Dave McKean


Who are your main inspirations and influences, visually? In MirrorMask I could see elements of Jan Svankmeyer, but also Hieronymus Bosch, Brothers Quay, Terry Gilliam and Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Any of these?

I love all of the above, plus many, many more. The Quay’s film Street of Crocodiles lives in my blood stream. I only realised this when I finished a scene in MirrorMask, the music box dolls singing close to you, and realised, only after it was all done, that it is strikingly close to a scene in Street of Crocs. I’m so close to it, I didn’t notice.
Several other artists work were strong influences, Henry Moore, Miro, Louise Bourguois. Also, the films of Murnau and Dreyer. I realise this sounds strange, citing filmmakers from the 20’s on a computer animated kid’s film, but the feeling I get watching those films, like Faust, Nosferatu, Vampyr and Sunrise,
as well as many other silent films like Der Strasse, Cabinet of Dr. Caligari and
From Morning ‘Till Midnight fed directly into the atmosphere in the film.

What about the influences for your line illustrations?

Obviously most of the drawings in the film are mine, so my ‘line’ is everywhere. Some of the drawings are by Ian Miller, including some of the skylines. But my line, my sense of proportion and shape is in the design of everything, the characters, the costumes, the buildings, the sheets of translucency hanging in the air.

How much of you line work was used in the film?

I got Ian involved to help contribute the huge amount of drawings needed to fill Helena’s bedroom and the hanging drawings in the Dream Park. But most of the drawings are mine.

Your 2D work uses layers and multiple elements, like a collage. Did you consciously try to adapt that style to your cinema work?

It just feels very natural to create images like that. To a degree it was a safety blanket to set the film in a world of drawings, so the sky could look like paper, and the characters could be torn and fractured, but I love hand-made images, and computers are wonderful collage tools. They are usually used to create slick airbrushed perfection, but you get out what you put in. We put in rusty metal, burned out computer chips, and dusty, scratchy old photographs.

Were the effects done at Henson’s in London? Was it all CG or were there also some puppets?

NO! Oh dear, this is getting to be a perceived fact. Henson’s had nothing to do with the CG, in fact, we couldn’t afford the Creature Shop. I had to put together a small group of 15 ex-students in a room in North East London, and buy the equipment, including a small render farm, to make the film. Henson’s helped us out with 2 weeks of rendering near the end of the production.
There were no puppets. Or muppets.

The choice of music was interesting, quite eclectic and not to everyone’s taste. How involved were you in choosing it?

Very. I love jazz, I understand many people don’t, and the score has proven to be contentious. But I like films that stake a bold claim with their choice of music, rather than the bland interchangeable orchestral mush you often get. I love Gato Barbieri’s score for Last Tango, or Eric Serra’s for La Dernier Combat. Those scores tune me into the film as soon as I hear the first couple of notes.
I talked to Iain Ballamy a lot at the script stage. I got him to write and play the circus music live during the shoot. And then we kept in touch constantly. Iain started working with Ashley Slater straight after the edit was completed. I included some temp score in the edit, which was a little daunting, but Iain did a great job, I think. We grabbed all sorts of great musicians as they passed through London, and recorded bits of music and sound that he could weave into the whole. We got the best cymballum player in the world in his dressing room at the Barbican.

You’ve worked on movie visuals and designs before (including Blade and Sleepy Hollow), but how was directing for you, having to work with a cast and crews and budgets etc?

I personally found it very difficult. I enjoyed working with the actors, that was an area where the version of the film that we shot improved a great deal from the version in my head. Most of the look of the film is very close to the way I imagined it, but having real people speak and improve the lines in the script was a wonderful experience. But the shear quantity of opportunities to screw up is overwhelming at times. You just can’t, or, I just can’t, get it right every time. And my lack of experience meant I was inventing the wheel every day.
The crew were great, it was a (mostly) happy team, helped by the fact that the producer, CG supervisor and DP are my three regular team mates. To be honest, I still feel like an impostor shouting ‘action’ and ‘cut’, but maybe I’ll grow into it.
The logistics of everything I find fascinating, I love problem solving in any field.
It was a hectic schedule, in the studio we were doing 50 set-ups a day. I would like more time to think next time.

You had some great comic talent in the cast; Rob Brydon, Lenny Henry and Stephen Fry, even though the film is not a comedy. How was it working with them?

All wonderful. Lenny I knew a little bit anyway, he has such a characterful voice. Stephen Fry was in and out in 20 minutes. We wanted classic Stephen Fry and that’s what he does. Rob Brydon was a wonderful surprise. We didn’t have a funny part for him, but he found moments all over the place to have fun with the character. He is known for inhabiting comic personas, but this role is very close to his real self, especially during the 2 scenes with Stephanie on the roof.

The girl in it (Stephanie Leonidas) reminded me of a young Helena Bohham-Carter. Was that just a coincidence, with the character being called Helena?

Yes, although she reminded me of her too. Simon Moorhead, the producer, saw her in a TV film called Daddy’s Girl and recorded half of it for me. She came in to read and was obviously perfect.

The film doesn’t seem to be aimed at any specific age group, even though it is more of a children’s fantasy, for older children or rather precocious kids, such as those that read Pullman’s His Dark Materials trilogy. It is an intelligent film, both visually and lyrically, with lots of touching, emotional moments as well as some humorous ones. Was it your intention to make it so or did the story demand it?

I guess we set out to make a family film really. Not a kid’s film, something for everyone. I worry that the story is really too simplistic for an adult audience, but I have no worries about the darker elements, and the human drama at the centre being too much for kids. I think kids understand and respond to far more than the sanitised stuff that often passes for animated entertainment.

Do you have any other projects in development you can talk about? Anything else you plan to do with Neil? American Gods for example?

I have written a script based on, and greatly expanded from, a graphic novella that Neil and I did ages ago called Signal to Noise. At the moment I’m designing a Broadway musical version of Lestat, due to open in April. I’m also finishing off a collection of all my short films for a DVD release at the end of the year.

Thanks. We look forward to that and seeing MirrorMask in cinemas soon.

For more about the film visit the MirrorMask website.