AMMONIA

I wanted to cover this topic because I observed this particular form of generational conflict, both recently at member in my family and in my own youth. Especially the jealousy of old age towards youth.
The exercise of power and discipline is often a cover for the realisation that time is irreversible.

Professor Kranswer perceives the student Rafaela as a threat and at the same time feels attracted to her. 
Rafaela is playful and follows her own mind, which is often at odds with her environment.

I am always interested in revealing the inner world of the main characters to the viewer. It’s not a dream world, but rather a reality that exists in a parallel space in the mind and the feelings of the character.
I always aim to find the images and forms that correspond specifically to the story.

The decision to use animation came from the need to show Rafaela's own world, where things work the way she wants them to do. She is someone who draws and does crafts, does things with her hands and also likes to move. She is a physical person.

Adding the backgrounds with the pupils later im the process came from the idea that I wanted to set the rest of the class in a distant and disconnected space. As a form of memory - people from the past. 
At some point these two levels begin to merge into one another and this happens at a different time for the individual viewer.

In one of my earlier short films, TRANSIT, the story moves also into the inner world of the main character. She is somebody, who lives in her car, as she can’t live at home anymore after a break up. She needs to be outside, moving, away from the space that she and her ex-partner used to share.

ANIMATIONS AND SOUND:
We had an extensive pre and post production as the animator and me had to rebuild the animal figures several times because of the fragility of a mixed media figure.

We shot the background scenes with the classes and had to integrate them into the film. I wanted to be able to change the proportions of the pupils in the background. They are like a tableaux that is sometimes nearer and another times further away from the main characters. They refer to the emotion that occurs in the foreground.

The schoolyard scenes has in the background the yard of my old school that has already closed down. I love this old yard as it has not changed since the 1980ies.

I created out of the real materials used in the film nearly all the foley sounds for the animations. A few additions came from a library. The main idea was not to use real bird sounds for the build animals. I wanted to bring the feeling of metal into the sound, something mechanical. There are though organic sound such as breathing and several effects I did produce in my own throat.

ON ACTORS:
It was a challenge to work with the young actors in Ammonia, as only few of them had any film or acting experience. In all of them, I could find something of the character they portrayed.

Elisa, who plays Rafaela, was the first person who auditioned for the role. 
Although we invited far more teenagers, I caught myself always thinking about her as the ideal cast. And Elisa was the only one who asked about what the bird and the spiders looked like. She was curious about Rafaela’s world from the beginning.

Yasmin brought a certain amount of comedy into Kranswer’s character. Kranswer’s madness and fear gets the best of her. 
Beside that, Yasmin found it an interesting challenge having to act with thick glasses, through which she could hardly see the other actors.

Paul Matić and Alexander Absenger, both work in one of the biggest theatres in Vienna and loved the challenge in their characters. We wanted to move their scenes and the film in general further away from reality. The characters are mainly representing themselves and not acting as real people. Their stage-like appearance gives them an unreal space, where Kranswer acts out her superior role in the school’s system.
However she tries to insist on her power and domination, she can never escape the fear of death and being replaced by the next generation.