Oscar Shortlist Interviews: Director Nicolas Keppens Shares His Favorite Shot From ‘Beautiful Men’ (Exclusive)

Cartoon Brew invited the filmmakers behind each of this year’s 15 Oscar-shortlisted animated shorts to share their favorite shot from their film and explain why it’s special to them. The pieces are being published in the order that materials were received.

In this piece, we’re looking at Beautiful Men from Belgian director Nicolas Keppens.

Following three bald brothers on a trip to Istanbul for hair transplant surgery, Keppens’ stop-motion short focuses on the insecurities of this touching trio. Between the realm of fantasy and reality, Beautiful Men unfolds as a benevolent and caring view of aging as a man in modern society.

Keppens recently spoke with Cartoon Brew about the making of this short. Below, he shares his favorite shot from the short and why it’s significant to him:

Every time I rewatch the film, it’s at this moment that I’m sure I’ll have to laugh too. I’m a big fan of visual gags in cartoons, this one refers to the all-time classic where a large character is hidden behind a very thin tree, pole… and shows its face to check whether the coast is clear. I even think I remember the first time I really understood this joke. I had seen this kind of slapstick gag probably a lot when I was a child, but then, suddenly, when watching Goof Troop as a kid, I understood what was special and absurd about it. It was as if the humor and possibilities in drawing were suddenly revealed to me. It was a magnificent moment.

The hug, a few seconds later in the shot, was the initial poster. Of course the context was clear to the team and myself as we made the film together, but it surprised me what people saw in it. The film is called Beautiful Men so a lot of people thought it was about a gay romance, and not at all about three brothers losing their hair. On one hand it showed how I made my choice really without thinking, which is kind of dumb, because maybe a lot of people prefer to watch romances, but on the other hand it also created a surprise in what the film was about in the end.

I also remember that Maxim [Hectors, director of photography] and I did some tests on how we would do the mist and finally we ended up with the easiest way possible. We built a curved wall, added very soft lights, and in post, I just added a gray fading layer and some very subtle clouds. It was important to me that it felt as a good-looking but cheap trick. A small fun fact, but this shot was also my biggest continuity mistake. Eventually it was solved by animator Iris Alexandre in a very beautiful way. I forgot to put the hat on Koen’s head, but the previous shots weren’t filmed yet so we decided to give the hat to Steven so he could hold it as a comforting lucky charm.

Read the other entries in the series:

• Dice Tsutsumi on Bottle George
• Nina Gantz on Wander to Wonder
• Kei Kanamori on Origami
• Loïc Espuche on Yuck!
• Torill Kove on Maybe Elephants
• Hossein Molayemi and Shirin Sohani on In the Shadow of the Cypress
• Anna Samo on The Wild-Tempered Clavier
• Iain Gardner on A Bear Named Wojtek
• Laura Gonçalves and Alexandra Ramires on Percebes
• Tod Polson on The 21
• Alexandra Myotte & Jean-Sébastien Hamel on A Crab In The Pool