PRODUCTION MORNING JOY
O ften the simplest stories are the hardest to perfect, and Morning Joy is one of those rare examples. An animated short directed by John Henry Hinkel, the tear-jerking, dialogue-free film sees a depressed man rediscover his happiness through music. Hinkel and project partner Ethan Pakchar ‘always wanted to tell a musical story about a human-bird collaboration’, recounts Hinkel, but studios wouldn’t bite. Then, in March 2020, lockdown began. Alone in his apartment, Hinkel noticed the birds singing cheerfully through the silence, while ‘everyone in the human world was depressed’. Wanting to explore that disconnect, Morning Joy was born. TIME AND TIME AGAIN Hinkel and Pakchar dove head first into Morning Joy , assembling a small but mighty team of artists and editors who ‘responded to the story and the themes’. “It was trial and error, and learning as we went,” describes Hinkel, whose own background leans more towards writing and producing. The task proved more challenging than Hinkel had expected, with ‘cost and time’ as the main barriers to entry. “We managed to get a lot of talented artists to agree to do it cheaply,” recounts Hinkel.
LABOUR OF LOVE Despite encountering challenges such as costs and timeframes, this project was important to show the value of music and connection during hard times
“The thing is, if you don’t pay that much, you can’t force people to work quickly.” From its inception in March 2020 to its premiere in January 2023, Morning Joy took almost three years to complete. “I slightly underestimated the timing,” Hinkel admits. “You can sometimes fly through a live-action short, but I quickly realised that wouldn’t be the case with animation. “Animation is time-consuming as it’s so iterative,” Hinkel continues, “and every second is costing you a lot of money. By the time you start animating, you want to know exactly what film you’re making.” ANIMATION IN MOTION After developing the film’s script and storyboard, it was time to create an animatic – a crucial step in the previs process. This was done by Nat Matthew, who was ‘a huge lifesaver’, beams Hinkel. The animatic truly set things in motion, providing leverage for Hinkel to procure funding, which eventually came through donations and Kawai – the latter in exchange for product placement.
Matthew’s animatic attracted other artists, including Larry Scholl, who’s known for his work on Disney films like Mulan (1998) and Mulan II (2004), The Lion King II (1998) and The Jungle Book (2016). “He helped enhance some of the more
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