What came first, the desire to make a documentary or the desire to make animated film?
It was always Ari’s intention to make an animated documentary. Since he had already made many documentaries before it was a real excitement going for an animated one. What can you tell us about the animation process used in the film? Waltz With Bashir was made first as a real video based on a 90-page script. It was shot in a sound studio and cut as a 90-minute length video film. It was made into a story board, and then drawn with 2300 illustrations that were turned into animation. The animation format was invented in our studio Bridgit Folman Film Gang by the director of animation Yoni Goodman. It is a combination of Flash animation, classic animation and 3D. It was important to make clear that by all means this film was not made by rotoscope animation, meaning that we did not illustrate and paint over the real video. We drew it again from scratch with the great talent of art director David Polonsky and his three assistants. What about the characters? All of the character animation was
