Bus Kong Watch the winning film in the Routemaster Filmmakers Challenge.

Ed Hartwell was one of 25 filmmakers to accept the Routemaster Filmmakers Challenge (see right), and one of ten to actually complete a film in time for the 20th January 2006 deadline. His film, Bus Kong, was voted Best Film when the shorts were screened at the Ritzy Cinema, Brixton, on 30th January. Jury member Ben Walters called it "a delicious animated political cartoon that exploits the iconography of the Routemaster, London and a certain giant ape movie with bold witty simplicity". We flagged Ed down to find out more about Bus Kong...

What made you take up the Routemaster Filmmakers Challenge?
Routemaster buses are an interesting subject matter, but also it is always difficult to get a film screened. This competition guaranteed that anything I made would be shown to a large audience in a cinema.

Where did the idea for Bus Kong come from?
Before I had even finished reading the email about the film challenge, I had the idea of a Routemaster on top of the 'Gherkin' being shot at by planes.

Talk us through the animation process, in particular your use of London cityscapes...
All the backgrounds and buses in the film are photographs taken with a digital camera. My original idea was to use these photographs as they were; when you think of photos of London landmarks you think of postcard-perfect images. In reality, pictures taken on a dark wet day in December don't look that great. Also, it was very difficult to get pictures of empty streets to use as backgrounds (it turns out London is quite busy). My solution was to have some of the backgrounds as just flat areas of black and white, like in Robert Rodriguez' Sin City. The effect worked so well I loaded all my photos into Photoshop and simplified the colours and shapes on all my pictures. I then digitally cut out all my bus photos to animate over the backgrounds. All the animation was done in the computer.

How tough was it making a film in such a short timeframe?
I had a week to get all the shots I needed of the 159 bus before it was retired on 9th December. I only spent one day taking photos of buses. The hardest thing was getting a clean photo of all the sides of a bus without it driving off, or people walking in front of the camera. I then had until 20th January to do the animation, which I finished a week before the deadline.

What's the music you use in the film?
I played all the music on my Yamaha keyboard. It's very simple, each tune uses only three or four notes. The bendy bus music sounds like Jaws, and Ken Livingstone's music sounds like The Empire Strikes Back. As there is no dialogue, the music sets mood, tells the audience who the characters are, and what to expect.

All films need a good villain, which you definitely have. How much fun did you have with your depiction of Ken Livingstone?
I was originally just going to have Ken flying the plane that shoots down the bus, but when I went to Tower Bridge to take the background photos, City Hall looked too good not to use. It also links together the story with camera pans from Tower Bridge and the Gherkin across to City Hall. So City Hall became a sort of Death Star, with Ken Livingstone as Darth Vader at the controls. This is what gave me the idea of having buttons that control areas of London, such as "Expand Congestion Charge Zone" and "Inflate Bus Fare". It also meant I could have a bit of fun putting in some silly controls such as "Release the monkeys" and "Request sandwiches".

Tell us a bit about yourself as a filmmaker...
I started making films when I was about 11 or 12 with my friends and my brother shooting on his camcorder. We made a cowboy film, a Vietnam film and an alien invasion film with a bent feather duster with eyes stuck on as the alien. At the University Of Bradford I studied Media Technology and Production and after graduating moved to London. I have worked on other people's films as a runner, AD, art dept and puppeteer. These have included Funky Munky and Big Red Button. Last February I finished a Captain Pugwash-style puppet film called Time Looters, about a mad inventor who uses his time-travelling Wendy House to steal treasure from pirates. Last summer I made a six-part TV series called Finger Kingdom - short stories told with finger puppets, set in days of old when knights rode giraffes, dragons lived in the forest, and shopping for underpants was not only dangerous but potentially confusing as well. I am currently trying to get Finger Kingdom on TV, but apart from an unwatched Sky channel, I haven't had any takers. I have a few film and TV projects in development, some of which may or may not involve pirates, ninjas and cowboys.

Finally, what was it like watching the film in front of an audience of Routemaster fans?
It was like pantomime. The audience cheered when the bendy bus gets pushed in the river and they all booed when they saw Ken Livingstone. It went down better than I could have hoped.

There's a further showing of all ten films in the Routemaster Filmmakers Challenge at the Curzon Soho, London, at 6pm on Monday August 14th.

Adrian Hennigan | Published 17 February 06

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