Tella Film Spotlight

Today’s film spotlight focuses on the short film Tella directed by Zachary Conlu.

What is the title of your film and what inspired said title?

The title of my film is Tella. It’s an animated short film. The title is basically the name of the little girl character you see. From the get-go that was the title of the film, I didn’t brainstorm any other ideas or what. I don’t know, it just felt right, I guess. I dabbled with “Tella and the star” but that was too long and didn’t have that ring to it. Tella was more straight to the point and doesn’t give away too much or any of the film while still being interesting, at least for me.

Tell us a little bit about the story and origins of your film.

The story was simple enough: a falling star needs help to get back to the night sky. Come to think of it, Tella isn’t really what the story is about, it’s about the star, but the truth is I made the short film because of Tella. If I had to say what was the origins of the film that would be Tella herself. I wanted to make a film wherein Tella can play in. Initially, I had a bigger story where Tella was just one of the characters, just a side character really, but I needed to narrow it down into a simpler story because I knew I was gonna make it alone and it’ll be extremely difficult to make a concise short story with 5-6 characters (and its animated too).

Any films or filmmakers that inspired this film?

I really like those Chuck Jones Looney Tunes cartoons. It just has that comedic charm, so simple yet so effective for me. I tried doing that thing whenever Chuck Jones would make the character look at the screen with Tella. For a more technical reason would be How to Train your Dragon. I looked at how they did the flying scenes as a reference for Tella’s flying scenes.

What is the goal of the film for you?

Simply to get Tella’s story told. Nothing fancy, really. I just had Tella as a character super long ago and I’ve grown to like her so much that I see her as this real kid somehow, which is weird I know, but I think one needs to believe in the characters of one’s own story for it to work, anyway.

What has the journey been like getting the film into production?

It was fun and very, very frustrating. I did the pre-production and production phase basically all alone. Good thing I had some good friends to show my work to every now and then and they’ll give opinions and stuff.

It got frustrating because you know how in every project or something the “spark” is almost always just at the beginning? Well, it was like that for Tella. I got impatient really fast and animation takes a terribly long time to make.  But it was one of those things where I just couldn’t let it go. I would stop for 2 – 3 months at times very early on in production (because I was also a working freelancer) and then find myself continuing it like no time has passed.

The best part of it all for me would be post-production, because by then I had found 2 other artists to work with for the sound design and musical score, two things that I really believed would make or break the film. They gave more effort into it than I had anticipated and it really made me excited to finish it, it was like the “spark” was back somehow, and it felt good to finally share the project with someone else outside my group of friends (2 friends, not really much of a group), and having some other talents merge in other than animation; the music, which was beautiful and the highly effective sound design, both which really made the world much more “real” to an extent.

One thing you learned from this project?

One thing would be really how to make a film, I mean they do say making a film is the best film school, even though this is an animated film and I didn’t really shoot on location or worked with actors or all that stuff, but I made a film.  And I feel like the next time around I won’t be going in blind like before, and the problems that will arise won’t be scary as much as it was this first time. 

How can folks find you and your film online?

I have accounts on Instagram: @kikorijohn and a page on Facebook. 

Any last pieces of advice for fellow filmmakers?

I’m fairly new and I think I need lots of advice as well.  But I will say that there’s no substitute for hard work.

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