Two Gents, a Lady, a butler, two giant steam powered fighting machines, oh and a poodle, are the cast of ‘A Gentlemen’s Duel’, a film by Sean Mc Nally and Fransisco Ruiz Velasco. Fighting for the affections of Lady Bluntsworth, the two adversaries, Sir Eustace Weatherbury and Lord Du Bois do battle in their pugilist steam powered armour, but who will be victorious?

Sean managed to take some time out of his hectic schedule, at Blur, to give some insight into the production of the film.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I understand A Gentlemen’s duel came about from your internal yearly film contest can you go into that process and why the film was chosen above the others?

 

Yeah, every year or so, Tim (Miller, co-owner and creative director here at Blur) puts out the call for entries. Anyone in the company can enter, usually we have about thirty entries or so (although most recently we had like fifty, I think!). The submissions range from anything from a single sentence to a full-blown pitch-package complete with storyboards and concept sketches. Generally speaking, though, the more developed the idea is, the better chances it has of winning and being made. The supervisors at Blur print them all out and read them, then each of them rates them, then the points are tallied up, and the winner is chosen. The year that "A Gentleman's Duel" won, the studio had set the lofty goal of doing two shorts (as we had done the previous year with "Gopher Broke" and "In the Rough"), one sci-fi/action, and one comedy/family. Most of the short submissions were sorted into either category, but "G.D." kind of rode the line between both genres, so was judged as such, and ended up winning both categories. I think it ended up winning because it had something for everyone in the company to be excited about. The guys who really liked action/sci-fi stuff had the giant steam-powered robots, while the fans of more stylized animation and comedy could really sink their teeth into the quirky characters and gags. That, and the story was fairly straightforward and clearly defined...and funny!

 

Francisco had the initial idea of two guys having a duel over a girl with giant steam-powered robots instead of pistols, but he didn't have time to develop it as a short submission along with his other ideas, so he asked me to help him out. We talked about the story off and on for about a month or so, then Christmas break came, when we were supposed to each do a few sketches and write up some stuff, then compare notes when we came back. The short was due the first week of January. Francisco was delayed in Mexico until the day it was due, so on the last weekend before the deadline, I typed up the story, trying to recall what we had discussed and scribbled a few sketches for submission...It was all kind of last minute stuff, but in the end it worked!

 

Where did you take your visual inspiration from for the production?

 

During the early days of pre production, Fancisco and I took trips to the L.A. county Museum of art and the Getty centre to check out all the cool Victorian/Colonial/Napoleonic/1700's art and furniture they had on display. We also watched period-films like "the Duellists" (duh!) just to get an overall sense for the attitude and lavish decorative nature of the look we were going for. We weren't necessarily trying to go for a "Victorian" setting, per se, (this is a fictional alternate history, of course). We liked certain elements of different periods ranging from the mid 1700's to the early twentieth century and thought we could bring them all into a common aesthetic. Early character explorations drew inspiration from marble portrait-busts of the 1800's. We retained certain elements of that, but the characters became distinctly exaggerated as development progressed. For my part, inspiration came from various places: I loved the style of the classic Lucas Arts "Monkey Island" adventure games from the 90's, (especially the third one), the stylized characters in Peter De Seve's illustrations have always amazed me, And I loved the way Pixar handled their human characters in "The Incredibles". We definitely wanted to push the characters farther in terms of stylization than we had before, giving the animators something they could really have fun with and go wild. The colour scheme was another aspect of the film that changed as production went along. Initially, we thought it would be cool to take a cue form the beautiful landscape paintings of the 1800's, using deep, rich, earthy tones, and using pools of light to guide the viewer's eye. Ultimately, we settled on a more colourful cartoony feel to reflect the style of the characters and the overall mood.

 

 

There are three main characters in the film, the two dashing, duellists and the lady who’s affection they are fighting for. Can you describe them in more detail to us and how their characters evolved during production?

 

Sure. First you have Sir Eustace Weatherbury (the English guy). He's very uptight and concerned with the proper etiquette of courtship. He's definitely a brains over brawn guy, but he often lets his temper get the best of him. Then you have Lord Du Bois (or "Dubious" as he is known behind his back because of his suspect origins) , who is all about over-the-top style and has a particularly pompous attitude (perhaps he's compensating for something?....). His dog "Fifi" undoubtedly started out as nothing more than an accessory for Du Bois, but over time, she has become an extension of his soul. Unfortunately, for the purposes of the short, Lady Bluntsworth is little more than a prop, exhibiting minimal character development. I would like to think however, that beyond the scope of this film, she leads a double life: one of a prim and proper aristocrat, and another secret and adventurous identity, perhaps involving the security of the very nation! (Francisco and I have some ideas. maybe we'll see more if a feature film gets made, heh heh heh....) The butler is the only character who truly cares for the lady, and his silence and high tolerance for abuse makes him quite valuable as a man-servant. Originally, both duellists were English, but in the initial story boarding, Francisco drew one of them as a Frenchman with a poodle, it was funny and was an easy way to tell the two characters apart, so it stuck. also, in the initial sketches, Weatherby was the bigger of the two, with Lord Dubious playing the slight, yet overpowering flamboyant Frenchman. Visually, Du Bois went through the most changes. He had a completely different face design, which after being modelled in 3D, appeared perhaps too puppet-like. Also, he formerly sported an oversized cloak and hat, which underscored his penchant for all things frivolous and stylish. In the end, however, they had to be cut because of time and budget constraints. How I dearly miss that cloak and hat...sniff!... 

 

 

The mechanised fighting machines look pretty mean devices and one is apparently equipped with a helmet wearing French poodle!? What devious devices lurk in the gents equipment roster?

 

Well, the short shows us a mere sample of what lays bristling beneath the rivets and armour plates, as most of the fighting is pulled off with good old-fashioned robot fisticuffs. They do have a few surprises, though! The French machine sports the devastating groin-mounted poodle-cannon (as you alluded to...), as well as steam-powered rocket-fists, while the Englishman sports a sophisticated eel-powered electrical array, capable of frying a full-grown rhinoceros with a single touch. Mind you, these weapons are but the tip of the figurative iceberg that we may one day explore in the future if we are lucky.… 

 

 

From conceptual design to the final edit; how long did the production take and what provided the largest challenge?

 

The initial draft of "A gentlemen's duel" was written in January of 2005, over a year and a half before the film was completed in September of 2006. Smatterings of sketches and rewrites were kicked around over the course of 2005, but pre production didn't really start gearing up until the beginning of 2006. The bulk of the production work (animation and rendering, anyway), however, was done over the spring and summer of 2006. It was truly a monumental effort, with pretty much everyone in the company working on it at one time or another, all the while completing work for numerous other projects we had going on in the studio. I'm sure everyone else has their own particular idea for what the greatest challenge was, but from a directing and story standpoint, the most difficult part was setting up the introductory scene and making sure the short was "funny" enough. The actual duel was never a problem. Francisco story boarded out three complete versions of the duel, all of them brilliant, but we had a difficult time convincing Tim with the actual initiation of the fight. In the original draft for the contest, one of the gentlemen merely touched the lady's hand on accident, infuriating the other guy, prompting the glove-slap. I thought that the humour would come out of the fact that this outrageous, insanely destructive battle was started by such a casual mistake. The animatic wasn't getting that across, however, so it became necessary to build upon that introductory scene to make the offence more apparent (or at least, "funnier"). The most painful part of the writing process was generating the back-and forth dialogue between the two gentlemen as they fight. Originally, the duel was boarded out almost completely without dialogue, each man letting his machine do the talking. Some felt there might be an opportunity for more laughs with some well-placed insults, though, so we went back in and "retroactively" inserted lines during the fight. Its amazing how hard it can be to be funny when you're trying really, really hard to be funny.…

 

 

Were there any gags or scenes that got dropped along the way that you would have loved too have seen go in or subsequently thought of after production?

 

Definitely. Francisco had a couple of hilarious gag endings he put in early boarded versions of the film. One had the gentlemen continuing the fight in hundred-foot-tall robots in down-town London, then there was the gag ending with the butler tied up in a bed and the lady appearing in S & M gear....heh heh. The short was boarded out in its entirety three or for different times with a host of other gags. There was a lot more instances of the poodle peeing on things and people, I remember that…

 

Where can the film be seen, is there a DVD available and any chance of a sequel?

 

I haven't heard any word from the powers that be about any formal DVD release yet. It is available on itunes, as well as a few different viral video sites, and I know it's making the rounds at several prominent film festivals. Francisco and I definitely have feature film ideas, and there has been interest in development from outside production companies, but nothing for sure at this point...one can only hope!

 

 

 

For further info on 'A Gentlemen's Duel' and Blur check out the following...

 

 

Blur

Brooklyn International Film Festival

Sebastian Chort Animator

 

 

 

*All images provided for this interview courtesy of Sean Mc Nally