Rob Munday
Inspired by director Frederic Siegel’s own “struggles with creativity”, Sit Down, Don’t Touch Anything is a unique animated short that steers it viewers through four steps of creativity, with a freshly born face as a guide. Posing the question, “what happens when you reach a goal that you set yourself?”, Siegel’s five-minute combines an experimental narrative approach with an eye-catching aesthetic to create a truly thought-provoking viewing experience.
Initially beginning as a way to keep himself “busy during the pandemic”, as Siegel worked on Sit Down, Don’t Touch Anything, between other projects, the director found himself unconsciously compiling his own creative process into easy to follow steps:
- Curiosity: Something sparks my interest, I start to pursue it.
- Yearning: I start to develop a feeling of deep connection with the subject I discovered.
- Obsession: I obsess over the process, the meaning and the goal that I set myself.
- Tranquility: I finish the journey and I look back, thinking about the result. Was it worth the struggle? Or should I destroy what I achieved and start all over again?
With this mantra for inspiration and productivity in place, Siegel not only used it to propel his project forward, he sets his four steps within his film, as the central character of Sit Down, Don’t Touch Anything follows them in its search for purpose. Born from an explosion, this newly created being is trying to figure out its place in this strange universe it now finds itself, it goes through many struggles before finally finding some sense of peace.
“I wasn’t even sure if I would end up with a finished film in the end at all”
In creating his short, Siegel explained that he “tried to work as intuitively as possible”, even though he wasn’t sure if he’d “end up with a finished film in the end”. However, before the idea for Sit Down, Don’t Touch Anything had even solidified in his mind, the animator had already been developing the film’s aesthetic, which included animated colourful textures combined with his “signature motion style”.
“Before there was the idea to create a new film, during the Pandemic I experimented with a new illustration style” – Siegel on the aesthetic of his short
Impressed with how this new visual style looked, Siegel started animating shot by shot, starting with a “completely clean slate” and without a “preconceived story or storyboard”. With a couple of shots finished, the director then began to arrange them into a “loose narrative”, before adding more shots when he found time. His unconventional approach – which he describes as like a “cinematic clay sculpture, adding new pieces until the final sculpture was complete” – helps to give the film its odd, but compelling structure. You can’t imagine he would have got the same outcome with more planning in pre-production.
With Sit Down, Don’t Touch Anything that latest short from the Swiss filmmaker to grace the pages of Short of the Week, after previous picks The Lonely Orbit and Ruben Leaves, Siegel is now working on a new 14-minute film with the working title TV.