Memoir of a Snail – props, sets and characters with Adam Elliot

Transcript

Hello my name is Adam Elliot and I'm here at ACMI because we're having an exhibition of all the props, sets and characters from my new film Memoir of a Snail. Come with me and have a look.

So here we are, we've got these two full glass cabinets of all the props, sets and characters from the film, and right up front we have Luna Park. It's actually one of the oldest running roller coasters in in the world. The whole film's about celebrating Melbourne and so we can't celebrate Melbourne without Luna Park. At the front of Luna Park we have three of the lead characters in the film. We have young Grace and young Gilbert and in the middle we have Percy Puddle their father and Percy is actually voiced by a wonderful french actor Dominique Pinon, you might know him from such films as Delicatessen and Amélie directed by Jean-Pierre Jeunet.

Over here we have a little character who's dear to my heart and that's Harvie Krumpet who reappears in all my films. Harvie [Krumpet] was the short film I made about 21 years ago which we were very lucky to win the Academy Award for.

Here's a little sign explaining what stop motion is. Please read it.

Here's one of the several vehicles that were made for the film. I think we made about four or five, and this was made by our art director Bob. And just this one little truck took, I think, Bob about 6 weeks to make. So this is really probably my favourite part of the exhibition.

Over there we have Grace eating her Chiko roll and Grace is voiced by Sarah Snook. Standing next to her is her love interest Ken, voiced by the wonderful Tony Armstrong, and over here we have Pinky who played by the wonderful Jackie Weaver who generously loaned us her voice.

And this is Grace in her hoard. Grace is a hoarder. Every prop, set and character in the film has been handmade there's no CGI no AI, everything you see is something real and tangible that you could hold in your hand. Some of the other cast members who sadly didn't have their puppets displayed here because they've fallen to bits is the wonderful Nick Cave who's from Victoria and he plays a cameo, a guy called Bill Clark who dies tragically.

Down here you can see all these little mouth shapes and they're all Pinky, and in stop motion if the character says 'hello' we might have to put on three or four different mouths just for you to see that word 'hello', so it's a very slow art form, and we do 24 images per second, so we have to move the character 24 times to create just one second of footage.

One of my favourite sections of the exhibition is this little bit here where our lead character Gilbert voiced by Kodi Smit-McPhee is being electrocuted, so we had to get the puppet into this electrified state.

In this big cabinet we have the entire Brunswick Street set. Brunswick Street is a very famous street in Melbourne and we had a lot of fun building this street. So as we go down you'll get to see each of these little shops. For Melburnians, you'll probably recognise some of these shops particularly the Souvlaki King which is a very famous Kebab shop and that has a lot of sentimental value to me because I actually made one of my short films in that little room above the kebab shop.

This character down here is Denise Floyd and she's only in the film briefly. I love doing all the miscellaneous voices in the film so I did all the voice work for Denise Floyd. Here you can see the Black Cat Cafe another famous iconic Cafe in Melbourne, and you'll see there's a little sign saying Dennis Denuto. There's a lot of in-jokes and references to other Australian films. For those who know the film The Castle, Dennis Denuto is the chartered accountant or solicitor who does a very bad job.

Here we have the Collingwood Vet, that's where I take my dog Basil, too, very small but it's it's got incredible detail in it, and it's a little butcher shop, and in the window of the butcher shop is all the meat, and this was made by one of our many, many artists Maddie. She's even done the sausages, the little mince meat, and out the back she's got a giant axe. Everywhere you look there's all these little moments of humour. See this little character who's looking out the window there, he's the butcher from this butcher shop. I love the films by Jean-Pierre Jeunet, and this is a little homage to the butcher from the film Delicatessen.

Over here you'll see one of our many vehicles but this car here, which looks pretty average, was made by me. This was actually made as a demonstration to the art department of what I wanted the film to look like, the aesthetic, but everyone fell in love with this car and it actually made it into a few of the shots in the film.

So that's it, the end of my little tour here at ACMI please come down and see the exhibition and of course please go and see the film.