Lachlan Pendragon is now an Oscar-nominated filmmaker after being nominated for his animated short, titled “An Ostrich Told Me The World Is Fake And I Believe It”.
The project was produced as part of Pendragon’s PhD and took 10 months to put together in his living room during the pandemic. Pendragon, who is currently pursuing his PhD in visual arts at the Griffith Film School in Brisbane, already won an Academy Award for Students last year and is now in the running for an Oscar.
The short film follows a young telemarketer named Neil who is confronted by a mysterious talking ostrich who tells him that the universe is actually stop-motion animation. Neil, voiced by Pendragon, tries to convince his colleagues of the discovery.
Next, Pendragon chats with Variety about her nomination, the journey behind the film, and who she’d like to meet at the Oscars.
Nominations are announced here at 5:30am, which would have been late for you, so what were you doing when you found out you’d been nominated for an Oscar?
It was late Tuesday night, almost midnight. It was weird because you’re looking at all these names that you’re familiar with, and your name is up there. She was texting everyone she knew, but they were asleep because it was midnight.
Has it occurred to you that you’re going to the Oscars in March?
I’m the type of person who finds all the movies and watches them at the theater. So being in the room will be amazing.
Let’s talk about “An ostrich told me the world was fake” and his journey. Where did it start?
It was part of a doctoral program in visual arts at the film school. She had to come from a research perspective. The project needed to have a level of innovation and something that you were doing different that you could write and talk about. I wanted to do something in stop-motion because it’s something I love to do, but I hadn’t given it much thought yet. There was a lot of potential for what could be done and explored.
I wanted to look at the handcrafted quality of the stop-motion animation and make sure it was as obvious as possible. That led me down this path of doing something that breaks the fourth wall and deconstructs it, so that the audience can see behind the scenes as if they were watching the movie. I thought it was entertaining because it would show everything that goes into making this kind of movie. But then on the other hand, it’s like, how do I make sure that it’s not too distracting that you can still connect with these characters? Finding that balance was difficult.
It kind of reminded me of “Wallace and Gromit” to that extent. What was the inspiration behind the main character, Neil?
I did the voice of Neil. That character has a lot of me. I did the reference footage and animation. It has a lot of my idiosyncrasies in it. I’ve worked jobs where I felt terrible and still did my best. I could relate to that, and I wanted to bring that into the story in a way that was humorous and entertaining.
As the title suggests, there is an ostrich in the short. Did you have to study how ostriches move?
That’s kind of hard to track movements unless you have access to them. I was very careful with the shots I was doing in order to figure out how to animate him, so if you look carefully, there are very few full body shots. A lot of it is headshot so I put balls on top of my hand and rendered it before I started animating it just to get an idea of how it would play out.
What about your general inspirations and influences?
“Chicken Run” and “Wallace and Gromit.” I love everything Aardman Animations does, and they are a huge influence on me. I love “Fantastic Mr. Fox” for its ability to showcase handcrafted tactile materials. I love what LAIKA does in terms of its technical innovations and everything that can be done with 3D printing. I used a lot of 3D printing to make the mouth shapes for the characters. That was really helpful for someone who does everything himself. So, it was good to have access to the technologies.
How did you settle on the title?
It was one of the last things that occurred to us. We came up with many different ideas, but none of them worked. We went through the film hoping one of the lines would fit. It was one of my supervisors who suggested it. I thought he was joking, but it seemed to fit the type of movie it is and was the title I needed.
Is there someone you’re looking forward to meeting at the Oscars?
I think Guillermo del Toro. I love “Pinocchio” and his previous work, so it would be awesome to meet him.
Leave a Reply