Cameron Kwan was our Spring 2025 Grand Prize Winner with her stop-motion animated short film PAPER DAUGHTER.
PAPER DAUGHTER is about a young Chinese woman who grapples with the guilt of using the identity of a deceased girl to immigrate to the United States via Angel Island in 1926. We chatted with Cami about the production of the film and her upcoming goals with film festivals and distribution.
Did you end up developing the script further after winning the Short Film Fund and before going into production? If so, what were some of the goals in doing so, and do you feel you were able to achieve them?
Yes! The notes I got from the Shore Scripts team were really helpful, especially notes from international filmmakers who had a perspective on immigration to the US that I, as someone born here, do not. Their feedback about not taking for granted that coming to the US was a better option than staying in one’s home country helped re-ground me in the actual history and experiences of early 20th-century immigrants, and made the story much more powerful and accurate, so I’m very, very grateful.
There were also some great notes about restructuring some events to increase suspense and emotional payoff that were very helpful as well. None of the changes we made drastically altered the original script, it was really just a little restructuring and some expanded context that we added. It really made the final film stronger!
What was your casting process like? How did you find your cast?
Our casting was mostly through word of mouth – friends of friends, or actors that were recommended to us by peers. We did do some casting calls through voiceover agencies, but the voice actors recommended to us by friends really did end up being the ones we went with.
We gave each actor a few lines from the script to read, and then listened to them to see who felt right for each character. The hardest to cast was Joy, since the whole film really hinges upon her performance. I wanted someone who sounded timeless and a bit historical – this is a historical fiction piece after all, but also a bit whimsical, since the magical realism of the film has a bit of a gothic fairytale vibe. And finally, Joy had to be both innocent and young, but also with a core of iron determination. It was a tall order, but our final actor, Rebecca Wang, truly brought everything I was hoping for and more!
Tell us a little about voice-over production. Were you able to complete this at Apartment D Studios? Were actors in the room together or recording separately? Was the animation built around the performances or vice versa?
We recorded most of our voice actors in two different recording studios – Shane Salk Studios and Salami Studios. Amy Clover, the voice of Mae (and also my cousin!), recorded from her home studio. The actors all recorded separately from one another, which means it’s up to me as the voice director to make sure their performances match each other emotionally and work well in the final film. Our animation is built around the vocal performances – we always (or at least whenever possible) record our actors and dialogue first, then animate to those performances.
How many people were on your animation team, and what did the workflow look like?
The whole crew was about 55 people, from pre-production, production, and post-production. It was a big crew! But not everyone was working all at once.
The pre-production crew started first, drawing character and set designs, making the animatic, recording voices. Then, the fabrication crew starts – building the sets and puppets based on the designs made by the pre-production team. Then, camera and lighting (which was all done by our director of photography Warren Sheetz) comes in, and they do the pre-light where they light all of the completed sets. The pre-production and fabrication for this film took about three and a half months, plus an additional month that overlapped with animation.
THEN, once the majority of things are built, the animation team can start! We had about 14 different animators rotating through, with three to five animators working each day across six stages. Each stage holds one set, and the director is in charge of directing all the animators across all the sets. It can get a bit crazy with multiple sets running at once! In stop motion animation, we usually have an ideal quota we want each animator to achieve every day – on this film, our ideal quota was about five seconds per day. Some days we got way more than that! And some days we got less. It usually depends on how complex a shot is – if it’s a single character just sitting looking around, we can get tons of seconds in a day! But if it’s a group shot, or it’s a very complex movement with a lot of action and such, then we have to go slower. It all depends on the shot, so the daily quota should account for that.
We shot the entire film (14 minutes of footage) in about 10 weeks, which is honestly pretty fast! We worked 5 or 6 days a week, from 9 AM to 6 PM, so it was pretty humane. Stop motion is more of a marathon than a sprint, at least compared to how live action films shoot (or so I’m told). I like that aspect of it – it means that you can avert issues by intervening early! It’s like sailing a big ship – you have to intervene early and be really aware, but you’re moving slowly enough that you can usually redirect to avoid big issues.
What was the most challenging part of production and/or post-production for this short?
Making this film was a joy, from start to finish. There was no hard part, truly! But if I had to choose, the biggest challenge was coming up against the limits of my own knowledge and experience in post-production. I’ve never worked with a colorist, or exported a DCP, or any of that other higher-level finishing stuff that comes with making a film. My experience previous to this has been in making animation destined for digital platforms, not things that will be shown in theatres, so my head of VFX, Sean Malony, and I were definitely scrambling at the last second trying to merge our timeline with the timelines of the colorists and projectionists and such!
We love hearing serendipitous stories. Did anything happen during production or post-production that was initially a “problem” or obstacle that ended up being the best possible thing for the project?
There was a small moment like that during what was probably our most technically challenging shot. There’s a shot in the beginning that’s a moving camera shot where the camera is following Joy as she pushes through a crowd on the ship deck and then she stops and the camera keeps pushing forward and up to reveal the half-build Golden Gate Bridge. It’s a really stunning shot, and it took three separate passes to film everything – one pass filming the ship, one pass filming the puppets, and one pass filming the bridge. The whole shot is like, 10 seconds, and it took us about five days altogether (not including post-production!). With all this going on, there was also the issue of the American flag at the bow of the ship. Originally, I wanted it to be animated, waving in the wind. But with everything else going on, it would have added an extra day or so onto what was already our most technical, longest-lasting shot. So I was like, “Ugh, forget the flag, just let it hang there.” And after the fact we were like, “Huh, that actually works well thematically because the flag is limp and dead on the way in, but once Joy gains passage to the US and her future is brighter, the flag is alive and flying in the wind,” and it just ended up serving both the story and the mechanics of animation.
Congratulations on your International Premiere at Animation Dingle! Are you able to share anything further about your film festival / distribution plans and process? What goals do you have in this regard and how are you working to achieve them?
Oh man, I don’t know if I have anything useful to share here. This is the part of filmmaking that is really foreign to me – again, most of my previous work lands on digital platforms almost immediately after I finish it, so submitting to festivals is a new frontier both practically and emotionally! What I can share is that we have an amazing consultant, Kimberley Browning, who has guided us through our submission process. We’re focusing on festivals that prioritize earnest narrative stories over more edgy, avant-garde vibes, and festivals that have a strong history of supporting AAPI artists. What I can do now, other than wait patiently and not lose my mind, is I’m working on being much more active on social media with sharing about the making of the film, and who I am and what this film is about. Being very open about the social messages and historical inspiration behind it, and also about how I hope this film can help expand the stop motion industry. Hopefully a stronger presence there can help me find fans of the film more organically, and hopefully, maybe even help get the film noticed by programmers before it comes across their desks officially. I don’t know if that’s a normal or legit method, but it’s what I can conceivably do at this point.
Do you have any advice for filmmakers embarking on their first animated project? What resources might you recommend for filmmakers who are new to the stop-motion medium?
Ah, some of my dear friends, Alexis Deprey and Casey Follen, made a podcast called “Hello Stop Mo” that’s all about the stop motion industry! It’s a fantastic resource for people interested in learning about stop motion and how our world works.
For people interested in doing the craft of stop motion, honestly just start doing it. That’s not very sexy or exciting advice, but you will learn by doing. There’s honestly no “right” way to do anything. If you feel like you’re at the edge of your knowledge, reach out to artists you admire and ask them for advice or critique on something specific. Most people will answer!
Mmm, for filmmakers embarking on their first animated project…start small. Do some tests, a single fully realized frame. A single fully realized segment. Track how long it takes you to do each phase. Use that data to create a realistic schedule for yourself. Don’t go off vibes, go off observational data.
Ask for help! Films, especially animated films, are best when made by a team. As a director, you should strive not to be the best at anything happening on your film. The only thing you should be best at is understanding the emotional heart of the story, and knowing what the film should be conveying at any given point through any given means. Otherwise? Strive to surround yourself with people who are better at their craft than you could ever hope to be. It’s scary and humbling to do that, but it’s so so worth it.
Cameron Kwan (she/they) is a Chinese American director specializing in stop motion animation. She draws on her experience growing up queer and mixed-race to create stories for young audiences that explore emotions, relationships, identity and culture. She loves stories where the abstracts of emotion and identity are made manifest through magical realism. (Bonus points for historical reimagining!) Kwan began her career on the Emmy-winning preschool series Tumble Leaf before joining forces with her business partners to found their independent animation studio Apartment D, where she collaborates with brands such as Monster High, American Girl and Sanrio to create stop motion animated series.
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The 2026 Spring Season of the Short Film Fund is now open. This season, we are awarding a $15,000 cash production grant to one unproduced short screenplay, and $4k in finishing funds to one short film in post-production. For more information and to submit, click here.
