“Marcel: The Little Shellfish with Shoes” was an “ambient film”

The Story of “The Talkative Little Shellfish with Shoes”

The images, the story, the music. It is a lovely film that makes you want to embrace it all in its entirety.

Marcel is a chatty and curious little shellfish. One day, when Dean, a filmmaker, moves into the house where he lives with his grandmother, he begins to film Marcel’s daily life and make a documentary film. One day, Dean uploaded part of the video to YouTube, which became a big hit, and Marcel became popular all over the country. Marcel calls for a search through YouTube to find his family, who have been separated, but at the same time, his previously peaceful life undergoes drastic changes. ……

The role of Dean is played by the director, Dean Fleischer Camp himself. He first came to prominence with a short film that became the basis for this film, which was sequentially released on YouTube between 2010 and 2014. Since then, he has been featured in Filmmaker magazine’s “25 New Faces of Independent Film,” and is an up-and-coming filmmaker with great promise.

The film, “Marcel: The Little Shellfish Wears Shoes,” was nominated for the 95th Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film, the 80th Golden Globe Award for Best Animated Film, and the 50th Annie Award for Best Animated Feature Film. The film has received glowing reviews, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Animated Feature Film, a Golden Globe nomination for Best Animated Feature Film, and three awards at the 50th Annie Awards.

The first thing that draws you in when you see the film is Marcel’s adorable form and gestures, and his chattiness. Marcel, who prefers a peaceful life to his grandmother’s, is not the diplomatic and vivacious type, but through his encounters with Dean and other people, and through his knowledge of the outside world, he develops the courage to take a big “step” forward. In this sense, this film is both an authentic Bildungsroman and a film with a universal theme that can be superimposed on the steps taken by each of us.

A skillful expression of the “sound” surrounding the 2.5 centimeter long protagonist.

In addition, what makes this film special is that the acute sensitivity to various “sounds” is skillfully expressed in the film. In order to emphasize the auditory experience of Marcel, who is only 2.5 centimeters long, one could, for example, have used a gimmick such as making the sounds that humans make loud and piercing. In this film, however, the various sounds are processed naturally and skillfully designed. Wind, footsteps, insect wings, sounds of traffic, and voices coming from somewhere. All of these sounds are arranged with delicate acoustic manipulation so that they do not differ from the impression of the soundscape that usually surrounds us.

In the case of a video work with such a sound design, the selection and arrangement of the music used in the film requires a more meticulous attention to detail than usual. In the case of documentaries, it is not uncommon to eliminate all music in order to avoid such difficulties, or, conversely, to add music in a very dramatic manner for dramatic effect (although, of course, there are many excellent works in this category as well). This film, however, skillfully meets this difficult challenge.

Japanese composer who modeled the original soundtrack

Usually, when an original score is ordered from a musician in the process of film production, it is often done at the stage of storyboarding, or “tentative music” chosen by the director or music supervisor is added to the tentatively edited footage in advance, and the work proceeds based on these images. The same was true for the production of this film. Music supervisor Joe Rudge, who has worked on “Midsummer” and “Ace Grade: The Coolest Me in the World,” selected a piece by the late Japanese ambient artist Hiroshi Yoshimura as the “tentative music” for the film.

Hiroshi Yoshimura is one of the pioneers of Japanese ambient, a genre that has recently been enjoying a worldwide reappraisal, and since the 1980s he has produced a large body of work, not only on record but also in sound objects, performances, and music for various institutions. In his lifetime, Yoshimura was not necessarily well known to pop music listeners in general. However, in the midst of the reevaluation of Japanese ambient music since the 2010s, Yoshimura’s past works became very popular, and he quickly gained a strong following among creators around the world.

Rudge was one of the people who became aware of Yoshimura’s work through this reevaluation frenzy. In an interview with the film information website IndieWire, Rudge said, “Any film is a voice, a voice of its own, a voice of its own, a voice of its own.

The hardest part of any film is finding its ‘voice,’ but we knew that Hiroshi Yoshimura’s music would be the foundation of what we wanted as the score for this film.”

Source: from https://www.indiewire.com/features/general/marcel-the-shell-with-shoes-on-sound-music-shakira-score-1234739824/

Produce an original score that references Hiroshi Yoshimura. Rich Vreeland, aka Disasterpeace, a musician who had previously done excellent work on “It Follows” and “Under the Silver Lake,” was given this mandate and set to work on the composition. At that point, he was only vaguely familiar with Yoshimura’s music, and the production of each track was a painstaking process (in fact, he produced three times as many tracks as were used in the film). As you can see in the film, Yoshimura’s original score is indeed very effective and has a taste that is very much in line with Yoshimura’s music.