Signe Baumane Quotes

When I do only images, people don't connect with the images because the images are too weird to understand. But when I explain the weird images with straight words, then all of a sudden there is a tension between the two that the audience wants to see.

I have decided that I want animation to be taken seriously; that is the goal of my life. I believe that animation is a very important medium to tell stories, not just for kids but for adults.

Animation remove you from a visual reality - if it was live action, you wouldn't be able to see through the person's mind. But animation takes a step away. It creates a very stylized landscape, but at the same time it is the form that is best able to address the reality of being alive and being in pain.

Even if you have a gift, it's nearly impossible to become a good actor in just a few weeks of training.

In my opinion, animation is best when it communicates without words, because it is the perfect medium through which to make shortcuts to meaning. When actors are not talking, just acting out, it looks kind of weird. But in animation, mime is constant, and you accept it.

When industry people see something different they don't know what to do with it, so filmmakers who make films about women, they kind of fall through the cracks. If a woman filmmaker makes film about war, they say "Okay, this is a war film, it has ninety percent men in it, we know what to do with it." But then it still gets attacked for not doing it properly. But even though it bothers me I don't want to dwell on the sex and gender thing.

With my personal work I prefer not to work from storyboards because being a director, producer and animator in one person I don't have to communicate my idea to anyone else, I can keep the feeling of the story, the story arc and structure in my head.

I always knew that I wanted to be a writer. I think I was six or seven when I learned how to read, and I still remember it.

I guess for major film industry players a film is a money making devise, so using formulas assures them that their investment will have returns. A lot of big studio films are created by formulas and committees, stripping away any individuality or personality from the work so that they could appeal to most everyone on there planet but to no one in particular.

There can be no formula in arts. Formulas are for factory mass productions. There are no discoveries in already discovered formulas.

Like every normal person, I hate my voice. And I am not the only one who hates my voice. The voiceover gets a lot of strong reactions. A lot of people love it, and a few people truly hate it and pronounce the films are unwatchable because of my Latvian accent. But it also has a certain level of theatricality, and everything is important for a manic character.

The ability to understand and deliver comedy and tragedy is extremely rare in one composer.