December 23rd, 2024 
Jackson Murphy 
The 97th Annual Academy Awards shortlists are out, and Bottle George is one of the 15 finalists for Best Animated Short Film. Talented director Daisuke ‘Dice’ Tsutsumi has been nominated before, for The Dam Keeper. He also was behind the Annie-winning limited series Oni: Thunder God’s Tale. Bottle George is about a daughter who witnesses her father sink deeper and deeper into alcoholism. Is there a way out, and will she help him get there? (This Animation Scoop Interview with Tsutsumi was conducted as an Email Q&A and was edited for length and clarity.)
Jackson Murphy: How did you want to present the very heavy theme of alcohol addiction through the eyes of a child?
Daisuke ‘Dice’ Tsutsumi: To me, filmmaking is always a conversation with the audience. I was hoping the POV of the little girl would give the audience the space to feel her awareness of the situation, and her affection towards the person she’s waiting for. If the audience empathized with our characters in any way, that’d be so rewarding for us.
JM: What went into the design of the creature in the bottle and how expressive it could be?
DT: When I inherited the original idea, it was a human character but when we started working out the story in a short film format, it evolved into this strange hairy ameba to symbolize one’s internal struggle. I asked the puppet making team and animators not to worry about changing the silhouette of the design.
JM: How challenging were the bottle movements — any time it rolls or bounces?
DT: We spent lots of extra care for the bottle animation. One of our animators, Kimimasa Inazumi, beautifully did most of the bottle animation, especially the hill climb animation in the climax.
JM: No spoilers but did you always want the final scene to have a delicate feel, and was it tricky to craft it?
DT: We spent extra time figuring out the ending of the story due to its sensitive theme of ‘addiction’. The topic brought pain to some of our crew members and we wanted to make sure it doesn’t turn away the audience while avoiding unrealistic happy endings we couldn’t believe in. We kept going back to why we wanted to tell this story in the first place.
JM: How does “Bottle George” represent you as a filmmaker, and how does it feel different from your previous films?
DT: It was my first fully stop-motion film. I’ve done hand drawn animated films as well as lots of CG films. It was my dream to do stop-motion and of course found out how hard it was. You have very little chance to redo your shots in stop-motion. So it is a painful and yet fantastic training ground for directors.
JM: What would an Oscar nomination — and a return to the Academy Awards — mean to you?
DT: I watched all 15 films shortlisted in this category and they are all fantastic films that deserve to be celebrated. And I want to add that there are many, many short films I watched that didn’t make it to the shortlist that deserve to be equally celebrated as well. We are all in this together in this community. We all understand that it’ll be a huge challenge to be nominated out of these fine films. I’m very happy this indie passion project has come this far.
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