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.
