animation set.
Working through the rushes for what seems to have been a lifetime, I have now got a relatively concise five minute film to show - well, not to show, obviously, not yet, but you get my meaning.
The trouble is I haven't the faintest idea how to describe it. It is wholly improvised, each section devised and shot in sequence and there is a narrative thread that ties it all together. But it couldn't be less traditional! The current reshoots, incidentally, are the result of some bad decisions long ago in the shooting that have messed up the continuity. Turns out there's only so much that you can fix in post production, even in this day and age.
At the risk of sounding catastrophically solipsistic, it's been a great learning process for me to make this film. I've used it to fine tune techniques and explore technologies and I can't deny the result is very pretty. In many ways it is a character study, and an experiment into the versatility and the limits of the stop motion form. There is little to no dialogue - Hey! Something managed to get me to shut up! Well done Something!The main character actually interacts very little with anyone else so it represents a purely internal dialogue which is played out in a variety of subtle expressions. He goes through a range of emotional states universal to anyone who has ever been a teenager and expresses through his reactions, the frustrations that that period of life and it's inherent lack of control is heir to.
I have never felt in control of it, even now, I'm looking at the rough cut unsure if it's the film I planned to make, desperately doubtful of what an audience is likely to make of it.
Still I must purge on. I mean, take Cats: that's not about anything and that seems to work.
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