Over the years our natural surroundings have become the host of our ever-growing accumulation of waste and ecological disasters that have far too many times been a threat, bordering fatality. There was a time when human life existed in balance with nature, living off the Earth and all it has to offer. However, risings demands of a growing population now far overtake the renewability of the land and the seas, and our complete disregard for the environment as a race is truly catching up to us in a terrible way. While Donald Trump may insist that climate change is a hoax—it’s not—this is a real problem and the onground impact of it can be seen in our everyday lives. India is a region with varying seasons and climates, in the last few years these differences have reached devastating extremes. Right from floods to droughts, hurricanes and sweltering heat waves— cases of rampant deforestation, decline in air quality and decreasing clean drinking water, all on the rise as economic development is given more importance than our ecosystem.
The Ghost Animal Collective (GAC) is striving to shed light on this dire situation through their animated short film Wade. The film’s created by a team of ten animators — Kalp Sanghvi, Nikunj Patel, Gaurav Wakankar, Anwaar Alam, Saket Ghaisas, Shreeya Wagh, Sharath Ravishankar, Deepti Sharma, Shaheen Sheriff and Upamanyu Bhattacharyya — all from the National Institute of Design, Ahmedabad, with Sanaya Ardeshir AKA Sandunes serving as the music and sound director.
Wade made headlines earlier this year in September when its Wishberry crowdfunding campaign reached its target of INR 4.5 lakhs in less than three day, raising over a lakh in the first 15 minutes of it going live — one of the fastest accomplished campaigns till date. We managed to have a quick chat with this incredible team, getting a better understanding of the film, the industry of animation and the importance of such a movie, all while they continue to work hard on getting their film ready for the public.
The world’s largest continuous mangrove and a UNESCO World Heritage site, prediction regarding the Sundarbans’ future is grim. Covering large areas of Bangladesh and West Bengal, home to the endangered Bengal Tiger, the risk of this fragile eco-system completely submerging, displacing not only its approximated 4.5 million human residents but also the beautiful and diverse range of flora and fauna that have called this place home for hundreds of years. Like the receding Majuli island of Assam, the Sundarbans too have a ticking countdown as environmental degradation, rising sea levels, soil erosion and increasing pollution drive both humans and animals into smaller and closer quarters. It is when resources run low that there are clashes, purely for survival, and Wade draws our attention to a bleak Kolkata of the year 2040 where, as the team explains, “climate change and sea level rise force an ambush of hungry tigers and a small group of human environmental refugees together, on the backdrop of a Kolkata of the future, flooded beyond recognition.”
A tiger prowls through the flooded city, making its way towards a child that sits on a float strung together with plastic bottles; in the tiger’s mouth dangles a human arm — this is just one of the shocking scenes you see in Wade. When the inhabitants of the entire city, which is swamped with waist-deep water, flee in fear leaving behind a few to fend for themselves, what you get to witness truly is the survival of the fittest. “We have designed the environment to be as recognisable as possible. All the locations are real and completely unaltered (except slight remnants of conflict, and of course, the water that’s now everywhere). When people see that, when they see the filth and trash that has risen to the surface and they see real people living in the mess we leave behind, we’re hoping they absorb the dull reality of the situation. We’re not packaging the idea as far-flung science fiction. We want our audience to get hit by the plausibility of it and recognise the immediate threat, especially to low-lying areas like Kolkata,” explains the GAC team.
“The concept began from an article about an island in the Sundarbans delta having gone underwater owing to climate change-driven sea level rise. That sparked off a lot more reading about this certainty that is sea level rise — where might it hit us worst? How would we manage, considering we do so little now to prepare and recognise the problem? Besides us humans, our thoughts extended to the ecological chaos in general. Then it struck us that if the wild tigers from the Sundarbans reserve were faced with rising waters from the south, the only place to flee to would be the immediate north – Kolkata.”
Animation is a very meticulous and time consuming process, with each and every frame being designed and detailed one at a time. The brain drain that comes along with such strenuous work in the VFX and animation sector is understandable. “Animation filmmaking is slow, and committing to animated short films usually means extended periods of hunger and uncertainty. We feel that in the past, not too many people have come together to stick to their vision of a film and see it through by any means necessary, because the worries of a ruthlessly finance-driven world force you to take up other sorts of quick output-oriented work. If we are to have more homegrown animation, directors and artists need to stick to their ‘passion projects’ (a term we find misplaced: shouldn’t all animation be made of passion?) and build the scene from scratch. We need more short films, more festivals, more screenings, more writing,” comments team GAC, making an important point.
Honestly, I didn’t know much about animation other than the fact that each frame is made individually with the little animation work we were forced to do in school using Adobe Flash. Seeing the boom of animation films of all kinds in Hollywood, and comparing that to the little work being done in our own country, at this point I had a lot of questions for the team — do you think that Indian audience aren’t willing to pay good money for good animation unless there’s a commercial brand attached to it? Why do we have so many incredibly talented animators, but not enough homegrown animation? What do you think the audience wants?
“The response to Wade shows that the Indian audience, like any audience, simply enjoys good films. We like to make animation of the kinds where after you are lured into the film, it reads as cinema, and not an outlandish cartoon. Perhaps this is a good way to build a larger adult audience. While we’re sure the audience just wants good stories that entertain and compel, we’re also aware that we need to build the demand for animation ground up as it’s still a bit of a niche interest. Short films, comics, turning the comics into short films, episodic content, then feature length animation would be the ideal progression,” they say.
Kolkata’s famous Park Street plays the setting to the film with all locations being made to look as real as possible, except of course being overrun with water. We get to watch the people, the trail of filth and garbage we leave behind us in a situation that far too possible. “We’re hoping they [audience] absorb the dull reality of the situation. We’re not packaging the idea as far-flung science fiction. We want our audience to get hit by the plausibility of it and recognise the immediate threat, especially to low-lying areas like Kolkata,” says team GAC.
With an incredibly successful fundraising campaign and very positive responses to the trailer so far — “We have managed to interest film festivals overseas who would like to have Wade screened upon completion. Wade has also made it to several online journals for animation, and on a coveted list of the most exciting animation short film trailers from around the world” — since their first teaser screening at the National Institute of Design. Climate change and animation are two things that have long been ignored and sidelined, not just in India but around the world, for far too long. With GAC having brought these two together, I eagerly await the next step for GAC, hoping to get a chance to watch the film as soon as I can.
Posted below is a teaser for Wade, courtesy of The Ghost Animal Collective. Read more about the teams journey in this article and on their campaign page.