Three animation studios in three Belgian regions came together to make The Polar Bear Prince, a family animated feature produced by Maipo Film of Norway and co-produced by Vivi Film and Beside Productions of Belgium. As well as combining animation talent, the collaboration allowed co-producer Vivi Film to draw finance from all three regional film funds, in addition to the Belgian tax shelter through co-producer Beside.
The funding from Belgium has been essential for the financing of this ambitious project, and the animation crew was highly skilled and creative.
In Europe, most big animation features have to be multinational productions. This makes The Polar Bear Prince unusual, since it involves just Norway and Belgium. “The funding made it possible to keep the co-production between the two countries, and ensure that most of the work, except pre-production and post-production, was kept within Belgium,” says Boysen. “This secured a stability in the production that has an important impact on the final result.”
Vivi Film founder Viviane Vanfleteren already had experience of co-producing with Norway following the feature Titina, which was entirely animated at her two studios, Studio Souza in Brussels and Creature in Ghent. So, when she was approached by Belgian tax shelter company Beside Productions to join a bid to co-produce The Polar Bear Prince, it was both familiar territory and something new.
“The Polar Bear Prince is not a typical Vivi Film movie,” she says. “If you look at our slate, we have a lot of author-driven films, and this is different. It has songs and action, and it is destined for a broad audience.”
Scandinavian folk tale
Based on one of Scandinavia's most beloved folk tales, The Polar Bear Prince is a story of love, greed and courage, packed with suspense, humour, music and breathtaking scenery.
The heroine is Liv, an adventurous girl who dreams of leaving her home in the woods. When the polar bear Valemon offers her family a way out of poverty if she comes with him, she accepts. A compassionate friendship starts to form between the two, a friendship that could well turn into something deeper. For Valemon is not only a bear, but a prince who was once cursed by a witch.
When it comes to animated fairy tales, it is hard to avoid the shadow cast by Disney. From the outset, Vanfleteren was keen to avoid the trap of trying to compete. “Even if we have the skills to match Disney, we didn’t have the time or the budget, so we needed to find our own style,” she says. The result is a distinctive animation that plays the flatness of 2D against the depth of the backgrounds.
Studio collaboration
The scale and ambition of the film meant that Vanfleteren was keen to expand the animation team, so in addition to Studio Souza and Creature she looked for third studio, this time in Wallonia, Belgium’s French-speaking region. The partner she found was Dreamwall in Charleroi.
“When we talked to Dreamwall we found they have a similar way of working as us,” she says. “And while they have lots of experience in 3D animation, they were interested in taking their first steps in traditional 2D animation.”
All three studios shared the animation tasks for The Polar Bear Prince, with Studio Souza taking on background lay out, background colour work, Creature carrying out layout posing and compositing with Dreamwall helping out on compositing. Meanwhile, the storyboard animatic, voice recording, music, post-production sound and post-production image were all handled in Norway.
The Polar Bear Prince has been a true co-production, both financially and creatively. It has been a very positive experience and I would gladly go into another one with the same model.
During production, director Mikkel B Sandemose visited the studios once a month, staying in Belgium for around a week. After working in live action films, this was his first experience directing animation. “Mikkel is a great director, with a nice way of working with the crew,” says Vanfleteren. “Whenever a new department started work, he came here to talk with the people, and we think that contact and communication is very important.”
Combining funding
Having the three animation studios involved from three different Belgian regions – Flanders, Brussels and Wallonia – meant that Vivi Film could apply for economic support from all three regional film funds. Meanwhile, its creative input to the project meant that it could also bid for cultural support from the Flanders Audiovisual Fund.
“We had the animation director, a storyboard artist who boarded all the songs, different department supervisors, head of compositingand a lot of artists involved, so we were able to get support from the cultural fund as well,” Vanfleteren said.
Meanwhile, Maipo had applied to Eurimages for support, money which was also spent in Belgium, along some of the company’s other investment. “That brought €1.8-1.9 million to Belgium, which in turn increased a little the tax shelter and regional funding. In all, we spent about €6.5 million in Belgium, around 60 per cent of the total budget.”
The Polar Bear Prince opens in Norway on 25 December, with international sales handled by Trust Nordisk.
Other animation co-productions forthcoming from Vivi Film include Upside Down River, a series made with Dandeloo in France adapting well-known books by Jean-Claude Mourlevat, and Ewilan’s Quest, a fantasy series made with Andarta Pictures, also in France.
Work is also progressing on the 3D animation movie Ploey 2: The Legend of the Winds, with Gunhil in Iceland. “We are still financing the project, but the aim is to set up the same collaboration in Belgium, with the same three studios, Creature, Studio Souza, and Dreamwall,” said Vanfleteren.