Night cap with Solar Walk

An interview with Réka Bucsi, director of Solar Walk

  How much are you generally interested in cosmology?
I like to think about things that I know I’m not able to understand. I like to feel the limits to my brain in terms of understanding distance, time, the concept of infinity etc. Space offers a variety of those things, and makes me feel my own insignificance. It’s freeing and I like to romanticize that.

 How did you work on the abstract figures? Did you do research in architectural geometry?
I didn’t do research. I was just combining many shapes and forms, and looking at what felt like a real object, but really wasn’t. I wanted to have different textures, and an illusion of functionality as well as a feeling of satisfaction by looking at them. I like how they could be perceived tiny and huge at the same time.

 Why were you interested in picturing different planets, their ecosystems and living inhabitants?
It’s just a way of getting out of my own reality, and focusing on something more interesting and adventurous. Playing God and controlling things is something an animator can have fun with.

 As Fox Mulder would ask, do you believe in the existence of extraterrestrials?
Sure. Not believing in that would imply that I have zero understanding about how vast the universe is. But I’m pretty sure they are not here, sliming around in our backyards. I wish that would be the case though…

 Do you enjoy daydreaming, contemplation and stargazing?
Of course. Who doesn’t?

 How did you work on the music?
I didn’t make the music. Mads Vadsholt did an amazing job on that part. We did collaborate of course, talked a lot about it, but he was really nailing what I wanted in the first place. We finished up sitting side by side for last tweaks. I really enjoyed that.

 Would you say that the short film format has given you any particular freedom?
I do think that the short format is a great tool to experiment with narrative, so yes. I don’t choose the short form because I’m thinking of it as some sort of jumping board to feature or an exercise of some sort. I think it works on its own, and is basically a genre in itself.

Solar Walk is being shown in Lab Competition L2.