Directed
by: Stefan Fjeldmark & Michael
Hegner
Written by: Stefan Fjeldmark
& Karsten Külerich
Music by: Søren Hyldgaard,
Released on: October 6, 2000
Running Time: 80 minutes
Budget: $
Box-Office: $1.754 million in Denmark,
$3.5 million worldwide
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Joe...
Alan Rickman
The Professor... Terry Jones
Chuck... Aaron Poul
Fly... Jeff Pace
Stella... Michelle Westerson
Sasha... Louise Fribo
The Crab/The Shark... David Bateson
Stefan Fjeldmark was born in 1964, Denmark. Author of the comic-book The Snow Queen (1981). Animator on commercials, storyboarder and chief animator on Valhalla (1986). Co-founder of A. Film in 1988. International breakthrough on productions by Bluth: animator on A Troll in Central Park, sequence director on Thumbelina and storyboarder on Pebble and the Penguin, and for Kroyer in Los Angeles: sequence director on Fern Gully, The Last Rain Forest. Nominated for an Academy Award for the animationed short When Life Departs (1997). Co-director of Amazon Jack 1 (1993) and Amazon Jack 2 - The Movie Star (1996). Help! I'm a Fish is his third feature film.
Michael Hegner was also born in 1964 in Denmark.
Assistant animator on the TV-series Quark (1987-1988). Director and animator
of numerous commercials. Director of the TV spot Organ Donation which won
the Grand Global Award in the category Best Healthcare Communications Worldwide.
Help! I'm a Fish is his first feature film.
The original title
of this Danish production is "Hjælp, jeg er en fisk". It premiered
at the May 2000 Cannes Festival, and held the top spot for two weeks when
it opened in its home country at the end of September 2000.
An amusing and
thrilling adventure about three children, Fly, Stella and Chuck, who set
off on a fishing trip and end up in cranky professor Mac Krill's laboratory.
The professor believes that the continents will soon become submerged,
so he is working on a potion that will make it possible for humans to live
under water. Fly's younger sister Stella accidentally drinks the potion
and is transformed into a starfish and floats to the bottom of the sea.
The two boys set off in pursuit of Stella, Fly in the form of a fish, and
Chuck as a jellyfish. They have exactly 48 hours to find Fly's sister and
the antidote, or else all three will remain fish for the rest of their
lives.
The title song of this movie is performed by Danish teen superstars Creamy.
Help! I'm A
Fish won the Children's Jury Award at the 2000 Chicago International
Children's Film Festival.
It was annouced
in May 2001 that Denmark's Egmont Imagination and A. Film are developing
a TV series based on this 3D/traditionally animated film.
A new version
of the theme song "Help! I'm A Fish", performed by the teenage Danish trio
of Little Trees -instead of Creamy who recorded the original Scandinavian
hit-, was put together for international release. It entered the UK charts
at #11 in late August 2001.
One of Scandinavia's largest and most respected animation houses, A. Film ApS produces both traditional and computer animation for feature films, commercials, and TV productions. The company has won a number of prestigious awards, including the International ITVA Grand Prix in New Orleans, 1998.
A.
Film is a member of the Egmont Group and employs a workforce of 85 people
at the company's offices in Copenhagen, Denmark, and Tallinn, Estonia.
The company's clients include MGM Animation Amblimation, Don Bluth Studios,
Kroyer Films, Hanna-Barbera, and Warner Brothers.
Among current projects, A. Film recently completed production on its 70-minute animated feature film entitled Help! I'm a Fish! based on a children's book. Another major project in the pipeline is Jasper, a 40-minute animated IMAX film for children.
Many of the company's employees are artists who use traditional animation techniques. Increasingly, computer animation is being rapidly adopted. Traditional and computer techniques are now often combined, such as when a large number of people are needed for a crowd scene. In such situations it is much easier to use computer animation to enliven the scene with digital extras, stunt doubles, and other animated characters.
Computer
animation is also preferred when animators must model objects such as cars,
houses, and boats that have fixed geometric shapes. Drawing these precise
objects by hand is often a "nightmare of a task," as every minute detail
and line must reveal the three-dimensional form.
Jesper Colding-Joergensen is one of several 3D animators at A. Film who works with 3d studio max® 2.5 software for modeling and animation.
"I think 3d studio max is an incredible program," he says. "We also use Softimage animation software, so I can compare the two. Firstly, I think that the functionality of the two applications is similar, but 3d studio max costs only a third of what we had to pay for Softimage."
According to Colding-Joergensen, 3d studio max saves the company time as well as money. "I was able to get started more quickly with 3d studio max, as it's not so weighed down by mathematics. Softimage, on the other hand, is constructed in an awkward way, and you have to rely on mathematics to use it.
Colding-Joergensen
also appreciates the flexibility of 3d studio max software. "If you add
the fact that there are an incredible number of plug-ins for 3d studio
max, it's obvious to me that the program is more open and flexible, and
easier to adapt to special requirements than its competitors," he says.
As a result, the company's use of 3d studio max is increasing daily. "In
the beginning, we used the two programs equally, but today we use 3d studio
max 80 percent of the time compared to Softimage. There's a clear trend
toward 3d studio max," says Colding-Joergensen.
With each new release of the software, A. Film's confidence in 3d studio
max has grown. "I was a bit doubtful about the rendering quality of the
3D Studio in the early days, but it's much better now and comes with raytracing,
for instance. I also like the rapid development of 3d studio max," Colding-Joergensen
added. "Kinetix software is advancing all the time, and it's no exaggeration
to say that I'm now hooked on 3d studio max."
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