Danny Boy- A film by Marek Skrobecki
Danny Boy is a young poet falling in love. A city that awaits a drama to unfold. A time of sadness and conformity, a time of decisions. There is light, there is hope, there is poetry behind the dark clouds of our world.
Credits
Director: Marek Skrobecki
Screenplay: Marek Skrobecki
Production: Archangel Film Group, Se-ma-for Studios, RSI Radiotelevisione svizzera, SRG SSR
Producer: Luc Toutounghi, Adam Ptka
Camera: Bogdan Malicki, Jolanta Malicka
Editing: Janusz Czuback
Sound editing: Florian Pittet
Sound design: Florian Pittet
Re-recording of the sound mix: Florian Pittet
Music: Florian Pittet, Stefan Aebi, Yvan Bralard, Frederic Chauvigne, Gisele Rime
Animation: Adam Wyrvas, Krzysztof Brzozowski, Yves Gutjahr, Krzysztof Kierzkowski, Piotr Ficner, Claudia Roethlin, Katarzyna Okoniewska, Hoda Esna Aswari
3D animation: Jean Deppierraz, David Bauer, Vincent Frei, Felix Helfer
Compositing: Aurore Hercher, François Jaquier, Leo Marthaler, Hervé Spycher, Ludovic Piquerez
Production design: Olivier Barbeau
Costumes: Silwia Nowak, Anna Szczesniak, Beata Jarmuz, Agata Szczerbka, Margorzata Stepien
Techniques: Stop Motion, 2D / 3D computer animation
Post-production: Sapristi Studio
Release date : 2010
Country : Poland/Switzerland
Duration : 10 minutes
Production notes
Danny Boy shows an individual at odds with the system
His emotions reveal his otherness and need for acceptance. The production is a refined animated film featuring elaborate puppets. According to the director, it was his most difficult piece of work so far given the great number of puppets appearing on set at the same time. This pessimistic animated film refers by its title as well as by some motifs to the famous Irish ballad.
Skrobecki presents a surprising reality
A seemingly ordinary city is inhabited by people suffering from a serious condition strangely enough, their headlessness does not seem to bother them much. Headless individuals walk in haste and chaos around the town, stumbling and falling all the time. The blindness of the city inhabitants is in fact a kind of social disease, of a mass stupefaction.
A mindless, intolerant community
Duped by “headlessness”, a reference to 20th-century totalitarian ideologies, those people follow an irrational blindness. Together, they create a mindless, intolerant community. It is the protagonist – the only one, colloquially speaking, to have his head screwed on the right way – who seems to feel the most lost and lonely in this “headless” crowd. As he wanders the city streets, Danny Boy is constantly filled by dread and sadness at the sight of its headless, duped and aimlessly hard-pressed inhabitants. In the privacy of his home, he slowly constructs a machine which will help bring his solitude to an end.
A means of liberation
It is the power of feeling that brings forward the drastic action of the last rational being: as the main character falls in love, it becomes even more difficult for him to bear the alienation and lack of acceptance. Particularly given that his dissimilarity – which might actually seem elevating – also repels his beloved mate. Paradoxically, the desperate act of decapitation becomes a means of liberation, mainly from the burden of rational thinking. Free from the necessity of reflection or any responsibility and holding his sweetheart in his arms, Danny Boy walks away towards the setting sun.
The famous Irish ballad
In the background, we can hear the famous Irish ballad, which gave the film its title. Danny Boy was often sung at funerals or in honour of men leaving for war or in search of work. Written in 1910 by Frederick Edward Weatherly, the lyrics to the song tell the story of a man who, in late summer, and to the sound of bagpipes, leaves his homeland, where he hopes to return one day. A certain reference of the idea and plot of the Skrobecki’s film to the song may also be found in the history behind the tune. Legend has it that it was composed by Rory Dall O’Cahan, a blind harpist who lived at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. The song was made popular two centuries later by two other blind musicians, Denis O’Hampsey and Jimmy McCurry. The ballad has become an unofficial anthem of Irish Americans and Irish Canadians, and it has been recorded by an enormous number of artists, among whom there are: Judy Garland, Johnny Cash, Joan Baez, Elvis Presley, Eric Clapton, Diana Krall, and Sinéad O’Connor.
The final scene
This 10-minute animated film presents Danny Boy walking away as a dramatic event happens in the background: a plane hits one of twin towers visible on the horizon. It seems that the catastrophe comes completely unnoticed by the inhabitants of the city suffering from the ‘headlessness’. The tragedy of the passengers of the hijacked plane or of the people trapped in the skyscraper is left on the sidelines of everyday life, like the fall of Icarus in the Bruegel’s painting. The last individual who might have been able to use his brains and watch the world in a critical way gives this capacity up, preferring to lead a happy mindless life with his beloved woman, intolerant of his otherness.
Danny Boy is Marek Skrobecki’s third puppet animation
Made with 3D technique elements, following Marchenbilder and Ichtys, the puppets are made of latex, plastic, fabric and plasticine on top of a flexible metal construction which makes it easier to move the marionettes. The three-dimensional setting for the film was built in one of the sets of the Se-ma-for Studio in Łódź, which produced the film in cooperation with the Swiss Archangel Studio.
A wide range of visual effects are produced by the studio on all shots of the film in very high resolution.
The Sapristi studio erases the supporting rods of the puppets, recreates the missing sets and produces several special effects, including encrustations of smoke, fog, explosions, American nights and bullet holes.
The very high resolution of the images made it possible to work with a maximum of material. The images, taken directly from the cameras during the shoot, are in 5K and the final resolution of the images in 4K.
Awards
Belgrade, Belgrade Documentary and Short Film Festival, Golden Plaque Belgrade for the best of the international competition program 2012
Lille, Festival du Cinéma Européen de Lille, Prix Animation 2011
Festival de Cine Fantástico, Mejor Cortometraje de Animación (Audience Award) 2011
Montecatini, Mostra Int. del cortometraggio Montecatini, Premio Pinocchio Fondazione collodi per la migliore opera di animazione 2011
Montecatini, Mostra Int. del cortometraggio Montecatini, Premio per la migliore opera della mostra (Airone d’oro) 2011
Festival de Cine Fantástico, Méliès d’Argent (Short Film Nominee for Méliès d’Or) 2011
Espinho, Festival internacional de cinema de animação, Audience Award 2011
LA BOCA DEL LOBO International short film festival, Mejor corto animación internacional 2011
Festival de Cine Fantástico, Mejor Cortometraje de Animación (Official Jury) 2011
Film Festival Centovalli, Menzione speciale della Giuria 2011
Nenzing, Europäisches Filmfestival Alpinale, Goldene Einhorn des Besten Animationsfilms 2010
International Young Audience Film Festival Ale Kino!, Marcin Award: Best Animated film by the Young People’s Jury 2010
Festival Internacional Cortomate de Buñol, Special mention from the Mayor of Valencia 2010
Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival, Prix Taurus Studio du meilleur film 2010
Neuchâtel International Fantastic Film Festival, Prix H.R. Giger «Narcisse» du meilleur court métrage suisse – Prix SSA/Suissimage 2010
Festival Internacional Cortomate de Buñol, Best Animation Award 2010
ANIMANIMA International Animation Festival, Best direction (Special Prize of the Jury) 2010
Filmography
Danny Boy – 2010
Ichthys – 2005
Marchenbilder – 1998
Dim – 1992