Michel Club
Synopsis
On a large island, somewhere in the middle of the ocean, humans are living an ideal life, peaceful and equalitarian. The price of their tranquility: Michels, little creatures carrying out the work that the humans no longer want to do. Every year, the Michels are allowed to retreat to the Great Mudpool, a seaside resort for Michels where, in reality, they are killed, crushed and recycled into new Michels ready for use. One day, a Michel escapes from the Great Mudpool and is adopted by a family in the village. His adoption will have a cascading effect on social organisation, confronting the inhabitants with their privileged lifestyle and forcing them to show their true selves.
Director: Paul Mas
Main Producers: Joachim Hérissé and Stéphanie Launay (Komadoli Studio, France)
Format: 7 X 13’
Target audience: Young Adults / Adults
Techniques: Stop-motion
Michel Club is a captivating stop-motion animation series project pitched at Cartoon Forum 2024. Its enigmatic story, unfolding in a deceptive utopia within a dystopian world setting, makes us intensely curious about the story as a whole.
We interviewed Paul Mas, the director of the project, on the story behind Michel Club.
Interview with Paul Mas
Hideki Nagaishi (HN): What part of Michel Club, the animated TV series, do you think are especially appealing to your target audience?
Paul Mas: The society we live in is rooted in inequality, and I think it’s important to make stories about what we see everyday. I think that the themes in Michel Club (class disparities, immigration, racism, privilege) are quite inevitable for anyone living under capitalism, which is almost everyone on this planet.
HN: How did this project start?
Paul Mas: The project started during lockdown. In order to deal with boredom and end-of-the-world anxiety, I began to have this super-stable routine of writing absolutely everyday. I had just finished my previous short film, Precious (produced by Je Suis Bien Content) and I finally had the time to watch films again. I noticed that the films that I was enjoying the most were actually super mainstream films, with good quality writing and directing (for example, I remember being amazed after watching Men in Black for the first time). From these two things combined, I began to write science fiction with a political comment.
HN: Where did the initial idea of the story and the characters come from?
Paul Mas: The concept and the whole story evolved a lot over time, but the main idea comes from my grandparent’s story. They were Spanish and Moroccan immigrants, and they worked as butlers for an insanely wealthy family. My dad spent his whole life having a very ambiguous relationship to rich people, as he hated them as much has wanted to be a part of their social circle… Which inspired me the character Michel the First.
I also think that the story comes from my experience of living in Paris, which is a city where inequalities are blatant, as you can switch from fancy hipsters place to migrants camps in a few meters. The villagers and Lucide are inspired by a lot of left-winged yet upper-middle-class people that I can meet quite everywhere in the art and animation industry.
The Gravedigger is inspired by my grandfather. He fought in the Algerian war, and never talked to us about it. To me, this generation represents a dark past of France, which still have a huge impact on French society nowadays.
HN: During the story writing, what do you take care in the most, and what are the difficult parts so far?
Paul Mas: The hardest part is not to write a story that’s too Manichaean, and balancing the characters between each other: I really want all characters to be as interesting, and it’s sometimes quite hard to resist the desire to write characters that are pure evil, pure losers, or perfect little angels that want to fight for what’s right. I want to find qualities and have empathy for all the characters in the series, and for some of them it can be quite hard. It’s also difficult to keep radical writing without leaning too much on one political side or another. But I’m enjoying this so much!
HN: Could you please let us know what you take care in the most in terms of the visuals of the characters and the visuals of the story’s universe?
Paul Mas: About the visuals, the most important thing for me is that they reflect properly the historical references that we’re using. The series’ aesthetic is strongly influenced by the 60’s-80’s era, a period where a lot of western societies experienced wealth and fast development. I want people to look at the sets and feel that something is familiar. It’s also quite hard to maintain a “handmade” aesthetic, as we nowadays tend to do stop-motion animation that’s too clean and looks like CGI.
