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Q&A with FlickerLab founder/creative director Harold Moss

Feb 25, 2009 12:00 PM, By Craig Erpelding

           

For Trouble the Water, an Oscar-nominated documentary about the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, Harold Moss and FlickerLab used a police-tape motif and simple open titles to give the lower-resolution opening shots what Moss calls “cinematic heft.”

Harold Moss is the founder and creative director at FlickerLab and Moss — based in New York — which worked on two movies that are grabbing headlines of late: The Reckoning was selected to the Documentary competition at the 2009 Sundance Film Festival, and Trouble the Water got an Oscar nomination this year for Best Documentary. For more on Moss, visit FlickerLab's Reel-Exchange profile.

Congratulations on a big month for FlickerLab. Could you reflect on these honors and how your animation/design company got involved with these documentaries?

Moss: My background is in studying documentary film at Ithaca College, and though I ended up doing a lot of work in commercial animation and motion graphics through FlickerLab, I have always kept a strong relationship with the documentary community. I consider this work an act of service, fundamentally, bringing the expertise and resources I've developed in the commercial world to bear in helping offer a level of graphic clarity to important documentary films. I've had the tremendous fortune of working on some truly great documentaries through the years, and this past year was particularly strong on that front — including work on Sundance winner and current Oscar Nominee Trouble the Water and Sundance selections The Reckoning and Glass House. We also completed graphic and effects work on Sicko the year before.

This relationship to documentaries has been extended and reaffirmed with the birth of Moss — a new company label I've launched with my partner, Tammy Walters — focusing on media at the intersection of the environment and social justice. We are honored to have been involved with these incredible films dealing with questions of social change and justice — each in their own way.

I originally met Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, the directors of Trouble the Water, while working with Michael Moore on the Oscar-winning doc Bowling for Columbine. They were producers on the film, and I created the 3-minute cartoon in the film, “A Brief History of the United States of America.” Tia and Carl are two of the most talented and compassionate filmmakers (and people) I have ever met, and when they went down to New Orleans in the wake of [Hurricane] Katrina, I knew something special would come of it.