Poetry & War Project - Final Film

Last semester, I got as far as developing a story and visuals with this project - ready the create a storyboard and animatic. I decided to focus mainly on Ungaretti's poem "Detachment" for inspiration. The film would follow the journey of two characters - a modern day climber and a soldier. The original idea was that these two characters would be related; the modern climber being a descendant of the soldier (thus carrying the photo of the soldier with them on their journey). I wanted the Alpine landscape to be an vital feature of the film, like a character in it's own right. For this I also took inspiration from other Ungaretti poems that mentioned the mountains and included themes of nature. The journey was to be a paralleled struggle - a challenge of character as well as survival - with a hopeful note in the ending.

Animatic:

Password = ungaretti 

Detachment - Animatic from Ali MacPherson on Vimeo.

Some development sketches:

I wanted my film to be ready for our animation exhibition in February so I soon got animating! I had originally wanted to do the whole film traditionally but due to lack of time I settled on animating digitally using Photoshop and After Effects - this was still good practice for working digitally. To maintain some of a traditional look however, I painted all the backgrounds with watercolour. I felt the watercolours were able to create that cold, pale atmosphere I was looking for in this film:

With a few weeks intense animating, I was able to get the film done in time for our exhibition! It was also screened at a student run animation festival at Queen Margaret University.

After the exhibition, and following advice from a crit with Ungaretti project organiser Carlo, I changed some aspects of the animation. This was mainly in regard to the colour; originally both characters had been coloured in a greyscale palatte, but this proved confusing and made it hard to differentiate the characters from one another. So I re-coloured the modern climber to be in full colour (but still a grey/blue/cold palette). I think this made a big difference and was the look I had originally hoped for.

The Final Film:


Detachment - Ungaretti Project from Ali MacPherson on Vimeo.


Reflections on the final film:

• To try and get the film made in a couple of weeks (in time for the exhibition) was a bit of a strain and I think the final film suffered for that. I wasn't able to spend as much time animating as I would have liked and had to settle on creating the whole film digitally rather than trying traditional techniques.
• In trying to keep the film as short as possible I think the narrative was lost a little in the film. It was not as understandable to the audience as it could have been and I think the original themes I wanted to incorporate were perhaps lost.
• Despite these flaws, I was happy with some of the actual animation. I enjoyed animating the characters climbing the mountain! Through the watercolour backgrounds I was still able to incorporate my original ideas regarding colour; that the colour palatte would begin cold and blue, and turn progressively blood red and darker as the climbers reached the summit and the peak of their struggle. I also think using watercolour here was the right choice and I really liked the gentle look it gave to the film.