Wish you could have super powers? Supa Supa follows a character who discovers he has powers and uses them to gain attention from the girl of his dreams. However the path to retrieving his lover isn’t easy when he is constantly faced by archnemesis MEGA MEGA. Will Supa Supa get his dream girl?
The 12 episode web series of stop motion, animation and live action makes this journey of finding true love a must see, filled with action and laughs. Created by directors Steven Briand and Julien Jourdain de Muizon, the french web series is sure to gain your attention with its many mixed techniques. We spoke to the guys, to get their take on creating such a unique web series.
What inspired your web series?
All our influences came from Dragon Ball Z to video games, as well as short films such as the French Tv show « Bref ». Supa Supa is our attempt to express all these influences into a series using our own approach of film making (mixing techniques such as stop motion, live action and 2D animation).
Why did you choose web series as your format?
We made a pilot of it and had a great response from the web with more than 1 million views in less than 3 months. It convinced us to explore the universe through a web series, plus it allows a lot of creative freedom.
What are the challenges you came across when making your series and how did you overcome them?
Money was a big challenge as we didn’t have much. Hiring a passionate team with solid skills was our way of overcoming this challenge. Everybody wanted the show to exist, so we had lots of brains to figure solutions instead of just ours.
How did you fund your series?
France Television financed a big part of the series. They’ve been great partners and have helped us from the start on this project. Then it was several institutions (CNC, Ville de Paris ) and philanthropy. France has several financial supports for innovative projects which helped us a lot.
Do you have any future plans for this series?
The way we designed the story is supposed to work on a 3 act arc. For now we still promote this first season and we are working on the development of other series but we would be glad to continue this series in a not too distant future.
What do you want your audience to take away from this series?
Fun. And the feeling that creating a show is something feasible with small resources. We made everything ourselves, image and sound. One of our directions was to not hide the tricks, so that we keep the handcraft feel throughout the series. This is why all the music is performed in beatbox for example. And that’s also why we made a making of series (viewable on youtube), showing all the different steps of the creative process.
What is unique about your series?
It tells a classical love encounter in a very unusual way. Supa Supa’s way of seeing the world is immature and infused by cinema and animation influences. As a result, the series mixes techniques to create unexpected visuals. That’s the originality of the show.
Why did you want to make a series that was a mix of stop motion and live action?
Mixing technique is what we do. We wanted to use our visual universe to tell a funny story, and to pay an homage to all he influences we grew up with.
The definition for “supa supa” is the noise a knife makes when cutting through something. Was this the inspiration for the themes in your series as well as the title?
Wow, we didn’t know that. Great to hear it. For us it was just the Japanese way to say Super Super, as well as a reference to Dragon Ball Super Sayen (in Japanese Supa Saiyajin). We wanted to give a good karma to our character. Guess it worked!
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