Simple, Sublime, and Out There: Interview with Brian Cowe

By Ivar Zeile

You are utilizing simple tech, very effectively. How did you get from, say, Skeleton Dad, to this new and strangely seductive visual aesthetic? Do you think tech is your future?

Ahead is my first attempt at animation, my background rooted instead in live-action filmmaking. Skeleton Dad was very personal, and I had intended to make the pilot a cartoon to be more approachable. My co-creator was attached to filming it with actors. Somehow puppets came up, also a first, and it turned out to be a good but challenging compromise. The style for Ahead, years later, came out of a desire to develop computer games; once I realized I could draw for those, it clicked that I could animate a movie. Making Ahead proved to me that I can do projects on my own when I need to. I cherish the collaborations I share, but they are not always readily available; the need to make something new, however, is. So, yes, I think I will continue to work in the tech arena as it suits my needs and the needs of a given project. I am currently in production for several new animations. However, it is always preferable to gather a good group of colleagues and/or new friends to whip up some mutual magic in person.

I first described this to an associate as having touches of South Park, its all I could think of but it doesn’t adequately describe it. Do you have any influences you’d care to share with us?

Still from Ahead.

My brothers described their experience of watching the film as 8-bit Eraserhead, which gave me a good laugh. While I enjoy David Lynch's work, I do not necessarily feel influenced, stylistically, when developing a story. If anything, I spend more time studying Stanley Kubrick to understand what makes sense to me as a filmmaker. I am unaware of any animated influences on the making of Ahead, besides the process of learning while making, which I now realize is ironic for this piece. You see, for themes, I was inspired by four-dimensional shapes and the Banach-Tarski paradox. Both subjects reminded me of loneliness and impermanence. Having now gone through a version of the animation process, I pay closer attention to how cartoons work.

Cozy and crazy go hand in hand. A child makes a new friend. These are very minimalist descriptions from the trailer and the short itself. Are you an advocate for leaving it up to the viewer to decide what’s going on?  

I would advocate for letting the viewer decide, but not so far as to let the questions distract. Even if the viewer does not always understand the world of the film, I want them to feel like they belong in it, to question it no more than everyday life. To become more concise, I attempt to make my storytelling straightforward and literal from how I understand it. This is not the average experience for others who watch my films, I am told. I suppose it may come down to taste. I am trying to remove the bells and whistles from what I do, and what is most important to me becomes revealed over time. While there is merit in any form of storytelling, I would feel unsuccessful if any abstractions overtook a relative understanding of the narrative.

The sound design is kind of perfect. I’d love to hear more about your approach to that.

While I was firstly concerned with writing potential music, I knew the vibrations of rain would provide enough inspiration for at least the process. I wondered about recording natural rainfall and would have had it rained at the time, but I decided to try out the shower. I had doubts about making it work, but risks add a lot of spice to the journey. Every sound, except for the sunny day audio at the end, I engineered out of household items or weird noises I could utter. The challenge of sound design excites me in that you are hiding something in plain sight. In the case of animation, we suggest that what we have drawn is really making the sound, which has different psychological implications than when audio is paired with live footage. If one can relate to the blatantly unreal, maybe they can relate to anything. This process humbles me because it is always a lot of work regardless of what the piece is. And it forces me to examine those bare minimum truths I have to stuff in together to finally understand the whole. The art is the expression, but the making of it is the artist. 

How did your producers come up with the $200 to front this project, and exactly what is their relationship to you?

The Producers of Ahead are one of my brothers and his wife. I was living at their home and working for them full-time in their restaurant during production. We produced a live-action short for Halloween a few months prior and had a great time. They have continued to be incredibly supportive of all of my film endeavors. $200 was a terribly rough estimate of how much food I had consumed in the 6 weeks it took to create the film, which was paid for by working in their kitchen. I was always either making barbecue or pixels. Whenever my brother and my sister-in-law would come home from their long days, they always made time to check in with me to see what I might need, share encouragement, provide feedback. The most important thing they gave me was their trust and the safe space to focus and create. I know many artists my age who create inspired works. But, without the proper support, they can lose confidence and stride and even stop working altogether. My life goal is to do for others what my producers did for me. I know many incredible people who I just want to support and see their creations come to life.

What do you hope to achieve with “Ahead?”  

Artists will tell me their intentions for a piece, what they were trying to comment on or evoke. I have no academic objection to this, per se, but I do not always know what I hope to achieve when I work, besides having fun and providing some. Submitting to festivals is new for me but already very exciting. Ahead was an endeavor into telling a straightforward, straight-laced story, as I had been given the feedback that a previous idea was too abstract. Creating fabulous visuals can be vital and is always thrilling. But I find more value in knowing the viewer got swept up in the story. Did I leave an impression? Did I evoke empathy for the characters? 

Is this your day job, and if not, would you care to share what that might be?

I would like to support myself through storytelling, and I have been trying to figure out how to make that work for ten years. Since making Ahead, I have moved back to Massachusetts and just started a new job assembling medical technology. I am also now pursuing a Bachelor's degree in Business, intending to someday make movies every day.