AV News 174 - November 2008
Waiting to Move On
Laura Bateman
My entry for the "IRIS-25" competition was based on a larger project called
"Tears of Mirth and Men" that I was working on for my BA degree course in
'Theatre: Design For Performance'.
My final degree project was self-determined,
and I chose to work independently on a
self-devised performance that was ultimately
put on in the college theatre. This was quite
a daunting project for me, but extremely
exciting. Time management was absolutely
critical to getting me from technical drawings
and scale models to a full scale set in a
matter of months.
This project was a massive challenge, encompassing script writing,
animation, directing, designing and building a set, and hiring an actor to
perform the soliloquy.
I based the piece on the life of Molière, and the main thing I wanted to
produce was a performance that showed beautiful images and words that
would be thought-provoking and moving. The audience were immersed into
'the world of purgatory' and learnt of the life of an extraordinary man through
narration and animation as well as by the live performance.
The animation, which depicted the life and death
of my character, was inspired by the beautiful work
of Lottie Reigner. Her silhouetted figures were both
intricate and enchanting - something I hope my work
also portrayed.
The performance depicted Molière in Purgatory
as he reviewed the events of his life, and the
animation was projected on to the wall behind the
actor playing the part of Molière.
To make the animation, I cut silhouettes from
black card and positioned them on a lightbox so
that they could be photographed. The figures
were jointed so that they could be re-positioned
between photographs. The images were then
assembled into a stop-motion sequence using
Pictures to Exe. For the soundtrack, I recorded
the actor's voice during his performance and
mixed it with the music that I had used for the live show.
Stop frame animation is fantastic, it was to bring photography to life, and I
will most definitely use it again in future projects.
So the competition entry was really just an extract of the actual production,
but hopefully gave the audience a ‘flavour’ of the piece, and I would like to
thank the judges of the IRIS-25 competition for choosing my work.
Laura won the Over 16 Category in the IRIS-25 Compettion - Eds
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