‘The Turning Door’ Director Nicholas Ashe Bateman Talks Indie Animation and Getting a Feature to AFM: ‘I Just Want to Make a Movie No One’s Seen’
“The Turning Door” is rare: an independent and ambitious animated feature based on an original story and script, with original songs. Nicholas Ashe Bateman (“An Almost Christmas Story”) directs, wrote the script, co-wrote the music and is one of the producers, and hopes that what he’s doing won’t be so unique in the future. Bateman, who, for some 15 years, worked in VFX and animation — a self-described “itinerant” worker who spent a lot of time coach surfing — sees a future where young animators are going to reject the status quo.
“I’ve never worked at a company, and I don’t have a concept of it, but yet I have to speak that language,” he says. “I don’t even think [young animators] will have to speak that language. I think they’ll just run directly into it and be like, ‘What do you mean there’s a world where I wouldn’t do this on my laptop?’”
Mister Smith Entertainment is selling Bateman’s “The Turning Door” — which features the voices of Alicia Vikander, Jamie Dornan, Jodie Turner-Smith, Bill Nighy and Gillian Anderson — at AFM. The film follows young Ariadlyn, who discovers an ornate wooden box in her parents’ bedroom that opens a door to a magical world called the Turning. To find her way back home and save her parents — now frozen in the real world — Ariadlyn must seek out a sorceress and her crystal vial. Along the way, she will encounter giants, whales, armies, shapeshifters and acrobatic monkeys as she discovers what it means to grow up.
Why did you want to make this film?
I’ve been writing these fantastic places and worlds since I was a kid. And as close to a religious sort of text as I have would probably be Tolkien. Those are my ideal stories — from a place of fantasy and humanism and magic, and the wonder of being a kid.
Did your lack of schooling in VFX and animation free you to be more creative?
I haven’t arrived at things through a place of standards. I’ve only really arrived at it through me saying I have these pictures that I want to make, and I’m looking around through all the tools to say, how can I get there? And it’s been helpful for me and advantageous for me in my career, because I have been so obsessed with the pictures that I can get to the answer quicker. And I’m not necessarily beholden to “this is how we do this at this company. This is where the files go. This takes three days.” I just got to get to the picture.
The film is very beautiful but has a very specific look and aesthetic, almost like hand-crafted stop-motion, but you’ve used CGI and motion capture.
I really want to make images that are deeply personal to me, that I’m understanding as I’m chasing after them. And I hope if I do that I will be able to make cinematic experiences that people haven’t seen. I just want to make a movie no one’s seen, and I think it’s possible, if we kind of unhook from “This is how it’s always been done.”
The film creates so many different worlds and creatures. What was the concept behind those worlds?
In terms of the backgrounds and the concept of fantasy, I love period. I love painters, and so much of the fantasy of the movie is really in conversation with period of fantasy that you don’t really see anymore, this sort of golden age of illustration. So you have N.C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish and Howard Pyle. And then even a little bit before that — I love the Pre-Raphaelites, which is just so beautiful and romantic and colorful, and all of that period of adventure has been somewhat devoured and forgotten by the last 20 years of fantasy films.
You have a great cast.
I’m really beside myself about the cast, obviously! I grew up doing theater, so when I’m writing, I can’t not be writing for an actor.
“I’ve never worked at a company, and I don’t have a concept of it, but yet I have to speak that language,” he says. “I don’t even think [young animators] will have to speak that language. I think they’ll just run directly into it and be like, ‘What do you mean there’s a world where I wouldn’t do this on my laptop?’”
Mister Smith Entertainment is selling Bateman’s “The Turning Door” — which features the voices of Alicia Vikander, Jamie Dornan, Jodie Turner-Smith, Bill Nighy and Gillian Anderson — at AFM. The film follows young Ariadlyn, who discovers an ornate wooden box in her parents’ bedroom that opens a door to a magical world called the Turning. To find her way back home and save her parents — now frozen in the real world — Ariadlyn must seek out a sorceress and her crystal vial. Along the way, she will encounter giants, whales, armies, shapeshifters and acrobatic monkeys as she discovers what it means to grow up.
Why did you want to make this film?
I’ve been writing these fantastic places and worlds since I was a kid. And as close to a religious sort of text as I have would probably be Tolkien. Those are my ideal stories — from a place of fantasy and humanism and magic, and the wonder of being a kid.
Did your lack of schooling in VFX and animation free you to be more creative?
I haven’t arrived at things through a place of standards. I’ve only really arrived at it through me saying I have these pictures that I want to make, and I’m looking around through all the tools to say, how can I get there? And it’s been helpful for me and advantageous for me in my career, because I have been so obsessed with the pictures that I can get to the answer quicker. And I’m not necessarily beholden to “this is how we do this at this company. This is where the files go. This takes three days.” I just got to get to the picture.
The film is very beautiful but has a very specific look and aesthetic, almost like hand-crafted stop-motion, but you’ve used CGI and motion capture.
I really want to make images that are deeply personal to me, that I’m understanding as I’m chasing after them. And I hope if I do that I will be able to make cinematic experiences that people haven’t seen. I just want to make a movie no one’s seen, and I think it’s possible, if we kind of unhook from “This is how it’s always been done.”
The film creates so many different worlds and creatures. What was the concept behind those worlds?
In terms of the backgrounds and the concept of fantasy, I love period. I love painters, and so much of the fantasy of the movie is really in conversation with period of fantasy that you don’t really see anymore, this sort of golden age of illustration. So you have N.C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish and Howard Pyle. And then even a little bit before that — I love the Pre-Raphaelites, which is just so beautiful and romantic and colorful, and all of that period of adventure has been somewhat devoured and forgotten by the last 20 years of fantasy films.
You have a great cast.
I’m really beside myself about the cast, obviously! I grew up doing theater, so when I’m writing, I can’t not be writing for an actor.