Reanimating The Dead With BUCK Studio’s Robert Bisi And Andy Lyon From Love, Death + Robots
A lot of trends come and go, both inside of animation and beyond, but one niche that’s sunk its teeth into the industry and held on for quite some time now is the fertile territory of a zombie apocalypse. Zombie apocalypses have invaded every form of media and so it should perhaps come as no surprise to find that one of the lighter installments from the third volume of Love, Death + Robots, “Night of the Mini Dead,” applies its own unique perspective to an undead epidemic. Zombie apocalypses have never been more in vogue, but Robert Bisi and Andy Lyon from BUCK Studio make their mark on the brain-hungry niche with one of the more playful and entertaining installments from an anthology series that’s absolutely packed with exciting and innovative material.
Andy Lyon and Robert Bisi open up on how they found the right look for this narrative, how the creative parameters of adapting someone else’s story can actually be helpful, why it’s time for an animated Coen Bros. movie, and what lies ahead in their future…besides a radioactive undead apocalypse, of course.
Daniel Kurland: What’s been your relationship with science fiction and animation in the past? Are you big genre fans that were looking to take on something of this nature?
Robert Bisi: Yeah, I’ve been a fan of zombie movies for forever. The original Dawn of the Dead was a big inspiration in my early artwork. I’ve been an illustrator and drawing monsters ever since I was a kid, but then went into animation—a lot of my career in the commercial industry has been built upon animation, which has led to more short stories. You’re always telling short stories in like 30 or 60 second character animations, so “Night of the Mini Dead” felt like all of those sensibilities coming together. Telling short stories with great animation and through the background of zombie and monster films.
Andy Lyon: I kind of didn’t know what I wanted to do when I was growing up and then I realized that, “Wait, art is cool!” It’s something where I can just lose hours, especially when it comes to animation. I literally feel like when I work it’s that shot of someone at the computer and the time is just lapsing and showing the sun and moon back and forth. I nerded out on animation pretty early on in my life. When it comes to horror in general, it’s funny because it’s really not my thing, but I like certain psychological horror, like The Shining. But what I like about zombie films, specifically, is that they’re always vehicles for social commentary. It’s death versus life and it’s so black and white, but then that feeds into broader social issues and that’s been the case right from early on in the genre.
RB: With “Night of the Mini Dead” we always said it was Idiocracy meets World War Z.
DK: Why did you decide on this particular art style, the miniature aesthetic, and a lighter tone for your story?
AL: We adapted this story from Jeff Fowler and Tim Miller and the miniature thing is pretty central to their core concept. It’s like, “It’s a zombie apocalypse…but it’s mini!” That’s a lot of fun, but then it becomes deeper with the payoff of elements like feeling inconsequential and the Earth’s insignificance. That theme of nihilism and humans not mattering is a perfect fit for the medium—they meet each other right on. If we did this story in some other way that was super epic and then we pulled out at the end and we were just this fart, it would feel unearned and like it came out of nowhere. With “Night of the Mini Dead” we sow that seed from the opening shot. It begins in this cute, small place that is almost disarming by the time the ending comes along.
RB: The seed of the concept is that it’s miniature and that it’s the apocalypse in a way that’s never been seen before. By necessity, we had to tell the story that way so there was nothing really else on the table. We did experiment with different types of shots, like if we could do cross-sections, underground shots, and other types of camera movements. As we refined everything and got deeper into it, it was obvious it just had to be wide shots. There are these zip pans, but it’s really about the wide shots and the pace at which all of this unravels. And then seeing it all from this “God’s Eye View” was another consideration behind everything.
DK: On that note, was it a nice challenge to adapt someone else’s story and would you be interested in doing an original story of your own for any future installments?
RB: A lot of them were adapted by authors, but this one was a little tricky in the sense that it was adapted from a concept. Andy and I had to do a lot of writing, despite the fact that there isn’t any dialogue. I love that aspect of it. It was such a unique experience. We’ve written scripts before for ads, which is such a specific way of working. The unique challenge here was having to write something where you’re disarmed of close-ups, mediums, and all of the standard film language goes out the door when you’re restricted to wide shots. So it was this interesting challenge where the visuals played a major role in how things build up. At that point, we were just making use of your standard understanding of animation and how it’s best for action to move across a frame. So it was a little bit of both—writing in terms of the satire, but then making sure that it’d also play out in a way that’s visually interesting.
In terms of doing another installment and if that could be an original story, yeah that would be great. Andy and I have a lot of ideas for things, but I’m also just interested in adapting more really strong stories. Love, Death + Robots does such a good job with how it curates its shorts.
AL: Hearing Tim [Miller] talk about what the series really is and why it’s important for storytellers to properly tap into these ideas and be able to go deep. It’s important to approach a story from a storytelling standpoint as well as a visual standpoint. When those two elements work together it’s incredible. This story was somewhat atypical since it was more like, “Wouldn’t it be cool if we did this?” and then just throwing a bunch of ideas back and forth.
DK: So you were still deciding what locations you’re jumping to in the story?
AL: Exactly.
RB: Originally, in its inception there were a lot of gags that were built upon things that would look funny in this miniature aesthetic. Andy and I wanted it to really feel like there was a progression to it all, what’s being shown, and where it geographically spreads and when. At one point we were spreading all through the mainland of the United States and trying to do this commentary on different states at the same time. At the end we kind of rushed through this global world view. We had this moment where everything broke open where because of the God’s Eye View that’s being used it’s totally possible to show what’s going on in New York during these attacks and then whip over to Paris and show what’s happening there. The more that we zoomed out the more that this God’s Eye View idea came together and how it should be fun to check in on all of this. In our writing we were initially approaching things like the timeline was moving at a normal speed, but once we better understood its accelerated rate it was able to move all over.
DK: I know that these three volumes of the show were all kind of concurrently produced, but were you able to see any of the show before working on your installment to get a feel for what the other stories were going for, or was it produced in a bit of a vacuum?
AL: We are the rare case in that the show was all done before we started. We were basically the last episode and it was kind of like a last-minute addition. We made it pretty quickly, which benefited from this community of knowledge that already existed. Everyone was already done and wrapped, while we were just working on our thing without any knowledge of what’s going on. We literally saw the episodes when everyone else did. And it was super cool and we could be like, “Oh wow, David Fincher is a genius.”
RB: We heard that Alberto Mielgo was doing another one [“Jibaro”] and we were huge fans of “The Witness,” so we were like, “Oh my God! What’s that going to be like?” But part of what we also like about “Night of the Mini Dead” is that it’s so different, format-wise, from the rest of the episodes. We love how weird it is and going into it we knew that we wanted to push those boundaries. The number one thing is that we wanted it to be funny and make sure that the audience would never be able to take a break from laughing.
DK: “Night of the Mini Dead” is quite complete in its short runtime, but Love, Death + Robots has already delivered a few sequels to stories. Would you be interested in an extension to your episode and if you were to do so do you know what that might look like?
AL: I mean once you nuke the planet there’s no coming back from that. Maybe there’s some sort of alternate reality or ending.
RB: I’ve always thought that a zombie movie is a zombie movie, but then the next installment is an alien movie and maybe there’s a different version of Earth or other planets that are under attack. We pulled on our love of ‘80s movies and a vibe that’s riffing on ‘80s movies, but with modern characters. We had some campy 1950s science fiction references too, with the giants, so in the end it’s this hodgepodge of different era and influences, but with a campy ‘80s fun coursing through it all. I’m not a huge fan of serious horror, but that kind of camp is perfect.
AL: This story was pretty singular. It’s the fall of mankind and that we don’t matter. That should be the logline. Nihilism is real. That’s the theme, based on the aesthetic, which tells us that we don’t matter. It makes us feel small. If there were to be another segment in this style then there would need to be the right justification for it, like there was with this one. I think there are plenty of justifications to be made and ideas to explore, so who knows?
RB: Carl Sagan already did it with Pale Blue Dot, didn’t he? That’s basically the most elegant way to do this story.
AL: Carl Sagan should be in the next one, for sure.
DK: These episodes in Love, Death + Robots are such fun proofs of concept and creative stepping stones. What’s next for you two? Would you like to tackle a full-on animated feature after something like this?
AL: I think it would be, yet that’s not a project that I would do entirely in fast-forward. The one thing that we figured out is that “Night of the Mini Dead” might only be five or six minutes long, but it’s basically because it can’t be any longer! In order to do a shot that’s like five seconds long, there needs to be thirty seconds or so of content that then gets squeezed down through fast-forward. So to do a feature in this style would be like making a 12-hour movie, but no, we’d love to get to tell bigger stories like a full movie.
RB: A feature animation would be amazing, as long as the story makes sense. What I love about “Night of the Mini Dead” is that conceptually it’s sound. It’s short, but it’s so short because of the concept. Everything works together there. If something like that were to extend out it’d be a lot harder to make it have legs.
AL: Even The Lego Movie had to get out of the Lego world.
RB: I was going to say that The Lego Movie properly subverts those expectations. It’s very difficult, in this case, to tell a story that’s without close-ups. We had so much stuff that was left on the cutting room floor because the agenda was to make sure that everything was as tight as possible. There were so many tiny bits that came and went so quickly that we didn’t know if the audience would be able to read that someone is pulling out a gun or a vaccine, so it’d all get culled down. It became broader strokes in the end through all of that.
DK: There’s been such a boom in adult animation as of late which increasingly proves that the medium isn’t just for children. Is it exciting to be a part of a project like this, but to also see how many opportunities are out there when it comes to anthology storytelling and mature pieces of animation?
AL: Oh yeah, that’s the thing that’s most excited me about Love, Death + Robots. I mean, I was a fan when Volume I came out and it’s exactly the kind of arena I wanted to be working in, of course having no idea that three years later I’d do exactly that. I feel like my inspirations always come from adult movies like the Coen Bros. or Tarantino. Can we just do a Coen Bros. movie in animation? That’d be amazing and people would love it! Love, Death + Robots is playing with all sorts of genres in exciting ways, but that’s basically what the show is doing! It honestly all comes down to money and people’s comfort levels with taking these leaps. Creators can take risks, but it doesn’t mean anything until someone higher up believes in it. That’s frustrating, of course, but it’s so cool that we got to make this adult content and that people higher up believe in it. It’s magical.
RB: Growing up I was a fan of Liquid Television and those shows that would highlight unique talent or animation styles that couldn’t necessarily sustain a full feature, but they were still these beautiful showcases of someone’s vision. I had followed BLUR’s attempt to recreate Heavy Metal, which is what eventually became Love, Death + Robots, and I was initially on board with it, but then thought it was amazing once I actually got to see it. It gives so many animation directors the best platform to do the weirdest shit. It’s a showcase that’s too risky for features, or even for most of television. It’s cool to get to see all of these amazing stories, but also the talent that it inspires and brings forward through these concentrated bursts of creativity. It becomes such a pure expression of art and storytelling when that level of creative vision is combined with these incredible short stories.
Another thing that I love about Love, Death + Robots—Andy and I are artists and we grew up as artists—and so it’s so amazing to see the level of respect for the craft of animation itself that accompanies this series. This is present among my peers in the animation industry, but I think it’s starting to carry over into general audiences too, which is really cool. Audiences are just naturally becoming savvier to animation and identifying these different styles and voices.
“Night of the Mini Dead” and all three volumes of ‘Love, Death + Robots’ are currently available to stream on Netflix
