“I bring a different perspective. I mean, I’m still a white man, but I’m gay.” – Tom C. Brown
In this interview, The Nerdy Basement chats with Tom C. Brown, director of Christopher at Sea, a queer, nautical thriller that had its premiere at the Venice Film Festival this past September. The film follows Christopher (James Potter) as he embarks on a transatlantic voyage on a cargo ship with hopes of finding out what lures so many men to sea and it sets him on a journey into solitude, fantasy, and obsession.
Dubbed a “visionary queer director” by OUT Magazine, Brown is known for his signature, hand-drawn, animation style, and story-first creative approach. Christopher at Sea immerses viewers into an artistic, visual experience around themes of identity and self-discovery. This latest project from Brown is yet another example of the creative-driven director’s significant and influential work in the LGBTQ+ community.
You can view the interview in the video above or read the full interview in detail below!
The Nerdy Basement:
How are you? By the way? Are you good?
Tom C. Brown:
Very, very good. Yeah. Little hungover, but I’m okay.
The Nerdy Basement:
Oh, that’s totally normal. That’s fine. There’s no problem there. (laughs) Okay. So hi, my name is Alejandro Orengo from The Nerdy Basement. I’m here with Tom C. Brown, the director of the short film Christopher by the Sea. Thank you for joining me today.
Tom C. Brown:
Thanks for having me.
The Nerdy Basement:
Yeah. So I saw the short film I think it was two days ago. An excellent short film. The animation style is very beautiful. So how do you come up with the story of a passenger traveling through a cargo ship? Because that’s a very interesting premise for a story.
Tom C. Brown:
Right. So back in 2015, Michael Fukushima, who was at the NFB at the time, the National Film Board of Canada, he posted about this artist’s residency, called 23 days at sea, which was, you got on a cargo ship on the West Coast. And then you were at sea for 23 days. And when you got to Japan, you had like a gallery space set up. And you showed the art that you’re making on the cargo ship. And I just thought that was such a crazy, weird idea. And then I was like, obsessed with this idea of being on a cargo ship. And I applied for the residency, but I didn’t get it. But that’s okay. Because your first “no”, is on your road to your first “yes”, so too much.
And I had always wanted to write a kind of romance kind of film. So I kind of combined those two ideas together. And then I convinced my production company to pay for me to go as a passenger on a cargo ship. That’s like a research trip that I used as a sort of writing residency. And I just, I really love the juxtaposition between the beauty of nature and being at sea. And then like this really industrial design of a cargo ship. It’s such a cool juxtaposition between those two things.
The Nerdy Basement:
Yeah, because there’s like an element of luxury. But there’s a contrast of just hardworking people just going by their day-to-day. So it’s kind of why I loved it so much. Because he’s like, living that type of facade, almost, because he’s like, you know, they gave him like the wine, the steak, and then everyone else is eating like normal stuff. And you’re like, Okay, this guy’s doing that. So it’s very interesting. I loved it, it was great. So how important for you is it for you to tell LGBTQ+ stories, through an animation medium?
Tom C. Brown:
Right, I think that you know, animation is predominantly a space where straight white men tell a lot of stories. And so, you know, I really wanted to do what I could make a little change. And I bring a different perspective. I mean, I’m still a white man, but I’m gay. So yeah, bringing my truth and like an element of my story. It’s the greatest stories come from your personal experience. So I wanted to bring that into the animation world and bring a little more diversity to what animation has to offer.
The Nerdy Basement:
So the film, there’s a lot of themes that you talked about through the film, so some of the ones that I picked up was about like depression, repression, and like, essentially, losing one’s sanity to some degree, how does the color palette and your animation style accentuate these themes, specifically?
Tom C. Brown:
Well, I really tried to use the color palette as a way of bringing people into Christopher’s, internal world. So a lot of the colors on the day-to-day life of the ship are quite kind of monotone and kind of in the browns and greys sort of area. And then as we move into Christopher’s fantasies, or delusions or whatever they are, I start to really amp up the not just the kind of psychedelic look of the animation but also in the color palettes and stuff to really kind of push the audience into a different space that is kind of representing Christopher’s internal world. And then other spaces in the ship as well kind of had their own palette. So like the engine room is this really vibrant green, that complements the yellow of his sweater, and just trying to push stuff around like that.
The Nerdy Basement:
So going through the idea of a color palette, you also use basically different camera angles, and different camera movements, camera lenses too there’s a lot of wide lenses. So talk to me about it. Because, you know, obviously animation you can play around with it. But you made it seem very purposeful that you wanted to make it seem almost as if you shot it with actual cameras. Was that the intent? And like what was the thought process behind that?
Tom C. Brown:
So it’s in cinescope. So I really wanted a kind of cinematic look to the film. And I did, I chose a lot of kinds of camera angles that were reminiscent of more sort of traditional filmmaking for the parts of the story that are more like the monotonous day-to-day life of the ship. So it had a kind of realism to it that spoke to that.
And then using the animation for what animation is so great that I could take that kind of world that we established and pull people out of it when we go into Christopher’s fantasies, and start distorting the lens and distorting physics and all of that kind of stuff to really push people into the psychedelia of Christopher’s imaginings.
So it was a kind of a way of, it’s a sort of Trojan horse, where you set up people’s expectations of the world and kind of bring people into this beautiful world that you’re creating. Once they feel comfortable in that you can start pulling the audience around a bit by disrupting that.
The Nerdy Basement:
So then also, the film has like hand-drawn animation, but you also blend it a little bit with like, either CGI, or like 3d elements or even like live-action elements. Like with the usage, for example of the water, I noticed, like when he looks out into the water, it looks like 3d and like the last shot of the movie, it has almost like water flicks on the lens. So talk to me a little bit about that, because it’s interesting you blend the two different animation styles in your movie as well.
Tom C. Brown:
Yeah, well, one of the things we quickly realized when you make a film set on a boat, is that you have to animate a lot of water. Because the boat is in the water. (laughs) Yeah, we were trying to figure out ways in which we could do that. Because of the cinematic language and it feeling quite live-action, like a fully 2d ocean just didn’t feel quite right. So we created I think five different ocean sims for various levels of stormy waves, and then composed those together in Houdini to try and make them a little more 2d looking.
So it wasn’t so outside of the illustrative world of animation. And then in After Effects, we combine those renders, the CG renders with animating textures, and also all of the whitecaps of the waves are all hand painted on top. So that we can kind of blend those two worlds together and get a nice theme of the ocean and realistic kind of looking waves but bring a bit of a painterly element into them. And actually, one of the textures we use in the ocean and light is the same texture as Christopher’s sweater. Yeah, you get the correlation between Christopher and the sea.
The Nerdy Basement:
Oh, I love it. That’s great. So then talk to me a little bit about your ending because you kind of made it purposely ambiguous. I’m assuming it was on purpose. So what’s the idea behind you want people to think that either something happened or didn’t happen?
Tom C. Brown:
I’ve lived with this sort of prophecy of me drowning my whole life from my, my mum when she was pregnant with me was plagued by these nightmares of me drowning. And so, you know, the film is set on a boat, it’s the perfect place to kind of explore that. And I gave I created a dual narrative for the ending, to kind of make it ambiguous and leave it up to the audience to sort of decide what happened.
But that ending for me kind of represents, you know, when you do come out of the closet and go and live your truth there is a kind of part of you that has, has to die that like imagine and heteronormative self and that life that you and other people have will kind of imagine for you. So, I’m sort of using it as a metaphor for Christopher. Letting go of that part of himself. And should enabling him to that is truth.
The Nerdy Basement:
Okay, so this is a fun one. If you were to throw a message in a bottle into the ocean, what would it say?
Tom C. Brown:
Ohhhh. (laughs). I suppose it would have to be like some kind of love poem or satellite message to the universe for some wonderful human. I’m a romanticist. And yeah, I would love to put a little love note in the bottle, and then the universe will, you know, make it find its way to who it needs to do.
The Nerdy Basement:
That’s great. I love it. I mean, five movies, you will think everyone should see in life and why.
Tom C. Brown:
Luchino Visconti’s Death in Venice, because it’s one of the greatest films ever made. And also, that was the first time I think I’ve ever seen myself in a film. And also the melodrama. It is beautiful. And cinematography. It’s all amazing. Luchino Visconti is my number one guy. Number two is Disney’s Sleeping Beauty. I’m sure everyone’s kind of seen it. But the backgrounds are enough. It’s so incredible. That should be revisited. If you haven’t seen it since you were a kid. So that’s two. Have you seen Triangle of Sadness?
The Nerdy Basement:
Oh, yes. I started at a festival recently. Great. I really Yeah.
Tom C. Brown:
Triangle of Sadness. You’ve got to get to the cinema and watch that film with a crowd. Definitely. It’s a cinematic masterpiece and the storm sequences in that are so good. So that’s a new one I would recommend. And then Barry Lyndon Of course. Oh, yeah. The candles just for the camera.
The Nerdy Basement:
Oh, yeah, definitely.
Tom C. Brown:
(laughs) That for one more. Okay. It’s gonna be a good one. (laughs) I’m trying to think. Oh, Tokyo Story.
The Nerdy Basement:
Oh Yes. Nice. Yeah.
Tom C. Brown:
That was a big inspiration for Christopher by the Sea. It’s just the way in which you really feel like, you know, the layout of the spaces that they’re in. And the geography of the film is just like, so good. And also, the framing in that film is beautiful as well. Let’s say that one.
The Nerdy Basement:
That’s great. Okay, this is my last question, then. What is the one thing you’d be really disappointed in if you never got to experience it?
Tom C. Brown:
I still haven’t done it. Yeah, right. I’ve never dropped acid.
The Nerdy Basement:
Oh, nice. (laughs)
Tom C. Brown:
(laughs) I’m building my way up to it. Yeah. But if I never got to do that. I think I’d be sad about that. Is that allowed on this podcast? (laughs)
The Nerdy Basement:
Oh, I think it’s fine. I think it’s fine. It’s great. It’s great. It’s a great answer. Yeah. (laughs) You can then do like a short film or a movie out of it to like the experience, you know? Yeah, definitely.
The Nerdy Basement:
That’s great. Well, Tom, thank you for your time. Thank you for taking the time to speak with me, everyone. Whenever they get a chance they should go check out Christopher by the Sea, it’s an incredible short film. Great animation. Great story. Great romantic thriller. It’s very phenomenally done. So thank you for your time.
Tom C. Brown:
Thanks so much.
“Christopher At Sea” premieres this Fall at the Venice Film Festival.
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