"Logorama" Oscar Winner Talks Fincher's Involvement

Last March French directors François Alaux, Hervé de Crécy and Ludovic Houplain walked away with a golden statuette for Best Animated Short Film. LOGORAMA is a crazy ride, a visceral spectacle and (if something like that even exists) a visual satire. And guess what? The film's voice cast includes Mr. Andrew Kevin Walker (screenwriter of "Se7en") and David Fincher -- voicing a Pringles charater.

Here is a fincherfanatic exclusive look at Fincher's collaboration with the French team.

Logorama is a 17 minutes animated action film, featuring exclusively brand characters (Ronnie Mc Donald, Michelin's Bidendum, etc.) and set in a fully branded L.A. It uses more than 2,500 logos and is both a technical and visual tour de force earning both an Academy Award and the Prix Kodak at the 2009 Cannes Film Festival.
So at this point you may wonder "How did Fincher get involved with this"? Before our exclusive insight, let's remember that Fincher has always been connected with brands, through his impressive career as a commercial director, and notoriously with Fight Club which sent a blow on materialism and consumerism. Fincher says of himself that he is "totally anti-commercialism (...) Anybody looking outside themselves to make themselves whole is delusional and probably sick."

No big surprise Fincher would decide to contribute to something like LOGORAMA.


Logorama from Marc Altshuler - Human Music on Vimeo.

Co-director François Alaux was kind enough to answer our questions and reveal exclusively how they got Fincher on board:

Once the screenplay was ready, its creators felt the need to give it a polish so that the dialogues felt exactly American and sound L.A. Through their local producing company in L.A, and with the strong help of William Morris/Endeavor agent Elia, their screenplay fell into the good hands of screenwriters Andrew Kevin Walker and Gregory Pruss (Se7en, Sleepy Hollow).
Both not only rewrote the whole dialogues but served as go between with voice cast Bob Stephenson, Sherman Augustus... and David Fincher.

François reveals that Fincher, impressed by the visuals, proposed to voice over the Pringles character, which came as a surprise, knowing how busy the man must be. Recording took place on an afternoon in Capitol Records Studios. David Fincher, usually known and feared as the "greatest cynical" (as he once described himself), was very nice and spontaneous, François told us.

Funny enough, to this day, no brand has sued the production. Cannes Festival and now Oscar spotlight should be the best protection.

François Alaux and Hervé de Crecy are currently working on a Tom Clancy short film to be produced by Scott Free. Sounds interesting. So look out for more from these Frenchmen...

Linkroll:
Vimdeo.com: LOGORAMA
Wiki: Use of brands in the film
Oscar Acceptance speech
H5 official site

By the way: Let's hear how you guys like the film? And your take on what it means?

3 comments:

  1. As far as I can tell, the Pringles character speaks at 0:57, but it doesn't sound like Fincher at all! Am I missing something here?

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  2. Interestingly I found his voice to be very recognizable. It's not the character you identified by the way: David Fincher voices the Pringles "Original" chatting with his buddy "Hot & Spicy" aka Andrew Kevin Walker. Their dialogue starts at 4:40.

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