Exclusive Interview: Alec Castillo Showcases “Bootleg Beck”
We catch up with animation producer Alec Castillo as he drops his newest short film Bootleg Beck and the Internet Pirates. The short follows Bootleg Beck and his mighty crew of incels as they sail the ocean blue in the hopes of torrenting an elusive treasure that promises to repair their broken childhoods.
The new short drops today and we asked Alec all about it.
John Schwarz: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Alec Castillo: My name is Alec Castillo. I am an animator and comedian.
Where are you from and how did you get into animation?
I am originally from Miami, Florida but I’m based in LA now. I got into animation at a fairly young age. My mom worked with computers a lot, so sometimes she’d come home from work with different computer games and CD-Roms. I’ve always been encouraged to be creative but one day, she brought home Macromedia Flash so I started playing around with that software as a kid.
What are some of your favorite animated series either now or from your past that you feel has influenced you in some way, especially with this series?
Being stuck at home and devoid of communal experience, I constantly kept thinking about the theatrical experience and great animated shorts that would play in theaters. Popeye films, The Three Little Pigs and the Daffy Duck parody cartoons (particularly Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2th Century) inspired the film a lot. Those films definitely impacted the pace and tone of the film.
Mel Brooks’ great parody films, like Blazing Saddles, also weaseled some influence in there too. He’s one of my favorite filmmakers.
How did the idea of Bootleg Beck come about?
Once the pandemic started, everyone was living lives that were completely online. We’d go to school online, work online, socialize with our friends online. I thought it would be interesting to make a movie about digital identity and the internet’s individual subcultures but visualized through the grammar and cinematic language of swashbuckling fantasy adventures.
It also just seemed like a fun exercise in injecting an old genre with very contemporary ideas and seeing how the old/new compare and contrast together. It really humored me to think of pirates as the original incels.
What were some visual inspirations for the look and aesthetics of the series?
I got some visual inspiration from Marc Davis’ concept art for the Disneyland Pirates of the Caribbean ride but the main goal visually was to have this film truly feel like a “real movie.” With parody, I think the closer tonally you are to the subject that you’re twisting, the more effective the parody will be. Our background designer, Cameron Grant, really knocked it out of the park and created an atmosphere & world that set the tone for the film.
Talk about some of the voice cast you got to bring in and work with, and what were you looking for in the development of your voice cast?
My two friends, Richard Pizarro and Brandon Vargas, are really amazing sketch comics and actors working out of Chicago. They are really whip-smart and have a background in Improv, so within our process of working together, they usually bring in a lot of fresh ideas that could support and punch up my script.
To round out the rest of the cast, I was able to call in some favors and ask some of my friends, who have voice acted in awesome TV shows, to play a part.
What do you think Bootleg Beck can become down the line, is the show envisioned as a series with potentially multiple seasons and are there ideas on where else to take premise or do you see it as a social series?
I have a couple of scripts and story outlines for more Internet Pirate adventures and I would love to do more. I feel like this film really set up this fun world and its players, so I’m hoping the opportunity can come where now we can really dig deeper with these characters and push them further.
