the making of Netflix's newest ode to stop-motion animation, The House

A young girl named Mabel is seen strolling down the hallway of a Georgian home in a scene from Netflix's newest stop-motion anthology The House as the twilight rose carpet that runs the corridor slowly trembles beneath her feet.

The three chapters of the anthology, which is organized into three sections, are all richly infused with psychological terror. It is evidence of the enormous demands, difficulties, and, eventually, success of stop-motion animation.

The House, a dark comedy made by Nexus Studios, spans three timelines to tell the tale of a mansion and the people that live there. The three volumes, simply titled "I," "II," and "III," are helmed by prominent names in independent stop-motion animation.

The genesis narrative, which is set in the 1800s and follows a growing family as they move into the house, is introduced by Emma de Swaef and Marc James Roels. While Paloma Baeza transports the audience to a dystopian future in which the house is the last surviving structure in a landscape inundated by a global flood, Niki Lindroth von Bahr places the story in the current day where a contractor is frantically attempting to flip the house.

During a meeting in 2019, co-founder and series producer of Nexus Studios, Charlotte Bavasso, asked the four directors to lunch to discuss a cooperative project, which served as the inspiration for the overarching story. The story's concept, which would unfold a generational story via the lens of a house, was one of the first ideas the directors came up with. The three-story home that would later serve as the anthology's focal point didn't start to take shape until after that. "Since everything in animation must be created from scratch,When Bray, our production designer, played a key role in creating The House's overall aesthetic. We all collaborated to develop the building so that we could be delighted with a place that could 'hold' all of our unique stories, according to Baana.

The mansion is situated on a mountaintop amidst miles of lush green fields when we first catch a sight of it. The large house's foundation was composed of wood, which was then covered in handcrafted felt, fabric, and wool parts.

It also included a roaring fireplace, wide hallways, and upholstered furniture. The first chapter's visual character is greatly enhanced by the tactile, fuzzy texture of the materials used to create the puppets and the scenery.

An underprivileged family of four moves into this exquisitely designed home in the 1800s after the father, Raymond, makes an odd agreement with an eccentric architect who offers to build them a stately home—but only if they agree to never go back to their quaint country cottage. The mansion is an odd yet opulent location where meals come out of thin air and are prepared by unseen hands. Lamps are also lit automatically as the last rays of sunlight begin to fade from the sky. In some cases, it is so simple to forget that everything in the universe is made of wool and cloth. Swaef and Roels apply this aesthetic in all of their stop-motion animation works.

The pair conducted extensive historical research for clothing and architectural inspirations. They are well known for their highly acclaimed short This Magnificent Cake and their self-made, bulbous-headed needle felt puppets.

While Mackinnon & Saunders created the puppets for The House, Swaef's characters for the first story maintained their design aesthetic, with beady eyes placed in large, fluffy heads that appear to have received a light drizzle. Strange puppet proportions enhance to the gothic storytelling's ominous undertones as the plot becomes more absurd.

A few poignant passages from the first chapter involved the use of fire, one of the most difficult components to depict in stop-motion, as well as elements like mist, rain, and fog. The animation also highlighted the story's shifting tonality: The first time Raymond lit a log in the fireplace, the flames were slower and more tremulous than they would later become as they engulfed Mabel's favorite dollhouse.

According to Swaef, "Our animation director Tobias Fouracre, cinematographer Malcolm Hadley, and we worked very closely on the fire effects." Tobias created an animation system for the flames, and Malcolm programmed lightbulbs to provide a flicker effect. We knew we wanted to accomplish the effects on location.

The level of detail that went into creating the setting roots the anthology and instantly makes it convincing even as the story deviates from reality and plunges into a fever dream.

In the second chapter, the house undergoes a significant transformation. Hilltop has vanished. In the present, it now sits in a bustling intersection. We meet a builder, an anthropomorphic rat trying desperately to sell the property he just renovated but failing due to a fur beetle infestation, and a bizarre pair from an open house who won't go. David Lynch and freaky isolated apartment stories like The Tennant and Repulsion served as inspiration for Bahr, who is best known for her award-winning short films like Bath House, The Burden, and Something to Remember. "I wanted to make an eerie and absurd thriller with this current overheated real estate market as a backdrop, inspired by David Lynch and freaky isolated apartment stories like The Tennant and Repulsion," Bahr says."It's about madness that comes from within but also happens in a quite mad society, where our most fundamental need for a roof over our heads has become connected with social and material wealth, a class marker," the author said.

Together with art director Nicklass Nilson, Bahr redesigned the home's interiors to adhere to a soulless, Pinterest-approved aesthetic, complete with a kitchen island covered in imported Carrara marble, wood cabinetry in the Scandinavian style, and mood lighting that can be controlled by a phone. I wanted the interiors to have a contemporary, opulent aesthetic, but I also wanted them to look cheap and a little desperate, she explains. I spent a lot of my agonizing research time watching Keeping Up With the Kardashians and MTV Cribs with Nicklas.

The plot shifts from the dismal undertones of the first chapter's gothic roots to a contemporary, yet oppressive environment thanks to Bahr's aesthetic vision. The story's dry humor and the protagonist's desperation are revealed in the smaller elements, such as the "sexy" golden mouse statue in the corridor and the contractor's basement office's gloomy white lighting that heightens the gloomy mood.

Even though we are experimenting with the same themes of humor, absurdity, and terror in the first two pieces, Bahr says, "I'm delighted that the tonality and aesthetic style varies so much between them. "Marc and Emma's story is darkly beautiful, whereas mine is a bit more crude, using depressing contemporary details to create an unpleasant atmosphere."

Sketches, drawings, and Zoom sessions had to be used to convey the visual elements of the sets and puppets because much of the preproduction took place during the COVID-19 lockdown. The crew made sure that some aspects of the house held true across the three chapters, despite the difficulties of a spreading epidemic, such as the entrance hall and the staircase that are still recognizable even though the house around them has transformed.

The landlady Rosa, an anthropomorphic cat, is determined to save the mansion despite the fact that the home has collapsed and is engulfed in a post-apocalyptic landscape with rising water levels. "In my story, we had to make layers of paint and textures, a sense of wear and history, which involved a phenomenal team of painters and model makers," explains Baeza, who created similarly eerie settings for her BAFTA-winning short film Poles Apart. "My cinematographer James Lewis then did beautiful work with soft light and filters to capture a striking dreamlike atmosphere to do justice to those sets."The third episode, in which Lewis covers the screen with a rose-tinted light haze, loosens up the oppressive and occasionally claustrophobic storytelling from the first two.

The series' tactile textures, such as the murky tap water, Rosa's gooey wallpaper glue, and the peeled, daisy-patterned wallpapers in the rooms, refer to the artistic brilliance behind stop-motion animation. Each component is painstakingly constructed, and after endless positioning and repositioning off-screen, it is brought to life.

The eleven animators that brought The House to life frequently had to overcome minor obstacles. According to Baeza, "In the third chapter, some of our sets were pretty big because of the size of the puppets." The animators had some unusual access problems as a result, frequently having to scale ladders or reach through narrow doorways to get to the cats.

The contemporary success of stop-motion animation, which is reportedly having a moment, may be attributed to its handmade appeal and the perception that everything seen on screen is constructed from extremely palpable real things. One could even argue that stop-motion, despite its laborious production process, is in its heyday with filmmakers like Wes Anderson returning to the genre in Isle of Dogs, short films like Robin Robin finding a home on Netflix, and the eagerly awaited Pinocchio in production. What, therefore, remains of the aesthetic?

According to Fouracre, who oversaw the animation for the first chapter of The House, "there is more stop-motion being produced now than ever before in the history of cinema." It has the effect of making a genuine thing seem to come to life even while the audience is aware that it is clearly inanimate and that they might touch it. It's a kind of alchemy that, when done effectively, always resonates with viewers. According to Bahr, the medium lends itself to sincere errors and "the vulnerability of imperfection" that touches viewers' hearts—something that hardly ever exists in the polished, high-definition world of CGI.

It most likely reflects a desire for authenticity that is pervasive across society. People are more drawn to hand-selected, flawed, and distinctive items. Craftsmanship and skill are now valued more than before, claims Swaef. "People prefer thick-crust organic sourdough over precisely sliced white bread from a machine. The former may require more skill to prepare and may require more of an acquired taste, but it is ultimately much more satisfying.