Animated Reality collaboration between Arban Severin & Sara Riley for Second Year Animation programme @ ECA.
Out of all the projects I found this the most enjoyable to work on, however, because of our approach, it has also been the least useful to me in terms of learning software. Documentary style videos are not something I would have honestly considered ‘animation’ or thought to do on an animation course, however, I suppose in a way it has helped me broaden my concepts of film making.
We were initially paired up with someone from our year, however, we were not required to stay in our pairs, and after seeing that my partner had already had ideas of which direction she wanted to take the project in, and who she wanted to work with, we decided to swap partners. This gave me the opportunity to work with a student in my year who I didn’t really know, as she wasn’t in often. I really enjoyed working with her, we got along well and had similar ideas with how we wanted our project to be realised.
We began by sitting down and discussing any ideas or concepts we had thought of already for the video, eventually we concluded that we wanted to create a piece of film that was very relaxing, slow and calm, we thought this would be particularly nice as we were making the video during the exam season; with deadlines looming, our video could bring some peace among all the stress. We also agreed to incorporate an element of textiles within our project, the rhythmic nature of stitching can be very therapeutic, and we thought that if we recorded our experience in a physical matter, it would also be as if we had brought the calming environment back with us, to the city.
We also agreed that a good place to gather footage would be at a beach, especially in winter it would be fairly remote and deserted, away from large crowds, giving us space to film. We took a day trip to Yellowcraigs, we decided to go a little further afield than Portobello, as Yellowcraig seemed just far enough outside the city to seem remote and peaceful, whilst still being within reasonable reach. It was certainly a beautiful beach, and as we were filming I thought that the ripples of the water, particularly when the tide was rushing out, looked like stiches and thread, so we really focussed on the patterns the water was making in detail.
We decided to time lapse the footage of us making the blanket, as we were filming it for over two days. We also have a segment of us filming on the streets, this was to enforce the message of bringing the calm tranquillity of the sea to the centre of the city. I like to think of it as us possibly being travellers from distant lands, making our way across the ocean, however, only to end up on the streets, a very real scenario in the modern day. As we sat of the street we wove the tale of our journey into the blanket.
Ultimately, although we had similar ideas and I enjoyed our time working together, I would say that because it was edited together without me being present, I perhaps didn’t have as much input of the outcome than I’d have liked. I think the beginning shots are wonderful; we agreed to have long drawn out shots, it made it seem almost as if the moment was frozen in time, however, personally I am not sure about the connection between that and the time lapse at the end. I raised my concerns with Arban; I thought that we should try to continue the theme of relaxation running to the end of the video, as this is something the blanket brings with it, and should never lose. Although we were having fun whilst making the blanket and it might have been difficult to fit slow music to a time lapse, the sudden change of music seems rather jarring. I would have suggested instead, using something like Jack Johnson -Only the Ocean, which is quite chilled, or, my personal favourite, Orinoco Flow (Sail Away) -Enya, which is rather upbeat, whilst still being relaxing. Arban believed it was good practise to try to do things properly and legally, especially since many festivals will not touch a film without the proper clearances, which is fair enough, however, it’s not as if this is being entered into a festival, and there is plenty of royalty free music we could have considered using.
In the end, I feel that that was just down to the interpretation of the video, Arban explained that for her, this one made her laugh and she thought it went perfectly with the jumpy movements of the animation and that the ‘jolt in the music reflects the reality of coming back to the city. We were able to bring some tranquillity with us, but the truth is that we were back to schedules, agendas, time constraints and busy student work to do.’
I also considered taking the blanket up Arthurs seat, rather than simply rolling it up, so it’s as if we were presenting the blanket to the city and spreading the calm across everything, but, I knew that even whilst suggesting it, Arban felt as if the video was complete. I don’t particularly mind, I think it’s important to be able to make sacrifices and compromises when working collaboratively, and I still think, although our video is rather abstract, it fulfils its intended purpose.
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