Three questions to… Elif Boyacioglu, director of The Teacup

The Teacup IFF2016

 
Once there was a man who was afraid to go out: it’s the opening of The Teacup by Elif Boyacioglu, one of the animated short films in competition at Irish Film Festa 2016.

The Teacup is a 2-D animated short, produced by the students of the Irish School of Animation at the Ballyfermot College of Further Education in May 2015.

Here’s our interview with Elif.

 

Can you tell us something about the animation technique used for the film?

For the animation we did the initial rough animation with pencil and paper, which were scanned/photographed into the computer. Then we used the Adobe Photoshop plug-in Anim_Dessin developed by Stephane Baril, to do any fine in-betweening that was left and line as well as color the animation. Most of the effects animation (especially the light-motes) were done 2D on the computer, again with Anim_Dessin.

 

Why are teacups and tea sets so relevant in shaping the relationships between characters?

From the very beginning it was my intention to connect the man and his teacup intrinsically. It was first hisgrandmother’s and then his. The teacup in a sense symbolizes him. Thus once the teacup starts to be affected by the events you realize that the man himself is being affected. The woman’s tea set on the other hand, the very reason the man even opens the door, we wanted to be as different as possible from his, almost opposites, angular and robust.

 

Without spoiling it, we’d like to know something more about the ending, which comes as an ironic surprise and it’s very important to define the meaning of the story.

The ending was actually the first thing I wrote. Working on the film we all knew that people would perceive the ending differently; some would think it cruel, others would find it funny, still others a bit positive. I always intended it to be funny to some extent, which is why we have the comedic timing as it is. But for me, personally, it is a positive ending especially because of what happens with the teacup at the very end.