Goutte d’Or

"As a pirate enters the Kingdom of the Dead he encounters its beautiful Queen."

Age: 13+

Goutte d’Or is a short film directed by French artist Christophe Peladan that features an unusual love story between a dead pirate and a beautiful queen. The film was produced with the support of Danish school The Animation Workshop.

Three main characters, an external conflict and an unlikely courtship are the main elements of this short film.

Goutte d’Or features impressive environment work and great character design. Framing and composition of elements is a pleasure to watch, with abundant interplay between foreground and background elements. Color and lighting are used for expressive effect, and the short places a strong emphasis on music, musical instruments and musicians. The love story itself is weaved through music.

Comedy plays a central role, too, and staging is used in this case very effectively. Characters are placed in unusual situations, creating comedic effects. Facial and body gestures are very expressive, which helps contribute to this end, too.

The story is shot mostly from the POV of the pirate, alternating sometimes with the POV of the queen. The musicians playing provide convenient cutaway shots for editing. Close-ups are used to accentuate the expressions of the characters and in some cases to conceal parts of the image and reveal through time. There’s abundant use of camera moves.

The animation technique is worth noting. Stop motion is used, shot against green screen, which means Goutte d’Or has gone through extensive compositing and postproduction work to bring it to its final state. Suffice to say the whole production work took 7 years to complete.

The use of nudity and sensuality is also worth mentioning, it’s something that shows up often in films coming from France and is a healthy expression of its culture. It is surprisingly much less frequent in films from some other cultures.

gouttedor.com


Christophe Peladan interview (French)


Exfools studio on the film's postproduction (French)


Making of material

Comments

(*) are required fields