Oct 25, 2024

Why the animator's dismembered fingertips appeared in Adam Elliott's “Memoir Of A Snail”

Adam Elliott's new stop-motion drama “Snail Memory” will open in Los Angeles (AMC Century City, AMC Burbank) and New York (AMC Lincoln Square, IFC Center.) ahead of an expanded November release by IFC Films, Brooklyn Alamo Drafthouse) in limited release beginning today.

The film debuted at the Annecy Film Festival, where it won the Crystal Award, the top prize in the feature film category.

Elliott's new film tells the story of Grace Pudel, a lonely delinquent whose hobby is collecting ornamental snails. Her life changes when she meets an eccentric old woman named Pinky, full of spirit and a desire to live.

Cartoon Brew spoke with Elliott shortly after the film's premiere in Annecy. The audience celebrated the Australian director's return to feature filmmaking. Elliott shared some fun details about the production that will change the way you view the film.

Grace Pudell's story is a creation, but Elliott drew heavily on his own friends and family to create this tale of hardship and estranged twins, especially in the protagonist's obsession with hoarding. Says Elliott:

My parents, though they would never admit it, were hoarders. Then eight years ago my father died and they had to get rid of everything he had collected. Why do they do it and why is it so hard to get rid of stuff: ...... I have read many books on the subject and have learned that many hoarders have had many traumas in their lives.

It is said that to give a believable performance, an animator must pour a part of himself into the character on screen, but what happened during the making of “Snail Memory” pushed that concept to a new level, as Elliott explains:

One of the animators on the film was my second cousin Donna [Eatman]. She wasn't as experienced as the others, but she was a very good animator and made some great shots in the film. She was a little clumsy though. She was always stabbing and cutting herself, and one day she cut off the top of her finger and it bounced off her workbench and she couldn't find it. A week later, while cleaning out her studio, she found the splinter, but it was too late to sew it back on. So I put it in a little jar. That has appeared on the screen many times, and there are small fragments of the human body in the film.

Because of the small budget, production of “Snail Memory” was very fast-paced, with a 32-week shooting schedule. He says, “Each animator had to do roughly 10 seconds a day, which was a lot of pressure.”

According to Elliott, the stop-motion community in Australia is also quite small. Most stop-motion animators shoot in their bedrooms, and there are no big studios. In Australia, only three stop-motion feature films have been made so far, and I've made two of them. I sometimes feel like an albino, which is rare in my country.”

Elliott understands that many artists want to leave the country, but he believes it is important to continue to build a stop-motion community in Australia, especially by allowing artists to tell more personal stories. It is very admirable that many of them want to work for Aardman or Pixar. Many of my students have gone to New Zealand, Oregon, and Ireland, and it is part of my job to bring them back. Now that I am in my fifties, I am more aware of the younger generation and how much nurturing and care they need to blossom as artists. It is more difficult to follow the path of independence, but it also allows for more creative control and creative freedom.