By Laura Carter – 30th April 2018
Paloma Baeza’s Poles Apart, released on 28 June 2017 in the UK at the Edinburgh Film Festival, is an imaginative story of an unlikely friendship between a grizzly and polar bear in the Arctic. It was inspired after the filmmaker read a surprising article about how grizzly bears were now breeding with polar bears due to the melting ice caps forcing them out of the woods and then them becoming stranded on the ice.
On February 18 2018, Poles Apart won the BAFTA award for the best short animated film. This is Baeza’s first animated film and although she is originally from Mexico, she is a British actress and director and has starred in the popular TV series A Touch of Frost, Waking the Dead and also the film Sunburn 2007. She has also directed two films – Watchmen in 2001 and The Window in 2006.
Baeza admires the work of Wes Anderson, especially Fantastic Mr Fox, as she liked the look of the furry puppets and this inspired her to create a stop-motion animated film. She was influenced by reading an article about the animal’s struggle and becoming extinct because of global warming.
Baeza only wanted two characters for the film; two bears that can talk. We are introduced to Nanuk, an arctic bear, voiced by Helena Bonham Carter, who is a very tough character and takes to her environment seriously as she is desperate for food. Aklak, the Grizzly, voiced by Joseph May, brings the humour to the film with his little bobble hat and a backpack full of camping equipment. His charming personality warms our hearts and lets us see the funnier side of the bleak situation these bears find themselves in.
Baeza contacted Mackinnon and Saunders who are animation producers and the world’s best puppet makers and asked for their help and advice. She showed them an animatic of her idea and they agreed to make the puppets. Baeza sculpted a rough version of the two bears which were re-sculpted to make changes for their final design.
It was a challenge to animate the stop-motion puppets as when they are touched, in order to given them movement, the fur would be displaced and sometimes finger-marks could be seen. The sets are designed by Paula Gimenez and her designs are breath-taking and beautiful. The audience is given an immersive perspective on the harsh Arctic landscape, so effective that one might feel the biting cold and shiver!
The landscape was given a realism by using a blue screen background. After effects were added to show the harsh weathering effect of the wind and snow against the characters and to help the stop motion look smoother. The big challenge for the team was getting the scale right because they were in such a tiny studio they had to try and get a sense of scale in a small space by putting tiny mountains in the background and big objects in the foreground, to show how epic the location is.
The communication between the two characters is well written and brings out a sense of humour which was unexpected given that the storyline and message of the film are serious and at times portrays what is in reality, a bleak situation. In one scene where Aklak tried to set the tent up and you can see on the painted snowy rocks bits of cotton wall blowing of the rocks and they kept it with the special effects to show how you can use home materials to create a realistic effect.
This film is current because it addresses the global warming and environmental changes and how this affects bears in the artic and grizzly bears in Alaska and northern Canada, forcing them to change their habitats. They now travel north to the Arctic tundra were two species of bear are breeding and producing hybrids known as “Grolar Bears” and “Pizzly Bear”.
This film is recommended for any age group.
References:
Laura Beth Cowley (2018) Interview: Paloma Baeza and Ser En Low discuss the BAFTA- winning ‘Poles Apart’. Available from http://www.skwigly.co.uk/poles-apart/ Accessed 12th January 2018.
Amber Wilkinson (2017) Poles Apart. Available from https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/poles-apart-2017-film-review-by-amber-wilkinson/ Accessed 09th July 2017.
Courtney Bennett (2018) Short Film Review – Poles Apart. Available from http://thepeoplesmovies.com/2018/01/short-film-review-poles-apart/ Accessed January 17th 2018.
Oliver Milman (2016) Pizzly or grolar bear: grizzly- polar hybrid is a new result of climate change. Available from https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/may/18/pizzly-grolar-bear-grizzly-polar-hybrid-climate-change Accessed18th May 2016.
WWF (2017) Threat to polar bears. Available from http://wwf.panda.org/what_we_do/where_we_work/arctic/wildlife/polar_bear/threats/
Accessed in 2017.
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