Introducing Charlie Higson's Prize Winning Animated Film on Boris Karloff
Introducing Charlie Higson's Prize Winning Animated Film on Boris Karloff
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Back during the first national lockdown, Plymouth College of Art and Plymouth Arts Cinema joined forces to bring students, staff and members of the public the opportunity to enter the Boris Karloff 60-Second Film Challenge. Open to all styles and genres, entrants were asked to submit a one-minute video taking inspiration from the life and work of Boris Karloff.
The Boris Karloff Symposium committee chose author and actor Charlie Higson’s film as the winning entry.
The committee said that the film “showed imagination and technical skill and encapsulated the theme of our forthcoming symposium on the enduring appeal of Boris Karloff’s work.” Peter Barker added that "we chose Charlie's film not only because it was excellently conceived and made, but it completely chimed with the spirit of the Boris Karloff Symposium on the great man's life and work that we will be hosting at Plymouth College of Art."
On his inspiration to do this Charlie said:
"We’d all just gone into lockdown and no-one knew how long it was going to last. People thought it was the chance to learn a new language or write their next novel, but it turns out the underlying anxiety of a pandemic makes it quite hard to concentrate! I found it the same, and since I wasn’t able to do any of my TV projects, I found it easier to focus on smaller projects."
“During this time, I was approached by a TV producer who asked me if I was interested in a show about comedians during lockdown. She asked if I’d like to do a sketch of Swiss Toni, zooming his assistant Paul, for example. I said I could write it, but without the suit, hair, wig and makeup, I don’t look anything like Swiss Toni! I rather rashly solved that problem by suggesting an animation, and she said, oh brilliant, yeah!”
“So I had my iPad, my Apple Pencil and Procreate and began generating frame by frame artwork for the Swiss Toni sketch. I would download images of Swiss Toni and use a rotoscope technique to trace them, then apply different mouth shape animations to his head. It was this method I used for the Boris Karloff short.”
“It took me months! Despite the fact I’m using quite a simple technique, it’s easy to forget how many frames you’ll need per second and how many drawings you’ll actually have to generate. In reality, I was creating artwork for weeks, but it was a very welcome distraction to lockdown. It was a great project to do.”
Charlie on his love of Karloff:
“Boris Karloff was in the centre of the huge explosion of horror films in the 1930s, and his portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster is stunning. The theme of coming back to life, living beyond the grave, is something that Karloff never escaped from. So many of his films revolved around the idea of someone coming back to life. I took the starting point of Frankenstein because if you’re going to do anything about Karloff, it’s impossible to escape that. It was when I was resurrecting him again for my animation, that I found myself thinking, through the medium of film, Karloff truly did become immortal. Every time we watch his films now, he is brought back to life.
Film has always fascinated me, it’s such a bizarre idea that you’re essentially flashing lights onto a wall, but there is a living breathing person there. There’s a story you get involved with and the actors, who are long dead, dead for decades in some cases, they’re there! In front of you! We’re so used to it, we accept it without thinking. I do think that’s such a fascinating idea, and I tried to put that into a one-minute animation!
I really love Boris Karloff, but I’m into the whole history of horror really. After writing The Enemy, I ended up developing quite a long talk about horror, going through the origins from Mary Shelley right through 19th century gothic horror and into the 20th century and how that all comes together now. Film is such a great medium for exploring the fantastical and horror has been at the centre of cinema right from the start. Horror is a great way to look at those very heavy concerns like death, disease, loss, aging, but with that fantasy filter. It becomes that classic safe scare where you can induce some extremely powerful emotions; fear, dread, disgust, grief, and can help you process real world issues."
-- Charlie Higson, 2021
Charlie Higson is best known for his work as an author, TV writer, actor and comedian. Starring in The Fast Show in 1994, he quickly became a household name with characters such as Swiss Toni and Ralph of Ralph and Ted, who he played alongside comedian Paul Whitehouse. Later, Charlie found success as an author, in writing the hugely successful Young Bond series, which has sold over a million copies in the UK and has been translated into over 24 different languages, as well as The Enemy, a series of zombie horror books for teens. From the evidence we have here, we look forward to a second career in animation.
We thank you for your contribution, Charlie!
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