Review of "Babak and Friends"

Using advanced technology to recreate and picture ancient stories and traditions has always been very exciting for me. Modern technology knows almost no boundaries except the creativity of the producer, and if exploited properly, it could create extra-ordinary results. It becomes more exciting when the plan is to picture Iranian traditions and customs, and even more important when the audience are the children of Iran.

Cheerfully such movements have started from the heart of our motherland, especially in cinema by great directors such as Ebrahim Hatami-Kia, and a few other primitive but still noticeable products from the Children's Cultural Centre (Kanoon e Farahangi e Koodakan). Surprisingly, even though high-tech equipment and expertise are more accessible and ubiquitous in the west, not even a single notable product had been created, until very recently.

I expected "Babak and Friends - A First Norooz" to be a sparkle. When I saw the ad in this blog I told myself there are people out there with passion and enthusiasm who have managed to bring a group of creative minds and techie experts together and successfully create their first low or mid-budget animation cartoon, one good enough to ignite more similar activities.

Unfortunately I hate to say that I was disappointed by the cartoon for two reasons, firstly the poor story and secondly the technical weaknesses in its production.

Summarising Chaharshanbe Soori in 20 words, leaving the fire festival unexplained, and omitting other traditions such as ghashogh-zani etc (even though they are overshadowed by the new trend of exploding handmade grenades) to me only means lack of knowledge of the story writer(s).

As far as I remember, the time of Norooz was never mentioned in the story, so people who watch it will never find out that we actually celebrate the spring equinox, which is the rebirth of nature. In the animation, Norooz just happened to be around the time of Easter holidays.

Moreover, the haft-seen spread was left unexplained. It's not only a major element of Norooz, but I'm also sure it would be very interesting for kids (and adults alike) to know what each of those "Seen"s represent on the table. Another question, who was Amoo Norooz and why was that joker guy Haji Firooz accompanying him? The tradition of receiving (and giving) Eydee was also missing, and every single one of you will agree that it's one of the most important parts of the Norooz celebrations :)

Now the technical side of things:
Quality post-production tools and services are widely available and relatively cheap, and I would say any low-budget production team could easily afford to use fairly decent equipment for that purpose. While the term "post-production" was well mentioned in the title of the cartoon, I barely saw any sign of real post-production work. Sound design was just a combination of pre-recorded digital sounds, some of which were probably bundled with the software package itself. IMHO there were also some totally irrelevant rhythms of Daf. Almost the whole of the audio line feeding the speakers was distorted. The same goes for the speeches, which is usually the smaller part of audio content in movies. It was a shame how almost no related traditional piece of music was used in this animation.

The fact that "Babak and Friends" was one of the first Iranian animations (on the subject of Iranian culture) is enough to tolerate its problems and mistakes, but there is a difference between mistakes and abusing the story. Apart from that, honestly, I cannot accept the quality of production (both the animation and the audio) from a firm that has access to the best expertise and tools in a country like the States.

Last but not least, "respect" to the team who made Babak and Friends and to their enthusiasm to take this very first step, and to bring it all the way to the UK. I'm looking forward to seeing their future products.

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