Behind the scenes of THE KITE / Part 3 / Shooting

The third episode of documentary series about making of a short animated film The Kite by Martin Smatana. Our original plan was to produce the whole film in Prague, but thanks to Animarkt award, we shot the film in studio CeTA in Wroclaw - the biggest Polish film studio, where directors like Agnieszka Holland, Roman Polanski and Andrzej Wajda made their films. We had a fully equipped hall and a couple of assistants at our disposal. Animarkt award allowed us to go bigger and to even make shots we otherwise couldn’t have managed. It suited extremely well as The Kite deals with flying. Shooting was definitely the hardest part for all of us, because due to several deadlines we had a very limited time, so we were usually shooting 18-19 hours per day included weekends. Sometimes, it happened that we have not seen sunlight for 4-5 days, so we were eating vitamin D in tablets. We managed to shoot this 13- minute film in about 2 and half months. Working with all that fur, cotton wool, and texture was sometimes a nightmare in stop motion! Luckily we had an animator, Piotr Chmielewski, who was in charge of animating the elements; especially grass, to express the wind. Grass was made out of long-haired carpets, so he was moving those hairs little by little to make a wave. visit my portfolio at you can say hi at martin@ :)