January 25th, 2022 
Jackson Murphy 
Zacharias Kunuk is the director of stop-motion Angakusajaujuq: The Shaman’s Apprentice. It’s one of 15 animated short films vying for the 2022 Oscar prize. Kunuk details some of the key visual and story strengths for Animation Scoop. (This interview was conducted as an Email Q&A.)
Jackson Murphy: The film shows a strong, unique relationship between grandmother and granddaughter / teacher and student. What were your goals with presenting this relationship?
Zacharias Kunuk: I was told this story back in the 1980s. That’s how the story goes. A grandmother shaman was teaching a youth how to become one, through observing and following her.
JM: In the opening scene, we see a glowing flame and brief light in the darkness. How did you want to create that?
ZK: Speaking only technically, we created the light using a small LED light, programmed through Dragonframe animation software.
JM: I love looking at the snow and ice throughout the short (including the dogsledding moments). What materials did you use?
ZK: The snow was created using foam padding – the kind you find inside of furniture. The ice was made with different plastics. For example the ice tunnel was formed with an acrylic sheet that was heated and bent into the tunnel shape.
JM: Some of the most impressive moments, visually, are the sweat and pain coming from the sick man. What went into making those moments?
ZK: The sick man had a series of different faces, all sculpted by our lead puppet builder Karen Valleau. We had 3 or 4 different faces to change between, with various expressions of agony. The animators studied video references that I created for how I wanted the sick man to act, and then they animated the puppet performance. The animator used a gel for the sweat that wouldn’t evaporate over the time it takes to animate (approximately 5 seconds of animation was finished per day).
JM: What do you like about the steady beat drum score that accompanies much of your film?
ZK: Our traditional drum’s beat is the beat of the heartbeat, so I like to use that when we use it in slow for some of the scenes we do.
JM: At one point there’s the line, “We cannot show fear.” Why is it so important to be fearless — in life and in animation?
ZK: In this story, to fear the dog is because the dog knows who is a good or bad person. So if he sees you as a bad person and you have fear you can not enter and he will eat you. In other stories I’ve heard of, seal hunters stand at the seal breathing hole… animals give themselves up to a good person.
JM: How was the book version of this story? What surprised you the most about that experience?
ZK: What surprised me in this story is that it can be made by people in Toronto who don’t know too much about Inuit culture or never been to the arctic, with direction from our production teams in Igloolik and Iqaluit. When you have a good team it works.
JM: It’s an excellent year for animated short films. How do you feel about yours being on the Oscar shortlist — and what would an Academy Award nomination mean to you?
ZK: In our culture we don’t try to show what we can do. We don’t say we are better than others. But in this medium getting to the Oscars is the goal — we learned that. So getting nominated [would be] amazing. Getting from 83 films to 15 is a place we have never been before and it’s an exciting place knowing your film is one of the best in the world. It’s a great feeling not only for me but for the team of people who made it possible and most of all for the film in stop-motion animation.
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