Pop Sandbox: An Interview with Alex Jansen

Submitted by clelia on May 6, 2010 - 5:25pm

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Pop Sandbox: An Interview with Alex Jansen

Open Book talks to Alex Jansen, owner and operator of multimedia production and publishing company Pop Sandbox about film, graphic novels and KENK: A Graphic Portrait. The launch for KENK is tonight, May 6, at 7 p.m. See Open Book's Events Page for details.

Open Book: Toronto:

Tell us about your production and publishing company, Pop Sandbox.

Alex Jansen:

I officially started Pop Sandbox in May 2008. It is a multimedia production and publishing company centered on innovative and meaningful storytelling across platforms, taking projects from initial concept through production to eventual publication/distribution.

All that to say that publishing is really only about 25 per cent of what I do at Pop Sandbox, and this is in some ways as much a means to be able to ensure the projects we create will find their audience.

Our central focus to date has been on pioneering new forms of journalistic graphic novel projects, which we’re now bridging into film and web.

OBT:

Your background is in film. How did you get into publishing graphic novels? What attracted you to the genre?

AJ:

I’ve always loved comics and film equally – all forms of visual storytelling really – but when I was starting out ten years ago I think it would have been really hard to find an audience for the types of projects I was doing as graphic novels; in 2001 I was Co-Producer on a feature film called Walk Backwards that was a really raw niche indy flick that dealt with sexual abuse. It would have been hard to reach a female readership for a project like that through the traditional superhero-centric comic store. There were a lot of barriers to reaching your audience, but that’s really changed.

Meanwhile I now actually find film has more barriers, and I’ve become a bit disenchanted with it over recent years. It is an incredibly expensive medium that is becoming increasingly formulaic, and it is exceedingly difficult to find screens for non-Hollywood fare. Even the Canadian funding system is encouraging catch-all filmmaking. I view the graphic novel medium now as an incredible place to pioneer new stories and build an audience for them with the least negative compromise.

Lastly, Walk Backwards actually premiered at the Toronto International Film Festival in 2001. It sold to a fairly prominent distributor but promptly disappeared into oblivion. Not long after this experience I transitioned into Distribution with Mongrel Media (film distributor of Water, The Corporation and Persepolis) specifically to understand how that would have happened and to get the experience to ensure it wouldn’t repeat on future projects. With graphic novels I have the ability to retain publishing rights, utilize this knowledge and control the release.

OBT:

On the Pop Sandbox website, you have a 'Production Team' listed for each graphic novel, which seems very film-like. Is that standard for graphic novels? What's involved in producing a graphic novel?

AJ:

I’m essentially taking a creative film producer’s approach to graphic novel projects, overseeing the project from concept through completion (and then publication as well). This includes generating or finding the initial idea, developing and financing it, attaching the right creative talent, keeping things on budget and on schedule, editing, and so forth until it is print ready. It is an oft-misunderstood role in film. The extent of involvement really depends on the project, but it is a much more hands on role that isn’t standard within the types of projects we do.

OBT:

Your company's first graphic novel, KENK: A Graphic Portrait by Richard Poplak, debuts this May. Tell us about it.

AJ:

KENK: A Graphic Portrait is a ground-breaking 304-page journalistic comic book detailing the life and times of Igor Kenk, “the world’s most prolific bicycle thief” (The New York Times and The Guardian). In summer 2008, Kenk was arrested and nearly 3,000 bicycles were seized in one of the biggest news stories of the year. Built from more than 30 hours of never-before-seen intimate footage taken over the year leading up to his arrest, KENK is a thought-provoking and surprisingly funny portrait of an outsize neighbourhood figure and a city in flux.
KENK is produced and conceived by Alex Jansen, based on documentary footage shot by Jansen and filmmaker/designer Jason Gilmore. It is written by acclaimed journalist and avid cyclist Richard Poplak, whose award-winning books include The Sheikh’s Batmobile: In Pursuit of American Pop Culture in the Muslim World and Ja, No, Man: Growing Up White in Apartheid-Era South Africa with Penguin, and it is illustrated by Toronto based artist Nick Marinkovich, who adapted Sony Picture’s Underworld and has done various comics with Marvel, IDW and Image.
KENK is an exciting new hybrid that simultaneously takes the form of documentary film, journalistic profile and comic book.

OBT:

What other projects are you currently working on?

AJ:

We currently have two announced projects in production and several in development.

Last fall we won the NFB-TVO Digital Calling contest for The Next Day, a magic realism documentary told in interactive graphic novel form that is built from interviews with participants who’ve attempted suicide and survived. It is a philosophical exploration of life, death and what comes after.

The Next Day will be written by playwright and social worker, Paul Peterson, with film direction by Jason Gilmore (who also shot and designed KENK) and Interactive Direction by Shahid Quadri. We’ll be announcing a very exciting Illustrator shortly. We’ll begin filming in May, with plans to release the project both in print and on-line Spring 2011.

I’ve also been working with fine artist and filmmaker Nadia McLaren since 2008 on a graphic memoir coming-of-age-story built around her relationship with her grandmother, haunted by the Canadian residential school system. It is tentatively slated for Fall 2011.