that is stop-motion. All animation is a form of illusion really, but there is something tangible that trick of the eye is. You can see how something is made and you might think that you could do something similar, because you understand how that it is made. On the other hand, it’s living and breathing and being filmed in a cinematic way. Those two tangible things are happening at one. It’s a hand-made thing, and you could feel like you could feel it. The more life and naturalistic performance you put into the puppets, the more real the magic feels. With the needle felt, it’s hard to cheat that material in any other form. You could do it in CG, but the way the needle felt feels real.

AD: That’s something that I like about this form of animation. I feel like I can see the fingerprints of the artists maneuvering the puppets to animate it.

Michael Please: That’s a lovely way of putting it. It’s another aspect of things we enjoy. What clarified for me a little bit is the empathetic link between the maker and the viewer. Thinking about implanting the idea of creating something from watching our film is such a wonderful gift to give to somebody. We don’t feel that in everyday life. We are surrounded by unintelligible things like iPhones and skyscrapers, but there is a humbleness in how these are constructed while retaining a complexity and beauty. It’s a strong grounding. A strong, human level to bring things down to.

DO: The reason for the needle felt is because we have these Christmas decorations. Some are so simple–with beads for eyes–and they are so endearing. They kind of feel like they are alive. They might have a soul even though it’s just a piece of material. You imbue it with more meaning and more empathy. Using needle felt is really challenging. It’s difficult to control, and it doesn’t really stretch. In stop-motion, you want things that can hold its shape and form, but needle felt is not stretchy. Every time you touch it, it will boil a little or move. We didn’t want the characters to constantly moving. What is a great way to start a project is following something that you think is going to be great and almost ignoring the major problems that are clear. You have to work within the limitations, and you end up with something unique because of it.

MP: That attitude is a great surmising of Robin’s personality. She thinks there are some difficult things, but she will figure out along the way.

AD: You animators don’t make it easy on yourselves, do you? I am always so impressed with how artists in animation will have to go with the flow to create something great, and a lot of animators are not bogged down by some intimidating elements.

Daniel: There is something about the entire process of animation that is very labor intensive. If you take a step back, you realize that it’s insane. As Mikey was saying, there is a naive optimism. It drives you, and that’s across the board in the animation industry. In order to exist in it, you have to have this enthusiasm.

Michael: A nice example of that optimism is the title. I was talking to one of the animators who we charged with carving every single twig. We sculpted the title and then it’s filmed in reverse being sanded and repainted so it feels like it’s growing. As he was animating it, another animator came in and said, ‘Oh, what an arduous task. At least you only have to carve Robin once and then we can double it up, right?’ And the animator said, ‘Have you guys met Mikey and Dan?’

AD: I love how the opening scene establishes this world within a world. There are a lot of gorgeous blues and greens in that sequence. What do you think is the most difficult part about creating a world that “we don’t see.” Maybe because we are lower to the ground, we don’t have that perspective.

Daniel: We liked telling the story from Robin’s perspective but setting it in someone’s back garden. The most exciting thing is putting up the Christmas tree when we would think it’s no big deal. We can just grab it. That starting point of a tiny character in a big world is intrinsically very cool, because it’s just normal, every day activities. We are so familiar with it. A kitchen is just a kitchen, but for them it’s a huge obstacle course and challenge. Early on, we liked how the humans were just a backdrop that we didn’t get to know. There is a disparity between wildlife and us living our lives that we loved.

AD: It honestly reminded me of the magic of, say, Toy Story? Robin Robin takes us into a world that we see every day, but we don’t have the perspective for it.

DO: That’s the nicest thing anyone has ever said.

AD: I obviously don’t want to compare.

DO: I think you said, ‘It’s as good as–if not better–than Toy Story...’ (laughs)

MP: That’s what I heard too.

DO: It was very much treating the camera on their eye-level. We thought they could have a camera crew at that size.

AD: A little mouse camera crew would be cool. I love how you guys wrote the lyrics to the songs too. I was delighted when I found out that there were also musical numbers.

DO: After you make a musical, you start to wonder why all films aren’t musicals. If you’re going to make the trouble of making a film, you may as well add some music.

MP: Why have cotton when you can have silk. It’s already a pain, you may as well go the whole hog and give the people what they want.

AD: Exactly.

MP: It’s an amazing genre to get to play in. Dan and I have written songs and poems into our stories and the scripts can be lyrical. We like that love of language, but we have never taken it to this level before. The idea of it being a musical was there early on, but it became more deeply enriched into the story as we got to know the story better. The relevance of the music because deeper as we understood Robin’s character more and realized the conflicts between her family of mice. The singing would be part of her core, loud, exuberance, and that felt perfect as opposed to her being just annoying.

DO: Christmas is also, culturally, the one time of year when people sing together. It becomes a legitimate backdrop.

AD: I love how the family has a current of found family. How did you want to build that into the script?

DO: The idea truly came from the idea of what if an egg fell out of a nest and ended up with a family of mice. It’s quite intriguing opening situation to a story. Partially why that drew us so much is because it comes with a message in it. If a character is growing up amongst a family and they are completely different, and they think they are fitting in, there is a knee-jerk reaction that we should all be the same. That’s how people fit in. People do it every day, I think. There is the timeless message of being yourself, because people will love you more for that.

AD: We get stories about being yourself so often that it is sad to think of how much we need them.

DO: There is a constant conflict of wanting to be part of something but also wanting to be an individual. Thankfully, the more the mindset changes, it allows you to be yourself and still be part of something. Robin’s story is very much that, but the wider story is our differences make us stronger. We even weave that in with the colors. Our production designer, Matt Forsythe, will make a red out of greens, browns, and reds, and the hue is very strong. We tried pushing that throughout the whole film. Every color is made up from many things.

MP: The same with the music too.

DO: Yes. You can infuse that message into the music as well. In the opening scene, Robin’s melody and the sneak melody clash, and they create problems. It’s her journey in how she finds out how her melody fits in the world. That melody can fit in with the mice melody to help steal crumbs.

MP: If you really, really get to the core of it, it’s all about being a better thief.

Robin Robin is streaming now on Netflix.