Bubble UK: An Interview with “Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires” Director Mike Mort

Howdy Folks! I recently had a chance to sit down and chat with Mike Mort, the director of an exciting upcoming indie British animated feature called “Chuck Steel: Night of the Trampires”.

JAMBAREEQI: How would you summarize “Night of the Trampires?
MIKE: “Night of the Trampires” is a stop-motion animated Horror Comedy Action movie. It’s got elements of lots of different genres and it’s firmly set in the eighties. It’s primarily a comedy but it’s very violent, gory, and probably R-rated in the end.

JAMBAREEQI: What do you think sets it apart from other animated films for adults?
MIKE: Well, there’s not a lot of history of animated stuff for adults. You could call “Night of the Trampires” a spoof or a comedy, but isn’t actually meant to be neither of those things. It’s just a film where hopefully when you watch it, it feels like a film that could have been made in the eighties. I’m also shooting it in a strange way, where I’m trying to think of the limitations you would have as a live action filmmaker in the eighties, so there’s lots of really quick action and cutting the film. Sometimes we’re setting up shots that are just 6 frames long, just because it’s a flash of action. It’s how we get the film to look a bit different to the other ones that are out there, it does feel the more live action in it’s shooting structure.

JAMBAREEQI: What kind of audience do you hope to gain from this movie?
MIKE: It kind of appeals to a broad audience. It’s nothing for kids, it’s too violent for them, but it is for teenagers upwards, they should generally have some fun with it I think. We’ve shown it to a lot of older generations as well and they’ve all been laughing at it, they get the throwbacks to the eighties as well.

JAMBAREEQI: So, which films were the biggest influences on “Night of the Trampires”?
MIKE: I’ve been getting this film going since I was very young, Chuck Steel was a character I came up with when I was about 15, and I’m 46 now. Over that period of time, the films that have influenced me have grown, I would say that there are elements of things like Die Hard, Evil Dead 2, Fright Night, Last Boy Scout, Ray Harryhausen, and all those kinds of things. There’s a lot of influences that are amalgamated into this film, hopefully, it doesn’t come across as a big homage, but it’s a story that you’ll want to follow.

Sam Raimi’s “Evil Dead 2”, a big influence on Mike’s work

JAMBAREEQI: I can totally see all those influences in the original Chuck Steel short “Raging Balls of Steel Justice”
MIKE: Yeah that one was a personal project that I just wanted to get out of my head. So I started making the short film on my own in my basement, it sort of snowballed, I gradually got some financing and a crew together. That film was my chance to show what a three act structure could look like with a stop motion action horror comedy. It was 15 minutes long, so I was trying to do the three-act structure in a very condensed form, to show what it could be as a feature. It’s kind paid off now because here we are almost finishing the feature.

The original Chuck Steel short “Raging Balls of Steel Justice”

JAMBAREEQI: And this is your first ever feature, how would you compare short and feature filmmaking?
MIKE: Feature filmmaking is just longer, it’s not a necessarily harder thing. It’s been long and tough because we’ve spent nearly three years filming it. We’ve taken longer than most stop-motion features take to make because we’re an independent film at the end of the day. We don’t have the budgets that the big players do, but we’re trying to make a film that looks like we do.

JAMBAREEQI: After making “Night of the Trampires”, do you feel that you prefer doing features or shorts?
MIKE: I definitely want to keep making features. Short films are good when you want to experiment with something, but there’s nowhere for them to go. People expect everything for free nowadays, you spend a few years on a short and it goes out for free. It’s very tricky to weigh that up with a business, so feature films are a way we definitely want to focus, and Animortal is a studio that’s going to be focusing on feature film projects.

JAMBAREEQI: Now, You’ve also had experience working on some claymation TV Series like “Gogs” and “Shaun the sheep“. Can you tell me about working on them, and how they maybe helped you with making “Night of the Trampires”?
MIKE: Gogs was the first TV show I was involved in creating, it was very much trial by fire because I had just come out of college. I just went into that project doing all sorts of things and experimenting, so I was responsible for making the puppets, animating, and shooting; it was good to learn every aspect. Sometimes you find it hard to step away from a lot of stuff, but you need to when you have a bigger project like this, you need a team around you who can do all of those different things, and you know they’re going to get the direction you’re coming from.

Gogs, a Welsh claymation show that Mike worked on 

MIKE: Shaun the sheep was a job that I did for Aardman, I directed five episodes in their first series. It was a fun job, it was very easy because Aardman has such a big facility, resources and crew. As long as you know what story you’re telling, it kind of all happens around you. On the lower budget side of things, you have to get more involved in every aspect. On “Night of the Trampires”, I’ve been quite involved with all the character designs and sculpting; so I keep my hand in but we still have a lot of people in those departments.

Aardman’s Shaun the Sheep, which Mike directed 5 episodes for

JAMBAREEQI: It’s rare for the UK to produce their own original animated feature films nowadays, why do you think that is?
MIKE: It’s such a labour intensive and time-consuming thing to make an animated feature film. They’re also very hit or miss, if you have a flop with one then it’s hard to justify getting another one going. I think every film is a risk these days because people have seen everything. There’s also a lot of people expecting to see everything for free or downloading things for free, so it’s hard to find a way forward and start a legitimate business unless you have a mega hit on your hands. With “Night of the Trampires”, although it’s playing with genre specific cliches, it will look like something new once it’s done.

JAMBAREEQI: Do you hope that “Night of Trampires” could inspire other British filmmakers to make their own animated features?
MIKE: It’d be nice to grow the industry and see what could happen. I mean, I don’t want too much competition at this time. We’re still struggling to find animators because there are so many stop motion productions going on; Wes Anderson’s film “Isle of Dogs, Aardman’s new film “Early Man”, and there’s something being made in Ireland as well. So animators are pretty much gold dust at the moment, the good ones, so I wouldn’t want too much competition at the moment!

JAMBAREEQI: Haha! So what advice would you give to those who want to make their first animated feature?
MIKE: I would say that you’ve just got to stick at it, it’s taking me a long time to get to this point, and I’ve hit periods at the time where I nearly quit; but something made me stick with it, and that last go where I tried to make the Chuck Steel short film is what triggered everything. These days, you have to do something that stands out; the short film, even though it was made in my basement, people can see that a lot of time and effort went into it. I could have gone another route, just filmed one minute of Chuck looking cool or something, and then hoped that a backer would get where I was coming from; but that doesn’t tend to happen. You have to wow people these days, I think everyone is jaded, everyone has seen everything. I’d say that if you’ve got your dream project, be prepared to really really work at it to even get it noticed. So, hard work and a little bit of luck is what I’d say you need!

JAMBAREEQI: Excellent, thanks for your time Mike. You can watch the trailer for “Night of the Trampires” below!