Oct 31, 2024

Oscar nominees for 2025:-Quota director Jobs Roggeveen, Joris Oprins, and Marieke Blaauw

Welcome to the spotlight series of Cartoon Brew, which focuses on the 2025 Academy Award-nominated animated shorts. Films in this series have been certified on one of several routes, including winning an Oscar at a film festival, exhibiting in a theater or winning a Student Academy Award.

Today's film is a quota from the Dutch trio Job Roggeveen, Joris Oprins and Marieke Blaauw. The film has qualified through a theatrical exhibition, premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF) and won an honorable mention for its best international short film.

The previously Oscar-nominated trio (Single Life), known professionally as Job, Joris & Marieke, are working on the climate crisis and the global footprint of humanity in their latest short stories. Quota offers a cynical and gritty take on our highly connected society through a funny two-minute story-and one about our deteriorating environment

Cartoon Brewing: With a big dose of black humor, you're portraying a society where the climate crisis is a joke. As a filmmaker, how does this relate to your own professional views and career, and what does it mean to be a climate-conscious filmmaker today?-

Job, Joris, Marieke: We are very concerned about the climate crisis. But we do not talk strongly about it on a personal level. When someone tells us about their umpteenth flight for the holidays, we just nod politely. We are afraid of creating awkward or unpleasant situations by giving our opinions. But when it comes to our work, we feel we can be more frank. Quotas give us the opportunity to express clearly and loudly what we really think about humanity's role in the climate crisis.

We weren't there when the quota premiered at TIFF. We haven't flown to the festival for years, and we attend festivals that are within the distance of the train. This often means that we must refuse festival invitations that are not always appreciated. And because the festival relies on the presence of filmmakers, we understand that for filmmakers, those trips are important to meet other filmmakers and get inspiration. For us, going to TIFF was great for our network. So not attending our own premiere at TIFF was quite a sacrifice.

So we were very happy when the quota won honorable mention and the jury stated,"We also applaud filmmakers for practicing what they preach by choosing not to attend this year's festival as a way to limit their carbon emissions and stay within their"quota." It will be."Now we're excited that this film has Oscar credentials. But if you are nominated, you will not fly to Los Angeles to attend the awards ceremony. It makes the pill even harder to swallow for us, but we believe it is an important statement. We love our work and it means a lot to us, but we feel the climate crisis is more important.

What was forced to connect with you and direct a film about this story or concept-

All 3 of us are very concerned about the climate crisis. We try to do the best – we don't own cars, we don't eat meat, we don't fly, and you can find us at the XR (Extinction Rebellion) protest. For some time now, we were looking for a way to incorporate our views on this subject into the film. But we were afraid that it would only lead to a preacher film, and we really hate it.

But one day we were talking about carbon footprint and how there is a way to calculate your own CO2 emissions and we discussed how it would be fair if everyone got a specified CO2 quota. And we took it a step further: what happens if everyone gets a fixed percentage of CO2- and what happens when you exceed your quota The part of what happens if your percentage goes to zero has particularly stimulated our imagination. We came up with a cruel and funny result: when you are at zero, you explode. This turned the idea around, this is not a sermons boring movie, but a hilarious gory movie. Quota is an interesting movie, but it also holds a mirror to your own actions. Make you laugh only to understand that the joke is on you.

What did you learn about the production side, the filmmaking side, the creative side, or the subject through the experience of making this film-

The film was produced as part of the Ultrakort [Ultra Short] program, an annual project by the Dutch Film Foundation.The program has been chosen by various filmmakers to create a 2-and-a-half minute short film. The short film will be screened before the film in cinemas in Vue and NFO [Netherlands]. We also made Single Life (nominated for an Oscar) and Double Life (nominated for a Dutch Academy Award) through the same Ultrakort program.

We love the Ultrakort program because it forces you to tell your story in a very compact way. The quota was great for this format, but keeping it just 2 and a half minutes was the main challenge. We had a lot of shots and each had to be incredibly short. We were literally cutting a frame from 1 shot to add a few frames to another shot that we felt was too short.

Another challenge was the story. We needed to show it to people who are emitting CO2. And we had to find the right example. The CO2 emissions situation needed to be accurate and recognizable, but it was also interesting. And the situation had to be understandable, even for those less familiar with the impact on the climate crisis. We struggled a bit with it. For example, importing foreign fruits emits a lot of CO2, but if you can only show a character eating avocado, the message may not come out clearly. We also had to decide when a "crime" occurred, at what point someone would lose their share of CO2, when they buy meat, when they eat, and when the CO2 quota would shrink when the animal was killed.These discussions were really interesting.I got help from NGOs with expertise in this area.

Can you explain how you developed a visual approach to cinema - why did you settle for this style/technique-

We are a cg studio with a stop-motion background, so it was natural to make quotas with cg. But we wanted to take a different approach to the visual style, aiming for a more graphic look. We liked this aesthetic because it made everything clean and easy to follow, which was important given the fast pace of the film.

Finally, we created a very flat style of 3d, something like 2.5D. We designed the sets as if they were theater sets, very flat and two-dimensional, with only front shots. And all the actions are done in the center of the frame.

It was so much fun to design these flat characters. They had to scream a lot, so giving them a big mouth was an important feature. We also wanted to represent a diverse cast, so we modularized the Lego-like character design, allowing you to easily swap hair, clothes, and animation.The characters are composed in a simple form and have no neck. It was very important not to have a neck, because I thought the character's head would look more interesting at the moment it exploded. The animation in this flat world was equally fun. We had to focus on creating a strong silhouette and avoid poses where the character's hands are in front of the body. In addition, they can only move along 1 axis, adding an additional layer of challenges.