December 24th, 2024 
Jackson Murphy 
Alexandra Myotte and Jean-Sebastien Hamel are the directors of drama A Crab in the Pool, one of the 15 finalists for the upcoming Best Animated Short Film Oscar. The story is about a summer day with an older sister and younger brother that makes them reflect on the values of life — and how they value each other. (This Animation Scoop Interview was conducted as an Email Q&A and was edited for length and clarity.)
Q: What appealed to you about blending reality and fantasy / the past and the present?
A: As two people who love to get lost in their own invented worlds, we’re lucky to be animators. The medium of animation is unique in the sense that whatever you imagine in your head, you can transpose to the screen – regardless of your budget, your studio size, etc. You are not bound to the same rules as say, if you make a live-action movie. So we always try to use this strength of the animated medium to keep our audience surprised and invested on a visual level. The world of children is often a universe where the border between the real and imaginary is very porous; for our young character Theo, fantasy bleeds into his reality quite naturally. It becomes a coping mechanism too, when the real world is too dark or scary to deal with. Fantasy allows us to integrate metaphors and symbolism into the story, things left unsaid: for example, the word cancer is never uttered but you see the crab and you understand what we’re talking about. Concerning the blending of past and present moments, we wanted to show that memories often live alongside us when they’re strong enough. You’ll walk into a room and remember a strong emotion you’ve lived there, being played in a loop parallel to your current existence. The past and the present constantly overlap, and we wanted to show this in the story as if there were no real boundary between the two.
Q: What memories of summertime did you want to incorporate into this story?
A: We live in Quebec, where it’s freezing and snowy for at least four months, so we’re people who will get outside as soon as a bit of warmth appears! We’re lucky to enjoy sunny, hot, even scorching summers. We’ll swim and sunbathe as much as we can, so public and private pools are a staple of Quebec summers. The seagull chants, as heard at the beginning of the movie, is one of the first sounds announcing the arrival of summer and makes us giddy when we hear it. And of course, we love eating outside on restaurant terrasses like Theo, especially junk food – hot dogs, poutine, a slice of cheap pizza and of course soft ice cream!
Q: There is such a fascination with mythological creatures and Greek / Olympic gods. How did you want to convey them in the visuals?
A: In our film, the mythological characters are filtered through the imagination of our young protagonist Theo. Therefore they’re not looking like how they are usually depicted in popular media. For Theo, each god or monster is associated with a character from his real life; you end up with a scary-looking harpy drinking a soda, or his sister Zoe morphing into a medusa when she’s angry with him. We wanted to keep the creatures’ depiction very childlike, as coming straight out of a coloring book; they can be strange, but are never truly frightening. They were introduced into Theo’s world by his mom, so they are part of a somewhat reassuring and magical world where death – the real monster – doesn’t exist. Compare these with Zoe’s own monster, which is not born from the mythological realm, and is much more menacing and hideous.
Q: How challenging was it to present this sister and brother relationship in emotional and honest ways?
A: There were several challenges in approaching our two characters. First, we had to portray a child and a young teen in a way that felt real and not like “mini-adults”. In doing so, you have to be observant of people around you, put yourself in their shoes with honesty and not try to be clever with the dialogue or use expressions that you think sound young or cool (it usually doesn’t!) To make sure our characters and their relationship felt real and had a natural flow to it, we had to know them on a deep level. Even though it was only an eleven-minute short, we built detailed character sheets – their qualities / flaws, their desires / fears, how they feed off each other. We read about how grief is lived by children depending on their ages – how teenagers will know the finality of it and often react to it with rebellion and anger, while younger children won’t really grasp that the deceased is truly gone and sometimes build a fantasy around it. Finally, we always base our work a little on ourselves – we try to remember our own childhood and adolescence and our respective relationships with our sisters. We believe that a lot of animators are never fully grown-up!
Q: Zoe and Theo are going through a lot and have powerful outlooks on life. How do you relate to them?
A: The film is inspired by our personal story. Alexandra had breast cancer a few years ago and so did Jean-Sébastien’s mother. What’s more, Alexandra and Jean-Sébastien are a couple, so they went through the ordeal together, but each in their own way. Alexandra identifies with Zoe and the fear she has of falling ill, of their bodies being hosts to this foreign monster against their will. There’s a lot of anguish, and also anger at the random injustice that falls into their laps. Jean-Sébastien is Theo; he watches as the people he loves fall ill. He is powerless to cure them, but is just as anxious about losing them. What’s more, he is somewhat sidelined and forgotten, as it often happens to those close to people who are ill, who suffer a great deal but do so in silence because they are not the ones who need immediate help. When you’re lucky enough to survive an ordeal like this, you become more sensitive and fragile, but also more resilient. And it gives us the drive to make more films now, because we have so many stories to tell and life is so short!
Q: How do you hope your film inspires storytellers?
A: We’re happy you mention storytelling because for us it’s what’s most important in a film: the story. With experience we’ve learnt that having the most detailed and impressive animation might wow you in the moment, but you might forget it very fast. What stays with you is the deep emotions you felt while watching a film: you can touch people with only matchstick figures if your story is solid and true. As storytellers, we shouldn’t be afraid to dig deep into ourselves to reach core emotions we want to depict or get inspiration from for a story; these emotions can be dark and painful, they can even be shameful sometimes, but they will ring true. And sometimes they help you to grow personally through your creation.
Q: What would it mean to you to receive an Academy Award nomination for “A Crab in the Pool”?
A: It would be the honor of a lifetime, the icing on the cake of this amazing adventure! We believe it’s a dream for so many filmmakers, and so few are lucky enough to be able to touch that dream. We’re a very small independent studio made of a simple couple in love, so when we made the film, we had no idea how far it would go. But once the film was launched, we found ourselves lucky to get the support of so many festival programmers, juries, critics, journalists and bloggers, fellow filmmakers, as well as fans of the film; in fact, the very people we made the film for. And all these people contributed to an incredible word of mouth and gave the film legs. Each stage in this Oscar race was a surprise for us – qualifying twice as a starter, then making the shortlist… It’s already incredible, but whatever happens next, we will be forever grateful for its success!
- INTERVIEW: Diving Into “A Crab in the Pool” - December 24, 2024
- INTERVIEW: Stop-Motion Shortlisted “Bottle George” - December 23, 2024
- INTERVIEW: Inside The Music Of Pixar’s “Dream Productions” - December 11, 2024
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