Exclusive Interview

Justin St. Vincent from Xtreme Music received responses to an e-mail interview with film director Epi García Ferrero and musical montage producer Lluis Garcia of Innominat on April 20, 2005. Translation support by Lluis Garcia, editorial paraphrasing by Justin St. Vincent.

Xtreme Music: When did you first start developing Innominat and decide to collaborate together?

Epi García Ferrero: Innominat began with four pieces of paper and little touches of graphite, sufficient to convince myself that this was worth doing. That’s what gave life to this project and produced entrails towards an unpleasant and ominous world. Innominat is like a language that deserves to be expressed and yet this is not his purpose either. It’s end is already obvious. Thanks to incredible people like Lluis that reach to have protagonism in my existence. Lluis made the complex decision to include the music of Fantômas in this project. Many hours were spent before we arrived at the final musical consensus. Lluis has shaped this admirable music with elegance. It’s incredible to think that when I began Innominat I didn’t even think about the music at first. Rather it was opportunities that seized it and in the end we chose Fantômas. Seeing as everything took form, the animation’s elevation was an experience nearer to the conscientious nature of our existence. And that is a very suggestive point.

Lluis Garcia: The beginning of Innominat is uncertain because the ideas and thoughts began in rough drafts, and were developed little by little. Epi and I have worked together in other previous productions, all of them directly relate to the music. The music is a way to live in our own existence. Without it we would be lost in a world without sense. When he left me the short animation of Innominat, there was only the images and it did not have any music. When I saw Innominat I knew what was going to do with those images. I was going to give them the expresiveness that they demanded. I would be searching for suitable music that could identify with the images, expressing the feelings and the sensations that are reflected in the short film.

Xtreme Music: Who would you cite as the main musical and photographic influences for Innominat?

Epi García Ferrero: It is difficult to define them and it would be a long time mentioning them, but the influences for Innominat are any act, element, or melody. I always work with my personal conspirators and among them there’s my music. I say my music, because it’s plural and it expressed the range I listen normally. I like all music and usually give an opportunity to listen without any prejudices. That is why I always have the sensation that we are not complete. The music is the basic element in Innominat.. following the trajectory from our influence of Mike Patton was surprising. But the peak for us is in Fantômas, unsurpassable by anyone.

Lluis Garcia: Innominat was created from a collection of circumstances in which the music that appears in it, reflects the essence of it’s own creation. Although there is no original music created for this short film, I think that it has many things in common that unites the music to the images.

Xtreme Music: Why did you choose music from Type O Negative and Fantômas for the musical montage?

Epi García Ferrero: I’ve already mentioned that Fantômas posses the project of Innominat. At first it was not Type O Negative during the Innominat’s introductory sequence. There are those scenes that got discarded like so many others, some only exist on paper and others make it to machine. In fact we first presented Innominat without any introduction and even without a title. Innominat was something really wild and frightful. It worked until I decided to include a scene that opens the short film and also to baptize it like Innominat. Then enters Type O Negative with their beautiful composition “Haunted”.

Lluis Garcia: We simply believed the music from Fantômas was the most appropriate. I looked for music that had sufficient expresiveness so that the images could really come to life, and I found it in Fantômas. The self-titled debut release from Fantômas is highly complex and has tremendous visual sounds that helped facilitate my task during the audio mixing process. However, the first scene featuring “Haunted” by Type O Negative was not originally in the short film. Epi included this scene later and I had to include additional music because we wanted an introduction with a linear beauty shaped perfectly by the sounds of Type O Negative.

Xtreme Music: How was the scripting and filming process developed throughout this short animation film?

Epi García Ferrero: It was long and agonizing.

Lluis Garcia: Initially the scenes were created without accompanying music.. but once we had the scenes mounted, I mixed the music that was demanded in every moment of Innominat.

Xtreme Music: What film making hardware, software, and equipment did you use?

Epi García Ferrero: At first the prime idea was on cheap paper, and later by computers due to our very low self-esteem. We used the following software: Photoshop 7.0, Flash MX, Premier 5.0, Sound Forge 7.0, and iDVD.

Xtreme Music: What are the underlying concepts that are represented in Innominat?

Epi García Ferrero: Searching, disappointment, and innocence.

Xtreme Music: Tell us more about the entry of Innominat for the International Festival of Cinema and Technology (IFCT).

Epi García Ferrero: I have produced many different projects and have been selected for V.A.I.A International Show of Video Art of Alcoi in Spain, and later at Labocadellobo of Madrid. It was here where Isaac Alexander of IFCT contacted me and asked me to showcase Innominat within the film festival.. at the moment we do not know whether Innominat will feature in the rest of the film festival circuit. However, Innominat will be visualized and a web page is currently being published online. Here in the peninsula our animation has not been accepted in almost any festival, as short films like Innominat are not without their pretensions.

Xtreme Music: What can you tell us about the future film productions you will both be working on?

Epi García Ferrero: If something does not happened, by the end of year I anticipate the completion of a project that is difficult to digest. This will not be an animation like Innominat or the others I’ve produced. It will be a motion-capture film made with one camera and a lot of plasticine.. We wish to give thanks to Justin Sanvicens for his unconditional interest and support with our synopsis translations. With people like him, everything goes far better.