Today, we have the pleasure of sitting down with Dylan Dreher, the director, writer, puppet maker and animator of Fate’s Game. The short is an absolute delight to watch and the story is also quite thought provoking. Thank you for taking the time to speak with us.
UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): Thank you very much, I’m glad to hear the film is what I intended it to be.
First off, this was really a feast for the eyes. Can you tell us about how this film was made?
Dylan Dreher (DD): As with all my films the process I use is called stop motion animation. An animation technique where everything you see in the film has to be created, physically crafted and sculpted. The characters are essientially, modern day puppets, and they move by manipulating them millimetre by millimetre in front of a camera one frame at a time. There are 24 frames per second in the film Fate’s Game.
(UM): How long did it take?
(DD): I got the idea for the story of the film in March 2020 and the final soundtrack composed by Shane Thanner was completed by December 2020, so that’s 9 months of work in total!
(UM): Can you tell us about your background? How did you come to be a puppet maker?
(DD): I grew up watching and loving films made by Aardman Animations such as Wallace and Gromit and Chicken Run. It wasn’t until my cousin demonstrated how those films were made that suddenly it all clicked for me and I realized that animation wasn’t just some kind of unknowable magic conjured up by studios with big budgets.
The process fascinated me and I spent many hours of my youth trying to create stand alone films and try and finish them as fast as I could. The big problem I had back then was that I could never finish a story as I had so many ideas I couldn’t just stick to one project.
Thankfully, I’ve learned how to stay focused on one story since then! As for why I use puppets and stop motion as opposed to Computers or pencils, It’s quite simply that I have always felt more comfortable animating a physical model! I can draw and use a computer, but puppet animation is where my heart has always been, even in college, as it came more naturally to me.
(UM): Where did you get the idea for Fate’s Game?
(DD): I originally just wanted to do a simple story featuring a rat character because I had recently sculpted one. So I started thinking of random scenarios that the rat could be involved in. Like playing a piano or conducting an orchestra. After a while I settled on a rat playing chess. It was originally meant to be against other rats for food. Then I thought it could be against a human instead. The big idea that changed the course of the story came when I decided to set the film during the medieval plague.
(UM): Were you inspired by Bergman’s Seventh Seal?
(DD): It’s funny, no – one will probably believe me, but I had honestly never seen or heard of this film when I came up with the idea for Fate’s Game. But as I was writing the script for the film I stumbled across it. The dialogue when the rat introduces himself is very much inspired by the scene when death introduces himself in Seventh Seal.
(UM): One aspect of your film that I found very satisfying is that you set out rules and then break them. Rule: if you stay in, you won’t get sick. But then mother gets sick anyways. Rule: If Julia wins the game, the Rat will lift the plague. You seem to be playing with the idea of fate as something beyond human control. Could you speak about that?
(DD): Thank you. It’s very much something that I believe in. I think it is kind of the ultimate humility when you realize you can’t put your life or the world in a box and try and control it which is what I was getting at with this film. Mind you, I wasn’t necessarily thinking this deeply about the story when I wrote it. What I really wanted in this film at the time was a sense of danger. Establishing rules, then breaking them, seemed like the best way to create a sense of danger. Towards the end of the film, Julia is also saved by something out of her control. It could just be nature, it could be divine intervention.
(UM): Did you come up with this idea after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic?
Was there any connection there?
(DD): I came up with this idea in March 2020, which as far as I can remember was early in the Covid – 19 pandemic for Ireland where I live, but still, I would not say I was directly influenced by what was going on in the world when I first came up with this idea. Much like the Seventh Seal, the connection kind of grew and evolved at the same time I was making it.
(UM): I really enjoyed the soundtrack. Could you tell us about it?
(DD): The soundtrack was composed by an old friend of mine from high school named Shane Thanner.
I first reached out to him on my previous film (Subconscious Voyage) as I really prefer to work with people I trust beforehand.
I have known him since I was 12 and ever since our teenage years he had wanted to compose a score for the animated films I was making.
I know next to nothing about the craft of composing music for film. But I was incredibly happy with what he did on Fate’s Game. It was even better than what I expected or imagined.
Shane Thanner is an exceptionally gifted composer, and it was very kind of him to compose this score. I hope to be working with him again!
(UM): Could you tell us about any future plans? Will you be making more stop
motion animation?
(DD): Yes I will definitely be making more.
I have many ideas just as I had when I was younger. I have 3 different films in mind at the moment all with very different approaches.
One is an original fairytale story, much like Fate’s Game.
One is a re-edit of an 10 year old animation I made when I was 15 with the editing skills I have now, (without adding or reshooting anything) which should be interesting.
And one is a very short film that will likely tell a story within a 2 minute runtime which will be a challenge but a fun one!
As you can see, I’m going to be kept very busy for the next while!
by: Darida Rose
good luck, Dylan