Martin Krejci

directing stopmotion in Prague
Recreating the story of adidas founder Adi Dassler in stop motion was never going to be quick work, but the end result was an award-winning spot. Director Martin Krejci took notes.

15th August - 15th September 2007
We have couple of meetings with the agency [180 Amsterdam] creatives Dario Nucci and Sam Coleman in London. We know the task - to make a documentary about a great man who has passed. The way it will be shot will have to express his influence and spirit in an original and not obvious way. It has been decided to do so by using stop-motion technique. Usually, when you use this style it's for some strong artistic stylisation but we wanted the viewer to understand that this film will be about someone who really existed, who really lived, so we decided to use it in an unusual way. We will make a hyper-realistic stop-motion piece of film, so the connection with the authenticity won't be lost. The stylisation will naturally come from the process itself so we will just concentrate on making everything as real as possible.

We have a couple of meetings in the Prague studio of Animation People, where we will shoot the whole film. We are struggling a bit to find the correct scale for the film. I want to keep it big enough so we can have all the details but the bigger it is the more difficult it will be for the animators to move with the figure. In the end we all agree on the final scale being 1:3.

Everything will be shot on a digital camera - 25 photos in sequence will put together 25 frames per second. Our film will be quite long at three minutes, so it will be around 4500 photos. Between each photo the animators must move the figure so carefully that when sequenced the moves feel real and alive.

We start the research on Adi's real props, taking photos of each, so the people in the Prague studio can rebuild exactly the same but in our 1:3 scale. Marketa Korinkova (the art director) starts to draw first visuals of Adi's workshop based on the real one.

We have selected the photos of real Adi Dassler for the painter to prepare the realistic drawings in our scale for the model maker to start working on the first versions of models. We end up deciding on more than 100 props and the model makers begin building them.

15th September - 15th October 2007
We have approved the style and visual look of the Adi's workshop. Marketa visited the adidas museum in Germany, where she took photos of Adi's original table, chair, leather cutting machine and also a strange looking lamp, which was a gift to Adi. It uses water filled bulbs around the candle to enlarge the light. We agreed that we really like it and that we should use it in the film. I can't imagine how the model makers will be able to rebuild everything in 1:3 without losing its character. It becomes one of the most crucial things for me. Michal Podhradsky (the producer from Animation People studio) has a confident smile on his face about it and Daniel Bergmann (MD of Stink) is also confident after his previous cooperation with Animation People.

We have separated the props into three main groups - character props, shoemaking props and key props. The approval process is very slow, since every group must be revised by everyone involved. Michal from Animation People studio starts to get a little bit nervous about it. We need to start building the props but we have to wait till they are approved of course.

In order to keep our film as real as possible and considering the fact that it's the first stop-motion project I have worked on, I decided to shoot everything with a real actor and set and then transform it to our build scale 1:3 frame by frame, keeping the same perspective and camera lenses. I get my DP Stepan Kucera involved and we think it's a great idea. At this moment in time we have no idea what kind of trap we have just prepared for ourselves by this.

9th October 2007
We are shooting the live master footage. It's a surreal experience. We have built a very rough set, where all the props are just drawn on the walls and floor, so the angles and perspective will match. Then we shoot everything with our actor. It's like our humble tribute to Dogville by Lars von Trier. We cast a famous Czech actor, who is a bit disappointed by the fact that in the final film he will be replaced by small figure made out of clay.

15th October 2007
We have finally edited the live master and run it through the whole approval process. We think that from now on it will just be a technical thing, so I won't need to be that involved anymore (ha ha ha I have no idea how wrong I am!). The final film should be exactly the same in each frame as the live master in terms of angle, perspective and size.

Filip Malasek the editor from Robota said that this master is actually quite nice and maybe more interesting than the final film will be. I think he needs some rest.

15th October - 1st November 2007
All the props are arriving from different model makers. I am amazed by the quality. Michal and Daniel were right. The models look exactly the same as the real ones, matching details such as a small scratch on the side of the pencil. The stylisation comes just from the fact that they are smaller, so they look real but quite cute at the same time. I can't imagine how they make it. It must be such terrible work, the patience those model makers have is unbelievable. For example they build old cassette players with real tapes inside. They cut real cassette tape into three strips and then use for the mini cassette. I later found out that the props are made by some Japanese people who came to Prague because they admired the work of Jan Svankmajer and wanted to study in his school. It's quite funny, because I know that Mr Svankmajer hates the advertising industry.

People from the studio have started to work on Adi's figure after the technical drawings from our painter. They hate me because they had to rebuild it 10 times before it was approved. The studio is full of Adi's hands, heads, torsos etc. It all looks quite brutal.

We have to postpone the beginning of shoot because we don't have approval on everything for the set decoration yet. I really regret that Mr Adi Dassler has passed away. It would be much easier for us if there was just one person to approve everything.

1st November - shoot day 1
Stepan is playing with the light for half of the day, the second half we spent by matching the actual shot with the live master. It matches at the end but it's much more difficult than I thought. We decide to set everything up, so the shoot will start tomorrow.

2nd November - shoot day 2
The animator Frantisek Vasa starts to work on the first shot. It takes him all day. When it's finished and we can finally see it, we realise that the tracking is too fast comparing to the live master. I kindly ask him to reshoot it. He nearly killed me with his look. He reshot it over night. I am realising that this won't be as easy a project as I thought. We are sending the first shot for approval. Sam and Dario like it. I can't really imagine what I would have done if they didn't. I think Frantisek would really do something bad… very bad to me.

5th November - shoot day 5
We are shooting just the second shot. The biggest complication seems to be with matching the shot with the live master footage. From another point of view it's really worth trying it, because when the animator copies exactly frame by frame the shot from the live action, it really delivers the effect we were hoping for - it has that real feel. Michael from Animation People is starting to get a bit nervous about the shoot delays and it is only just in the fifth shooting day!

7th November - shoot day 7
We are reshooting the difficult tracking shot for a third time. In the studio there is quite a tough atmosphere, because it's a really difficult shot. I always come to the set when the animator is finished and then when I am not happy the toughest thing is to tell it to them in a diplomatic way. They have spent the whole day working on it just to hear from me that it has to be redone.

15th November - shoot day 15
We are supposed to be close to finish. Instead, we have just finished the 11th shot out of 21. The situation starts to get quite serious, Daniel Bergmann arrives at the studio for a meeting with Michal and Molly Pope (who's producing all adidas films for this campaign). Things start to settle down. The deadlines have changed and we now have a fixed date for delivery, the film has to be finished before the end of November. At the moment we have all the shots approved except one. Since this particular shot is such a complex process, we couldn't wait for the agency feedback, so we start preparing the shot; then the bad feedback came. So we will have to rebuild and reshoot it again. We decided to keep it as the last shot we will shoot.

20th November - shoot day 20
I hate myself for having this idea of matching each frame to live footage master. It's so difficult… the biggest problem for me is that it's basically just technical work, there's no space for any creativity. Everything was shot already and we have to match it now just in the different scale. It's like a Zen Buddhist exercise for how to concentrate when you can't. Michal has a serious lack of sleep. We have established quite a routine procedure every day - first in the morning comes Michal with the camera specialist to set the equipment. Then arrives Stepan, who is always so nervous that he comes earlier than he must. Then we set up the shot, so it matches with the live footage master. When we are happy, in comes the wizard - the animator. It is the moment when we have to leave, because Stepan has set such a low exposure on the camera that it would flicker if there is anyone in the studio making any shadows etc. In the afternoon, when the animator is finished, I come back again to check the look of the shot. Then we decide whether we have to reshoot it or if there are some minor problems, we can fix it in the post, which is now more and more often the outcome. I think they are going to really like me in Glassworks.

25th November - shooting day 24
I honestly admire all the people who work often with stop-motion technique. It's ssssooooooo slllllooooowwww, that it really changes the way you measure your time. We had a real crisis. Michal had to take some rest so we took one day off. It was the first day after more than 20 days of shoot. We have changed animators already two times.

The studio is in a basement of an old church and because outside is really freezing cold, the air in the studio is very humid. That's why our most important prop is a tissue at the moment, because almost all of the people involved have a cold.

Today we had a problem with Adi's wardrobe. The body parts were made out of clay but the jumper and trousers are made out of latex, so they keep the structure without distortion. But we realised that when we want Adi to reach his hand to the shelf, where he is supposed to put the photo of Dick Fosbury, the latex jumper sleeves are too short, so we had to cut them and lengthen them. The gap will be fixed in post. Hopefully.

30th November
I can't believe it. It's a wrap! There are just two more days for shooting the plates of dust, coffee in the cup and live action for the end scene. But the animated part is finished!!!

3rd December
Now the fun part starts - finally. We will play with everything in the post. The usual problem appeared. Every time, when you work on something for so long and go so deep into it, you start to hate it because you lose the distance. Suddenly everything seems to be wrong and ugly and when there are any people who say that it's not that bad, I become suspicious that they just want to blame us. That is why I like the post part, it's where we can try to save it. Then comes usually the second wave of depression, when we are nearly finished and I can see that there are not any more tricks left for making it better…

Then it's left to the audience to judge.

January 2008
The adidas Originals - Adi Dassler film is finished.
If I can, I would like to thank to Dario, Sam, Cat and Cedric from 180 for their really great trust. To Daniel, Molly, Janita, Sophie, Marketa and Dan from Stink for their support and help during the whole process and Michal & Co from Animation people for not giving up. I know it's a bit boring, but believe me, in this case it really has a value to me…

To watch the spot click here...