Erik van Schaaik

BIOGRAPHIE

Director's biography Dutch filmmaker Erik van Schaaik started filming at the age of twelve, creating super-8 short films that made it to international television. During his study graphic design, Erik started working for Dutch television, creating a series of animated films, live action drama and documentaries, in a variety of styles and techniques. For the big screen he created award winning animated short films Vent, The Phantom Of The Cinema and the stop-motion horror comedy Under The Apple Tree. Website: www.erikvanschaaik.com Directors statement Story When a world-famous film star is accused of eating his female co-stars, his career goes down the drain. However, this actor happens to be a crocodile by the name of Smiley. Crocodiles are much loved characters in horror movies and the audience expects them to eat people. Smiley is the most popular movie-monster of them all, using his smile as a trademark; he is The Smile In Horror. Every actress dreams of getting eaten by The Smile. But as often is the case: the higher up, the greater fall. Audiences are ruthless in making and breaking their idols. A first stone is easily cast, quickly followed by a hail of stones. Smiley gets tangled up in law suits, and his glamourful imperium starts to crumble. It all becomes very awkward and bizarre, and it is hard to say who is to blame, and for what. Everybody seems corrupt and perverted, and everybody ends up getting the worst of the bargain. However, nobody gets convicted. Do we – the audience – have a role in such scandals..? Are we perhaps part of the problem? The movie industry thrives on selling sex and violence to an eager audience. Isn’t it obvious the line between movie-magic and reality becomes blurred eventually? Vision Writer / director Erik van Schaaik started out with a little idea, which he thought was quite amusing: What if a crocodile was to become a famous horror movie actor? Great topic for a stop-motion mocumentary, and you don’t get to see those every day. Then he learned about Vorarephilia – the desire to be eaten – an anomaly that actually exists. And he came accross a pair of bright green crocodile leather boots... Only after writing the first draft, Erik realised the correlation between The Smile and the recent Hollywood scandals, and the #metoo movement. That’s when the whole project became a bit of a big deal. There were film funds who refused to finance The Smile out of fear of getting their fingers burnt. Too edgy! That really surprised Erik, for isn’t satire often a great cure for problems in society? But the Smile team persevered and scraped together a tiny budget. Erik started developing his own technique for creating face replacements for puppets, designing them in 3D and printing them in color. He had never done such a thing before, but he felt that dynamic facial expressions were cruicial for the performances of the many talking heads in the movie. The Smile was technically quite demanding. Erik: ‘I am proud we pulled it off, and what is best: the result makes everybody Smile!’

FILMOGRAPHIE