For the past 3 months the Creative Stars have been working hard on their end of project showcase which they all decided would take the form of a film and small art exhibition. The film was made as a collaboration between all the young people who used their personal skills and talents in their film role. Here is Katie’s account of the filmmaking process:
For the last few months, Creative Stars at the Cornerhouse have been working on the second part of our project that began over a year ago. The first half of our project was displayed at the Cornerhouse in January of this year. Lost is Found was an exhibition of contemporary art work by various artists across the North of England, chosen, planned and advertised by the Creative Stars team. Much as we enjoyed putting this show together, we were eager to move on to the next stage; creating and exhibiting our very own artwork!
Our work consists of a short film, accompanied by several more traditional art pieces. As an aspiring animator and film-maker, I was overjoyed to be making a film, especially one containing so much animation. Originally we broke into groups to come up with ideas for the film, this resulted in several completely different ideas, including a horror story and a surreal film including aliens and nuns! However, we eventually brought all our ideas together to come up with our final idea. With a script written by one of our own Creative Star’s team, over the Easter holidays, we began to bring our ideas to life.
The film tells the story of a boy called Henry, who loves to draw. Through the use of a magic pen he enters a parallel world where his doodles come to life, with hilarious consequences. To realise such a film required a lot of work, including building several sets, both life size and in miniature. It was also at times frustrating, working with difficult editing software and trying to manipulate cardboard cut-outs with just some fishing wire and blu tack to create the animation sequences! Using a replacement technique for the animation meant that we had over 30 cut-outs for one walking sequence which only lasted a few seconds on screen. Especially difficult was one scene set in the sea as it had 6 sets of waves that had to move individually in addition to the other pieces on the set. Another problem came with a jungle set as the trees continually fell over between shots and it was hard getting them in the same position again! Eventually we conquered this by cutting slots in the set, which worked when combined with a lot of bluetack.
Combining the animated sequences with the live action film was a completely new experience to me, it required a lot of measuring to make sure it was the right size to fit in with the live action piece.
However, all the hard work was definitely worth it. By the end of the week we had a complete short film, which we all agreed looked brilliant!
Written by Creative Star, Katie Harris (April 2012)