Picture Credits: Getty Images
One of Netflix’s big animation acquisitions out of Cannes this year was the subtle meditation on grief, In Waves. The story is adapted from an autobiographical story by AJ Dungo depicting him falling in love with a girl named Kristen, only to lose her to cancer a few years later. Set in LA, the film feels warm and nostalgic while delivering huge, heartbreaking blows through an experimental animation technique that is a true marriage of 2D and CGI, spearheaded by director Phong Mai Nguyen.
We caught up with Dungo and Nguyen at the Annecy Festival to discuss how the film came to be, the vision behind the visuals, and why this needed to be told through animation.
How did you first come across AJ’s graphic novel?
Nguyen: I came across it in 2019 when it was selected for a festival. I was curious about it because a lot of people were talking about the book. I was moved when I read the book, but I didn’t have any thoughts about adapting it. But two months later Priscilla Bertin, whom I had worked with before, came to me and said that she got the copyright to adapt In Waves. They were doing the first draft of the script and were looking for a director, so she approached me. She said there was something in my graphic style that connects to the story.
AJ, you lived this story once and then again by making the graphic novel. Was it difficult to hand that over to someone else?
Dungo: It was scary. It was an extreme exercise in letting go, you know. I think of other comic artists who have had their work adapted and are super hands-on. In my mind, I’m like, I can either let the professionals do what they’re gonna do, or I can nitpick every little thing that isn’t as close to reality and drive myself crazy. So I thought if I found people I could trust to really take good care of Kristen and her life and legacy, then I would be okay handing over the reins. It’s hard to let go of control, but I really do trust Mai and Priscilla and the team because, when they came to me, they were so effusive with their love and support of the film. Priscilla is a surfer herself, so she totally gets it. Mai and I connect on so many different levels, culturally and through our humor. She’s got a really good heart and a great laugh, and I think the more time we spent together and the more I shared my world with them, the more it became an easy yes for me to give up control. I could tell, just from the number of DMs I get from people who worked on this film, that it really meant a lot to them. There’s a lot of heart and soul and personal tragedy that’s been poured into this movie, so I’m very happy that I let everyone else use this as a vehicle to express their internal grief, if they have it, and connect to the story in this new medium.
The graphic novel looks very different from the film. Were you attached to the art style you initially came up with?
Dungo: When Priscilla came to me, she had an idea of doing something like I Lost My Body. I didn’t feel a personal connection to the way that I draw or anything; I was like, I’ll let some people who are way better at drawing do this. They made it better than I ever imagined. They added dimensionality, color, and light movement. It was not a hard decision to let them do what they wanted to do in terms of visuals.
I would love to know how you achieved the visuals. Let’s talk about the backgrounds first, which have a watercolor, nostalgic feel. How did you approach them?
Nguyen: My first reference when I came onto the project was David Hockney, because I feel there’s something very warm and colorful in his paintings, but also, through these compositions, he talks about loneliness and sadness. He also lived in LA for a long time, and when we started, I wanted to recreate that picture of Los Angeles as a very colorful place while telling a very sad story. I also wanted the backgrounds to be quite accurate, so I actually got in touch with Floriane Marchix. She worked with DreamWorks on The Bad Guys and did some concept art and backgrounds. Her work provided a foundation for us to work on.
On the character animation side, how did you achieve the look that offsets them from the environment?
Nguyen: The characters are animated in CG, and we used a script that flattened the characters and all the animations into 2D. Now, you can draw on them frame by frame. We had to do a lot of things with hair and water drops; we had to redraw them frame by frame on the characters. The reason why I wanted it in 3D was because sometimes I needed a very subtle movement, so it was easier to do that in 3D CGI.
The dialogue in the film feels very naturalistic. How did you go about making it feel authentic to these people on the verge of adulthood?
Nguyen: We had in mind some of the things already written in the book that we wanted to keep, but sometimes we tried them in the movie and they felt too literal and didn’t work. When we were working on the script, we would say it out loud just to see if it felt natural, and we did that again when the actors came to record their voices. It’s always a work in progress; I want it to be open, and for everyone who is coming onto the project to have the freedom to say, “That feels a little bit weird; you need to change it.”
Some people would say that because this story is just about regular people, it doesn’t need to be told in animation. Why was it important for you to tell it through this specific medium?
Nguyen: Maybe some of the ideas work better in animation, because there are spaces in the movie where we jump from the past into the present, and then to another time where a certain person isn’t there anymore. I feel like it works better in animation than in live-action because it’s as if you were telling a poem. Animation puts a lot of poetry into the images, because you try to find the essence of the movement, the essence of the backgrounds and the characters; you’re not trying to seize the complete image. In the book, AJ tells the story through drawings, so this is a story about how drawings can make the person you love live again. For me, it’s a way for us to keep that promise and to keep her alive through drawings.
In Waves will appear at the Annecy Film Festival between June 21st and June 27th, arrive in French theaters on July 1st, and come to Netflix in most regions later this year.
