Take a peek at the making of Group Session, the bonkers, nine-minute puppet extravaganza by Dutch creative houses Studio Mals and Setreset that made it’s premiere as the opening film at OFFF Barcelona 2024.

Martin van der Molen, co-founder of Studio Mals in Rotterdam: “Making a short film was a completely new venture for us. Usually, we do ridiculously crisp photography, video, and stop-motion animation for commercial clients. So, when we were invited to do the opening film for the OFFF festival we set ourselves a challenge to do something we’d never done and tell a story with an all-star cast of peculiar puppets.

“In the film we follow Geoff; a creative guy who struggles to figure out what, or if, there’s something wrong with him. As creatives we all struggle sometimes. We want to try new things, explore the world and our own personal creativity, but this can be puzzling. This ‘finding yourself’ issue is the deeper level of this narrative that we touched on in playful and positive way.
 

“On a practical level, we just wanted to blow the minds of our audience. We went all in with this project and made everything by hand. There’s no use of CGI at all.”

 
“The first major obstacle was making and working with puppets which is completely out of character for us. But we needed ‘actors’ to tell our story. Thanks to YouTube tutorials, we learned how to build puppets quickly. They weren’t comfortable to operate, after just half an hour of shooting it became quite painful – and we had four weeks of shooting!

“But the biggest challenge was tracking and animating all the eye movement. We decided to shoot the puppets without pupils and add them in post production. This gave the puppets much more character and life, but it was one hell of a process – our partner and co-director Koen, from Setreset Films put in many many hours of work to make it perfect.

Watch the BTS video:
 

 

 
Production: Studio Mals, Setreset
Director: Studio Mals, Setreset
Writer: Koen Berkhout, Martin van der Molen, Eddie Contento, Shaun Leyden
DOP: Koen Berkhout
Lighting: Koen Berkhout
Character design: Silas Nout, Koen Berkhout, Max Peterse
Lead puppet maker: Silas Nout
Puppet maker: Marlice van den Oord, Anne van den Berg, Eileen Boeijkens, Paula Paduraru
Puppeteers: Silas Nout, Martin van der Molen, Koen Berkhout
Set deseign/Art department: Martin van der Molen
Assistant: Randy Beker
Edit/color: Koen Berkhout
VFX/rotoscoping: Koen Berkhout, Silas Nout
Eye tracking/animation: Koen Berkhout
2D animation: Max Peterse, Tinus Kardolus, Koen Berkhout
Production assistant: Eileen Boeijkens
On-set assistants: Inge Groeneveld, Paula Paduraru, Lotte Cremers
Behind the scenes: Paula Paduraru

Sound design/voice record: Lars van Leeuwen @ Elephant Ears Audio
Voice actor: Eddie Contento (Geoff, Notepad, Eraser), Shaun Leyden (Laptop, Pencil, Empanada)
Composer/lead vocal: Maarten Smeele
Songwriter: Koen Berkhout, Martin van der Molen, Maarten Smeele, Eddie Contento, Silas Nout
Backing vocals: Eddie Contento, Shaun Leyden
Mix: Koen Jansen

Special thanks: OFFF Barcelona, Hector Ayuso, Amaran Lighting, Matt Jackson