“Eating the cake and the dough!”
Did you know that the living room can actually be a race track? Daddy asks Mathilde to tidy up her toy cars. For Mathilda and her two imaginary friends, this is the signal to start a tidy-up race. Cars speed through the room and under the sofa until it becomes clear that father and daughter have different views on tidying up… and therefore also on life.
THE RUMBLE-BUMBLE RALLY has a charming small-scale vibe, but technically, it accomplishes a remarkable feat by blending animation and live action smoothly. Secretly, the Norwegian Mikrofilm hopes to bring the Rumble-Bumble universe to the big screen someday, with the help of both directors, Annette Saugestad Helland and Johan Kaos, one of whom presented her work at the Filem’On Festival in Brussels.
My first question is a personal one… Do you agree that the dough is better than the cake?
Annette Saugestad Helland: Yes! I totally agree with our main character. As a kid, you’re sort of not allowed to eat the dough because some say it can cause a stomachache. But not being allowed is part of the pleasure.
You consequently use a child’s point of view. At several moments in the film, I clearly realised: this is how a child would see things.
Saugestad Helland: Indeed, both in the story and in its visualisation. We asked ourselves all the time how children would view certain situations and tried to come up with visual solutions on how they would use their imagination. That playful approach came with technical consequences; it’s a challenge to blend live-action and animation into one credible universe, but this visual mixture of reality and fantasy is quite close to how I imagine children play.
These differing perspectives also form the basis of this story.
Saugestad Helland: From the father’s perspective, the house should be clean and tidy to welcome guests. But the kids don’t care if it’s messy; they just think about the fun they could have with all those toys. This causes a clash of perspectives. Both co-director Johan Kaos and I are familiar with the pressure on young parents to strive for perfection at all times. We wanted to oppose that. However, I sympathise with the father in the film. It is not easy to impose things on a child, but he tries his best in a friendly tone.
Matilda says: Being the first one is not important. Then what is?
Saugestad Helland: Eating the cake and the dough! To children, it is more important that parents take the time to sit and play with them, and to feel accepted and have fun together.
Was safety in traffic ever an issue?
Saugestad Helland: On the contrary! In this make-believe world, it was fun to indulge in irresponsible driving with toy cars. We recorded the live-action part over one week; the 15 crew members all seemed to be into cars. Nothing excited them more than making them crash; the little boy inside them blossomed! They all stood around filming with their mobile phones.
You didn’t make it easy on yourself, combining all those different techniques: Stop motion, cut-out, drawing, live-action etc.
Saugestad Helland: When blending a drawn world and a real world, that sparks the imagination. But it’s also like making two separate movies and then mixing them.
Making two movies is double the work!
Saugestad Helland: I was in charge of the animation part, while Johan was mainly working on the live-action. With the actors, everything had to be done on a small budget, as fast as possible. Whereas for the animation, the work ethics were quite the opposite. You could use a whole day to animate the whiskers of a little rabbit. Merging those two methods into one film caused a maximum amount of complications, but it was worth it.
In the animated drawing, the landscape changes in an instant, as cars pass by. All of a sudden, flowers and trees are popping up. What was the logic behind that?
Saugestad Helland: No logic! It’s just playing, in an attempt to visualise a child’s imagination, which is somehow an impossible thing to do. As a starting point, I had a few ideas of what could spark a child’s imagination. We chose an idea where we fantasised about what it looks like under the sofa in a house where children live, which can be relatable for parents too.
Did you research that?
Saugestad Helland: Unavoidably. I have one small child (and two older ones), Johan has two, but the chaos is similar. When it came to the practical side, we didn’t have enough space for the camera under a real sofa, so we had to recreate that environment in a studio, which felt a bit surreal. We collected potato chips, crumbs, and objects that seemed a bit scary at first glance, to create this imaginary world. We got help from a model-maker, who constructed the car models, and made a model for a piece of old bread, with an extra layer of green on top for the mould.
The character design is indeterminate and genderless. I think one is a rabbit, but I’m not even sure.
Saugestad Helland: I often work with children in animation workshops, where they design imaginary creatures by combining different animals. That is where these characters originated. They are Mathilde´s imaginary friends, and therefore, have to look a bit quirky.
What you did with the lighting was amazing. Despite the darkness under the sofa, you combine real light, studio lighting, and animated light. Your lighting schedule must have looked incredibly complex.
Saugestad Helland: We used a significant amount of Christmas lights, which created the perfect atmosphere on camera. We had an excellent photographer, and there was Konrad Hjemli, who had the task of composing the animated and studio lights, sitting for long hours on this precision work. He was our hero. People were constantly lugging Christmas lights around the set, and then he skillfully had to erase their hands from the picture.
Those car wheels spinning uselessly on the edge of the couch look super realistic.
Saugestad Helland: We used an extra set of wheels that we retrofitted in the editing process to create some extra spin. It seemed as if we were making a car chase movie for children. Co-director Johan Kaos was in charge of moving the cars. He had the best week of his life; he was so much into it.
Do you have a favourite car chase movie?
Saugestad Helland: That would be THE PINCHCLIFFE GRAND PRIX, a Norwegian children’s classic from 1975 by Ivo Caprino. I just love that film!
Your producers were Tonje Skar Reiersen and Lise Fearnley from Mikrofilm
Saugestad Helland: This film could never have been made without them. 10 years ago, I made a film, set in this Rumble Bumble world, MORNINGBIRD AND MURMELTON ON WINTER HOLIDAY. Tonje was willing to descend into that universe with me once again. Now, there might be plans for a feature Rumble Bumble movie. We received development support from the Norwegian Film Institute. Did you know that in the opening scene, when father is baking a cake according to a recipe from the radio, it’s Tonje’s voice that you hear? She is the film’s heroine in so many ways!
Gert Hermans