Steal the Naughty List is a Christmas-themed feature-length stop motion animated film written and directed by Nathan VonMinden and produced by Upstairs Studio Animation, an independent studio in Brandon. The studio gets its name from the fact it literally is located upstairs in the VonMindens’ family home.
The production was a true family affair. Nathan’s wife Meleice, who homeschools their six children, served as a producer. Their three eldest children took on various roles: son Jackson, 19, served as animation director; daughter Avery, 17, did set design; and daughter Charis, 15, assisted as an associate producer. The production also trained and employed several local animators and artists.
The film is available to buy on streaming platforms Friday, Nov. 15. Nathan VonMinden, who also serves as Director of Video and Storytelling at Pinelake Church, recently spoke with us about the film’s production and the future of Upstairs Studio Animation.
How did the idea to do a feature-length stop motion animated film come about?
This is my third feature film. I’ve been a filmmaker for about 20 years. My first movie was Uganda Man, and it was about the water crisis in Uganda. That was a documentary. And my second film was The Challenger Disaster, a feature theatrical movie.
I’ve always loved animation and Christmas. I had the idea for the story about seven years ago. I was just thinking about the idea of “the naughty list” and right and wrong, and I was playing around in my mind thinking, what would be the worst way to get off the naughty list? And I thought, what if you stole it? You’d think you’d have to actually be good to get off it. And then I thought, what kind of characters would steal the naughty list? Well, obviously ones who are on it, bad little characters. That felt like a fun arc to go on, a journey to a place where they recognize the true meaning of Christmas.
Two of my favorite films of all time are The Wizard of Oz and Mad Max: Fury Road, and this is kind of a combination of both of those. It’s this epic race across the frozen tundra to steal the naughty list from Santa Claus. Along the way they learn about the real Saint Nicholas. Which also fascinated me about the story: What are the origins of Christmas? Where does all this come from? Especially having worked in a church for 20 years. Every year Christmas is a big deal.
That’s how we got here. We did this film with our family and my wife has helped me produce my other movies. And then on this one, when we started, my son and I were doing all the animation. We just kept going and added more people, made it a bigger production. And here we are.
You have a background in aerospace engineering. How does that translate into making an animated feature film?
Well, I wasn’t a good rocket scientist. I just am a rocket scientist. (laughs) With filmmaking, there’s the story, creative side of it. And then there’s the logistical side, all the technology that goes into it. There’s a lot of ways engineering applied to creating a stop motion film especially, with all the technology required and all the problems to solve. Literally everything in the movie, we had to build it, whether it was with 3D printers or by hand. Things like the internal mechanisms for all the characters to move and hold their shape between each frame. I mean, stop motion is both as easy and as hard as it sounds. You put it all out there and you take a photo of it, and you do the next frame, and you do that for 12 frames a second, every minute. You add all that up and then you get a movie.
And you did this all independently at a studio in your home in Brandon, Mississippi? What made it possible?
Finishing the film is quite a historical event, to be honest with you, because not many stop motion films get made, let alone ones of our size, budget and ability. We purchased our house with the express purpose of building a studio. A huge section of it is partitioned off for it.
We started working on this four years ago. We knew we could do it because, one, we love animation. We love stop motion. And two, with live action movies, you have to get everything together and film it real fast in a matter of a month or so. With stop motion, you film it slowly over several years. You don’t quite need as many people, and it’s not as intense daily. But, over four years it can still get pretty intense. It takes perseverance and grit, and you just overcome and keep going and don’t stop. Keep solving problems and keep the vision alive. Keep the hope alive.
Steal the Naughty List is the first feature-length animated project to utilize the Mississippi Motion Picture Incentive Program, so it was a new experience for our office given the difference in timeline to live-action production as you mention. What was that process like for you?
Well, all I did was just call and talk to (Film Office Director) Nina (Parikh) and we worked it out. We had everything they needed for us to apply. I mean, it’s a little bit of a different production than the office was used to, but at the end of the day, it’s still a movie! We’ve kept the lines of communication open these past few years.
What were some of the biggest challenges you faced with the production?
Well, I have this this quote that is on my wall in the studio that says, “Losers have goals and winners have systems.” And I take that to mean just having a goal—I want to win, I want to succeed, I want this much money—doesn’t really get you anywhere. It’s just an expectation. Having a system, though—how do you arrive there? What’s the mechanism that you use? I had prior filmmaking knowledge, and we’ve done shorter animated stuff before. And so it was just about scaling that up. Of course, we ran into problems that make you think, oh my gosh, if we keep going like this, this will never get done.
So we brought in consultants, Justin and Shel Rasch. They’re like the Michael Jordans of stop motion. He’s one of the best animators in the world. And we thought, let’s just reach out and see if they’re available. They were so kind and nice and really helped us get to the next level.
So that’s one of the major problems we solved, developing a system to where we can take, what we were used to, which is like a minute or two minutes worth of animation, and expand that over 90 minutes. It was about breaking everything down into bite sized chunks and being very methodical about it and putting the system together and just working the system.
Right, even just the little things had to be puzzles, like how do you make it snow in stop motion?
(laughs) Yeah, it’s not easy. I couldn’t even count the problems we had to solve. About the snow—that’s like something we had to figure out early on. How do you make it look right? We tried every white substance you could think of. Flour, sugar. You know, flocking stuff you put on Christmas trees, painting dirt… And the thing that we were most happy with was a mixture of granulated sugar and powdered sugar. Granulated sugar on its own looked like sand. It didn’t have the right texture. And the powdered sugar on its own looked wrong too. It’s hard to describe. You just kind of look at it and know it doesn’t look like snow. But when you mix them together like 50-50, it looks like snow somehow. That was a fun discovery.
While this started as a family project, as it grew, how did you find more animation talent to get it across the finish line?
One of our biggest wins on the movie was the talent we found. My wife Meleice, she’s a big part of the homeschool community here. She showed me this kid’s video. It was a Minecraft video and I was like, okay, cool. But then I saw it had like tens of millions of views, and I was like, oh, that’s interesting. And so we invited him over to the house, and I was like, how did you do that? Did you do screengrabs from Minecraft? And he told us that he built the whole thing, like all the characters and the environments and everything. So, my wife had this theory that this kid—his name’s David Campbell—may not have stop motion experience, but he’s got animation experience. Since he’s already got this base for animation, let’s train him up in stop motion. And that worked out really, really well. And so, being connected in the homeschool community, we were able to connect with so many young artists that came over and did months and months of artwork for us. We found them through CHEC (Christian Homeschoolers Education Connection). They did an art show, and that’s how we got some of our 2D artists who would help us with puppet creation. We found about 6 or 7 talented folks there that got hired on to the film.
What’s next for your studio, are you pursuing any other projects?
We’d love to do more projects; we have the stop motion studio ready to go. We’re certainly open to doing more stop motion in the future. The hardest part of filmmaking is fundraising. I’m hoping that our work on Steal the Naughty List will get us connected with people who want to see that grow. If this film does well, that’s going to look well when we go out to new investors. So, short answer, if this film does well, then of course we’ll be making more.
The film is being released on most major streaming platforms this Friday, Nov. 15. Is the distribution something you’ve also done independently?
We worked with a distributor before in the past, and frankly, it was a total nightmare. We said we would rather not do that again. We didn’t even approach any distributors this time. We know how to get the film on all the platforms: iTunes, Amazon, Google, Fandango. What happens sometimes is filmmakers make their movies and then run out of time and energy and money to promote the film, so they rely on a distributor, who sometimes take your money and do very little work on promotion. Our promotion comes through some of our producers, and certainly our cast. We invested heavily in a cast that we’re excited about, and they’re excited about the movie and promoting it through their social media. The whole time we’ve worked with marketing and promotion in mind.
Steal the Naughty List is a Christmas movie and Christmas movies are something that families watch and cherish every year. In our house, you can get in trouble if you watch Home Alone 1 or 2 without the rest of the family. (laughs) We highly believe that Steal the Naughty List will be a family tradition for many families for many years to come. We have a lot of confidence and hope in that.
