How Yannis Konstantinidis landed the WWF in hot water

For the past four years, NOMINT director/co-founder [and shots Out of the Box keynote speaker] Yannis Konstantinidis and the WWF have not only been attempting the impossible task of getting people to open their eyes to climate devastation, they've been trying to do it in impossible ways...

From animating with actual ice [Can’t Negotiate the Melting Point of Ice], actual fire [A Flammable Planet], and actual smoke [Up in Smoke], Konstantinidis' latest project is, by his own admission, the toughest yet; a call to end global warming shot entirely with thermal cameras.

Presented at COP29, In Hot Water shows the journey of a child as he dances with the underwater life, soundtracked by Radiohead’s No Surprises. However, the tables turn as the environment turns red hot , leaving our protagonist in a struggle to escpae dying coral reefs, abandoned boats, and disintegrating homes. 

To create the film's unique, climate-conscious visuals, Konstantinidis used precise heat control, down to 0.1°C, with thermal imaging and meticulous temperature calibration of 3D-printed models to craft each stop-motion frame's distinct, layered hues.

shots sat down with the director to discuss the immense challenge, how he tackled it, and what element he has left to animate.

First thing first – why do you make life so hard on yourself?!

Ugh, tell me about it! 

In all seriousness, though, in the past ten years, most animation—and I suppose most of our industry at large—has abandoned meticulous effort for the fast, cheap, and automated. But that has resulted in loads of animation looking more or less the same. The quality has definitely increased, but so has a general sense of blandness. 

That’s not why we fell in love with animation. 

We fell in love with animation because of its inventiveness and ability to create things that are truly unique. And for this, you need love and effort, sweat and pain. As JFK said, “We choose to go to the moon not because it is easy, but because it is hard.”

This is the fourth year of your collaboration with the WWF. What is the process now for developing the work? Is it a challenge to find new ways to show the message through the craft itself?

We take it year by year; so far, there is always an idea that feels spot on. 

In the final shoot, we ended up using heat fans, heat lamps, heat guns of various sizes, and freezing sprays.

I hope that when the time comes when it won’t feel like it’s a great, relevant idea, we will stop this line of impossible techniques and move to a different approach.

How did you decide upon the use of thermal cameras? Was there a lot of experimentation?

Interestingly enough, we had a meeting with the oceans team before we launched our previous film with WWF, Up In Smoke. At the time, we were in full production for Up In Smoke, and I remember we considered thermal cameras and immediately dismissed them as “too impossible.” 

I can’t remember how, but four months later, we were testing thermal cameras and how different materials dissipate heat. There was also a lot of testing for the right heating elements. 

In the final shoot, we ended up using heat fans, heat lamps, heat guns of various sizes, and freezing sprays.

Before you embarked on the project fully, what was the key aspect you wanted to nail?

We wanted to make sure it was even remotely possible from a technical point of view. We had questions like: How do you “paint with colour”? How do you “light” the set? How do you control the temperature so that different objects have different colours, consistently across consecutive frames? 

Can you connect a thermal camera to stop-motion software like Dragonframe? (Spoiler alert, you can’t.) 

And if not, how can you preview what you’re shooting? (You don’t!)

What materials did you use for the shoot itself? What lent them to the project?

That was a very interesting challenge because different materials dissipate heat differently. After heating the set from one side on the first frame, within 30 seconds some materials retained the heat while dissipating it to the rest of the set. That led to the whole set having the same colour, which was obviously not great. 

We had questions like: How do you “paint with colour”? How do you “light” the set?

Another challenge was that some materials warp under heat, which doesn’t cut it when you are doing stop-motion replacement animation. In the end, it was a combination of materials depending on what worked in the scene. 

The main character and fish were 3D-printed, which meant we had to go for a much smaller scale than was ideal to keep plastic use at an acceptable level.

We know for a fact that you have a rather unusual studio space – how long did the shoot take and how did your family cope?

Ha! The problem is not so much “taking too much space” or “why are all these people visiting at any time of the day, Daddy?” It’s more seeing me in a total state of desperation when we can’t make it work. 

And maybe my general hygiene! I wasn’t pretty! 

But it’s all hands on deck, no excuses! I couldn’t think of a more meaningful and interesting project to impose on everyone!

Above: Can’t Negotiate the Melting Point of Ice, A Flammable Planet, and Up in Smoke, released in COP26, COP27 and COP28, respectively.

What was the toughest obstacle to overcome? How did you manage it?

By far the most difficult part of the project was the shots where the boy and fish overlapped. 

Those few frames in the film took hours and hours because the two needed to have different but consistent temperatures within a 0.1-degree Celsius accuracy.

Were there any elements that were easier or harder than you anticipated?

Nothing was easier, everything was harder! 

This was by far the most difficult film of the four.

How did you get the Radiohead track attached? Was that in mind from the start or did it come through in the edit?

I started sketching ideas while listening to a playlist of songs that I felt occupied the same world. Then I had a long, rambling talk with the wonderful music supervising team at Twelve Decibels, who really get these projects and have the same let’s-go-for-it-what-do-we-have-to-lose mentality. 

Nothing was easier, everything was harder! 

We bounced some ideas and songs, and before having a locked storyboard, we decided on a shortlist, and they went off to try and see what could be done. Incredibly, Radiohead’s team came back to us with a yes very quickly, which was amazing because No Surprises was everyone’s favourite! Only then did we lock the storyboard and started working on the animatic following the track.

On top of the incredible track, the team at Twelve Decibels reached out to Leftfield, who added an additional layer of music production before Sine Audio finished with the sound design and mix.