In recent years, it has become a tradition for animated adaptations of beloved children’s books to grace our screens during the festive season. While this trend arguably began in the 1980s with Dianne Jackson’s adaptation of Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman, more recent years have brought us several Julia Donaldson classics, as well as older favourites like Michael Rosen’s We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and Judith Kerr’s The Tiger Who Came to Tea, both directed by Robin Shaw. This year, Shaw returned to the director’s chair for another Kerr festive adaptation, with the Lupus Films produced Mog’s Christmas, which has earned a nomination for this year’s Best British Short Animation award at the BAFTAs. Curious about the process of bringing cherished books to life, we sat down with Shaw to discuss the art of creating family-friendly films, the challenge of staying true to the original story, and his approach to replicating the tactile, intimate experience of holding a book through animation.

[The following interview is also available to watch at the end of this article.]

One of the things we always like to talk about with our filmmakers is their career paths. Could you share some information about how you got to the position that you’re in now, where you’re directing BAFTA-nominated short films like Mog’s Christmas?

It’s a weird one because I remembered recently that when I was at art college, my ambition was to do something very specific – I wanted to make half-hour specials for Channel 4. That all came from watching The Snowman when I was a kid, which was the first time I’d seen animation that really touched me. Where I felt a proper connection with what was being shown, the way emotions were portrayed, the way the drawings were done, the subject matter, the fact that it was set in the UK. It had a powerful impact on me. I would have been about 11 or 12 at the time, and I already had an interest in animation. I loved the way it was made, the trickery of it, or ‘Trick Film’ as they call it in Germany, was mesmerising for me. When I was small we had shows like Ivor the Engine, Ludwig, and Paddington. They were just magical in their diversity and use of different media. The limitations of doing stuff on film or under a rostrum gave rise to such creativity and were fascinating for me.

I was already keen on animation, but there was no one in my family who had been to art school or university, so I was really sticking my neck out trying to get into art school. I had this ambition about wanting to do half-hour specials, and it took quite a while to get there. I had a long apprenticeship in commercials, and unlike a lot of people who go into making short films, I didn’t do any postgraduate courses. I went straight into the industry and worked my way up. In my late twenties, there was a huge revolution when CG seemed to take over everything. I felt a lot of pressure to go down that path, but I ended up resisting it because I realised how miserable trying was making me. I decided to stick at what I loved doing, drawing, and one way or another, not least thanks to Ruth Fielding and Camilla Deakin at Lupus Films, I got to where I am now.

It feels like Mog’s Christmas falls into the tradition of Channel 4 Christmas-themed short films that have been happening in recent years. You’ve directed several of these, including We’re Going on a Bear Hunt and The Tiger Who Came to Tea. All of those are beloved children’s stories, did you feel any pressure translating them to screen?

Yeah, there is a pressure. You have to do the book justice. A book is a really intimate thing. In an ideal world, a book like The Tiger Who Came to Tea has been read by a parent to a child, and that’s such a precious thing. You mess with that at your peril! You have to respect the book, but you also can’t just do a straightforward retelling of the book on screen, it would fall flat. You have to give the film its own identity and make it work as a film. The greatest pressure lies in balancing those two things: respecting people’s perceptions of the book, and everything it means to them and yet, creating something new that works as a film.

You have to respect the book, but you also can’t just do a straightforward retelling of the book on screen, it would fall flat. You have to give the film its own identity and make it work as a film.

My rule of thumb is to think about what the book means to me. What are the core elements? For The Tiger Who Came to Tea, I got my oldest daughter to write down on my copy of the book all the things she remembered from when it was read to her as a child. Those things are key. But then you have your own vision for the film. For example, with The Tiger Who Came to Tea, my lasting impression was the scariness of the tiger, so I wanted to maintain the threat of the tiger. The pressure is in following through on the vision you have for the film. What I tried to do with Mog’s Christmas and The Tiger Who Came to Tea is not make a normal animated film, I wanted there to be something unique and special about them, where they feel more like European independent films than mainstream American-style animation. All of that drew upon the illustration style of the books and the characterisations. Communicating all the ideas in the vision I have for the film to the crew and then following it through despite all the day-to-day pressures of production is quite a difficult thing to do.

It sounds like keeping it personal is core to creating a successful adaptation.

It’s easy to think that it’s got nothing to do with you because it’s an adaptation of a book, but these films are incredibly personal to me. You bring some of yourself to it, then I think the audience receives that well. They will understand that what you’ve made is a film that has an emotional core to it. It’s also about knowing what you’re making. I always think, “What am I trying to do?” I’m trying to make a film that can be enjoyed equally by adults of all generations and their children, all at the same time. Where they come away thinking, “I’m glad we sat down and watched that all together.” It’s really important that they watched it all together. You have to tell them right at the beginning what the film is going to be — the style of storytelling, the humour. You have to put them at their ease. That’s something I try and do when turning the books into films.

It’s easy to think that it’s got nothing to do with you because it’s an adaptation of a book, but these films are incredibly personal to me.

You’ve definitely created something that different generations can enjoy. I watched Mog’s Christmas with my children, and they both really enjoyed it. It was great to introduce them to a story I was already familiar with. Taking a look at the production of Mog’s Christmas you went for a 2D animation style. Did you ever consider doing it any other way? Can you give us some insight into your production process?

No, it was always going to be 2D because integral to the book are the illustrations. One thing I try to do in the films is replicate the physicality of holding a book with white paper and illustrations sitting on top. The graphic style of the film tries to remind people all the time that they’re looking at a frame. Sometimes scenes are vignetted, sometimes they’re full bleed – a bit like holding a book and looking at the illustrations. You couldn’t do that in any other medium. I love all forms of animation, but my first love is drawing. I love solving puzzles when it comes to working out how to translate an illustration that’s been drawn without any consideration of it being animated – how to turn that into an animatable image. Solving puzzles of composition, trying to translate something you might get in a book that’s elongated and portrait and making it fit 16:9. Taking all the compositional rules of the book and translating those into film language is really fun to do. I think if it were animated in any other media, it would lose that direct connection with the source material.

I love solving puzzles when it comes to working out how to translate an illustration that’s been drawn without any consideration of it being animated – how to turn that into an animatable image.

We had about three/four months of storyboarding, which slightly overlapped with the start of the layout process where we’re starting to draw up in line work all of the backgrounds and work out the scenes. There’s a bit in the middle where everything is going on all at once — storyboard changes, layout, background painting, animation, cleanup. We started in September 2022, I was still working on some of the files in October 2023 and we delivered at the end of that month so it was a bit tight. There was quite a lot in this film — seven human characters, Mog, passersby, and more. It was a big undertaking.

It’s hard to talk about Mog’s Christmas without touching on your cast. You’ve got some great talent lending their voices, like Benedict Cumberbatch and Claire Foy. How did you collaborate with them to bring their characters to life?

We’d previously worked with Benedict Cumberbatch on The Tiger Who Came to Tea, so he knew what to expect. They were all absolutely fantastic. The key is to know who the characters are, their personalities, what they’re prone to do. As I started storyboarding, I decided how to clearly define each character. There are clues in the script but you take it to the next level when you start storyboarding, adding bits of dialogue and visually defining the characters. For example, the jolly uncle is larger than life, in your face in the best possible way and the aunts are like Hinge and Bracket. When the actors came in, I described their characters to them and tried and find quick reference points for them to draw upon. So for Mr Thomas, the dad, I told Benedict Cumberbatch there’s something of the Basil Fawlty about him in his frustration and indignation. With Claire Foy, I explained that the mum isn’t the ‘sensible one’ but is more the one who doesn’t get too bothered when things go wrong and doesn’t get wound up like dad. They come in and just nail it! It’s incredible watching good actors at work. It’s not just that you’ve had an idea about how you want the line to be said. They do that and then add something more to it that is completely surprising and then lets you take the animation in a whole new direction. That’s really exciting!

The biggest challenge is keeping your mind on the big picture. It’s about balancing the film out so the whole thing feels right, and not just a collection of really nice bits you’ve pushed to get perfect with other bits that aren’t like that.

Your film also boasts David Arnold as composer and a song by Sophie Ellis-Bextor. How important do you think the music is in the success of Mog’s Christmas?

After doing The Tiger Who Came to Tea, I really wanted to work with David Arnold again because it’s all part of the same universe. The films look, feel, and sound connected. From an early stage, I started planning out the music — what instrumentation I ideally wanted, where it should be, what tone, what feel it should have, how the music tells a story. We had dummy tracks in the animatic to show David, and he’s incredible at doing exactly what you wanted but much more. He just takes it to a whole new level. The music is so intertwined with the picture, which is exactly as it should obviously – it’s a drumbeat, a heartbeat that goes through the film. It’s great, and I hope very much to do it again. Mog’s editor Richard Overall came up with a definition that it’s like the music David did for The Tiger Who Came to Tea but five to ten years later. So from a ’60s sound to a more ’70s easy-listening vibe. David’s brilliant as well because it’s notionally a ’70s Christmas – which for me, part of that sound is steel drums, Mary’s Boy Child by Boney M. – and he managed to combine brass band and steel drum in one sequence. He’s a damn clever chap.

What would you say was the biggest challenge in creating Mog’s Christmas?

There’s a point in production where stuff is coming in left, right, and centre, and it’s exciting, but inevitably there’s a time limit. You can’t keep changing things. The biggest challenge is keeping your mind on the big picture. It’s about balancing the film out so the whole thing feels right, and not just a collection of really nice bits you’ve pushed to get perfect with other bits that aren’t like that. You’ve got to keep one eye on the macro and one eye on the micro all the time. In practical terms, the hardest part for me was towards the end when I was animating the song sequence while directing the film and doing a million and one other things. The song sequence, there’s a hell of a lot going on in it, two minutes in the film, and I was personally responsible for getting it all put together. That was a bit hairy.

Beyond the BAFTAs, what does the future hold for you? Have you got any new projects coming up?

I’d love to do more of these obviously, but I’ve also got a couple of my own projects that I’ve started working on and am trying to get going.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *