Meet the Maker: Vanessa Stachel

Mr Frogula and Stella The Moth have been having a very successful year, congratulations. What inspired your writing of these characters and their story?

Thank you! Yes it has been a wild year, I still have to process everything and I’m super thankful that people like those two characters so much. A Vampire-Frog is something that has been spooking around in my brain for some time, simply because I love vampires and frogs. And the combination is charmingly weird and cute, right?

Watching different Dracula movies of course inspired me to write Frogula, making him a cliché snobby Vampire-Lord but with a twist. And Stella is a badass character who treats work like many of us secretly wish we would sometimes. She’s overworked, she’s got no nerve for your shit anymore. Deal with it.

You had a large team at the Filmakademie Baden-Württemburg who helped create the film. How did you find the experience of steering the creative as director, and keeping things true to your original vision, when so many different people were involved?  

The vision was very clear for me early on, so the most important thing was to get everyone on the same track and communicate very precisely. But at the same time staying open to the ideas of the other departments is so important. That’s when the magic happens, and from the combinations of ideas you hopefully create the best film it can be.

But I’m always checking: will this new idea work with the film’s storytelling and humour that I’m aiming for? For our animators I recorded videos of me acting Frogula and Stella in most of the shots. Of course that was also still open for discussion with the animators, but it was really important to keep the characters consistent in their body language.

What unexpected challenges are ones that you feel ended up helping the film become the Frogula spectacular that it is? 

For people who like planning, animation can be a blessing as we had a very precise plan on how to produce the film. So not too many unexpected challenges. But one big thing was that we did not find a production designer from Filmakademie for our team, as everybody was already busy with a summer project.

So we had to look outside from Filmakademie and found Charlotte Lanfranca, who was just in her 2nd semester of Interior Architecture at another school. That was her first miniature film set, she planned and built everything and coordinated her team of assistants. We were just so lucky to have this crazy talented woman in the team, as she delivered like a professional and the film would not look like it does without her.

You started making films at home on a Mini DV cam with your sisters and friends. If you had the choice to turn one of these early forays into directing into a professional project, which one would it be? 

Uh, I love the question. With my sisters and a friend we once shot a zombie film that was about a reversed zombie apocalypse: zombies lived peacefully on earth but then Business-Humans came along and turned the zombies into more Business-Humans. They then just talked about meetings and eating healthy which was horrible for the zombies. The shoot was originally my youngest sister’s birthday party. But we turned it into a film shoot (we still had cake… with fake blood on it). 

What are the main challenges facing a young director heading into the industry these days?

I think these are exciting times but maybe also not the easiest? There is so much amazing talent out there. Sticking out is harder than before I guess, but I also love the amount of different perspectives we can see stories told by today.

Getting the opportunity to shoot a first real-life job is of course also a challenge when getting out of film school. I guess it’s a combination of building good relationships and getting to know industry people, and then also a bit of luck that the project exactly right for you comes up. 

Now that you’re in your final year of film school, what sort of projects would you like your future to involve?

Comedy storytelling and some weird and spooky stuff would be great. Be that in commercials, music videos or longer formats. I’m interested in all of those and I’m eager to write and shoot more! I also still have four film school projects before graduating… really excited for those as well!

Vanessa Stachel