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Marcel the Shell With Shoes On: You Will Believe a Shell Can Skate
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Animation meets the real world at every moment in Marcel the Shell With Shoes On—but maybe less than you think. Set inside a house that happens to be occupied by a chatty shell (voiced by Jenny Slate) and his grandmother (voiced by Isabella Rossellini), the movie uses stop-motion animation to bring Marcel to life in ordinary settings, like a kitchen floor or a bathroom sink. It’s technically a hybrid of live action and animation, and in the two-decade history of the best animated feature category at the Oscars, no film like that has made the cut.
But Marcel the Shell didn’t just make the Oscars shortlist, it’s been on an awards season streak, nabbing nominations from the Golden Globes and Critics’ Choice Awards in the best animated feature camp, along with winning the New York Film Critics Circle and the National Board of Review awards.
Marcel’s director Dean Fleischer-Camp and animation director Kirsten Lepore are honored to be pioneering the bridge between the two worlds that have gone unrecognized for so long. “I know some people are salty about what constitutes an animated movie. And ‘is that an animated movie?’ because it consists of live-action elements,” Fleischer-Camp says about Marcel expanding the animation branch. “But I think the place I’ve come to is that overall it’s a great thing because it means that there’s so much animation now in even live-action films that we’re even having to have those conversations.”
Lepore adds, “It feels cool to be recognized for creating something unique, like something that is largely animation, but it’s something different. And I feel like that’s always exciting to celebrate in filmmaking.”
For a scene that perfectly encapsulates that balance, look no further than a table, a shell, and one very uncontrollable squirrel. (You can see a glimpse of it at 1:57 in the trailer below).
The Scene
Part of Marcel’s beauty is in the combination of real-life things—including animals and people— and the stop-motion shells, creating the vivid illusion that Marcel and his grandmother exist in our world. According to Fleischer-Camp and Lepore, no scene exemplifies this more than the scene in which Marcel skates across a dusty table with his grandmother, Nanna Connie, until a squirrel disrupts their fun. Even the music—Jock Jams classic “Pump Up the Jam” and Shakira’s “Whenever, Wherever”—is perfect. “Those are just the type of subtle things that add to what you’re talking about that makes it so realistic and feel so naturally captured. But actually, it’s very good editing and sound design that went into the movie,” Lepore says.
When Shell Meets Squirrel
The arrival of the squirrel was, according to Fleischer-Camp, one of the most difficult scenes in the movie. There is so much precision and preparation that is going into this,” Fleischer-Camp says. “But also, it involves a live squirrel and stuff like that. It doesn’t matter how much you prepare, the squirrel is still going to do whatever it wants.”
Most of the production took place on a stop-motion stage, using motion-controlled rigs for the careful camera movements required for this animation technique. But, Lepore says, “when the squirrel comes in and everything becomes hectic, then the whole idea is like, ‘Oh, my God, handheld camera! The camera needs to be all over the place.’ Every shot required a lengthy conversation to maintain the stop-motion effect alongside the film’s documentary style. “We were just trying to be strategic and choosy with those scenes,” Lepore says. “It looked so off the cuff, but it’s actually very planned and controlled.”
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Rendy Jones
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