Waiting (Aros)
Details: 2002, 3.5 mins, 35mm, Dolby A
Background
Dreams, hopes and denials.
A rainy day, a girl is bored, she is waiting for her father to come home. She is remembering when she last saw him, he has been gone a long time and she imagines what has happened to him, has he drowned? Was he rescued? Will they all meet again?
My interpretation goes something like this – the child clings to a delusion that her father is a hero and wants to be with her (leaves with some gallant purpose, the heroic survival at sea, re-uniting out of the blue). But this is a bizarre and dreamlike fantasy (boat appears from no-where, ocean vanishes magically, family appear into frame as if stepping in from the imagination). She is in such a denial about not seeing her father again that she is still prepared to wait for him, and her mother plays along, probably because it’s easier not to deal with the truth.
Awards
Awarded at A Corto Di Cinema, Italy, 2003 – Special Mention for film language
Reviews
See comments on YouTube, (and add your own if you like). “…a lot of sensitivity and talent…”
Credits
Animation – Kevin Richards, & Lucy Lee
Rendering – Hyun-Joo Kim & Lucy Lee
Background Artwork – Annie Gunning & Danny De Vent
Art Direction – Hyun-Joo Kim & Lucy Lee
Composer, Sound Design & Track lay – Sam Sutton
Marimba – Barbara-Jane Waddell
Alto Flute – Caroline Welsh
Man – Ken Polton
Mixed at Inspired Sounds, Cardiff
Edit & grading at Barcud Derwen, Cardiff
Transfer to film at Digital Film Lab, London
Written & Directed by Lucy Lee
Produced at Instinct Media by Lucy Lee
Advisors – Halo Productions, Liana Dognini
A Lucy Lee Production for S4C and Sgrin in association with The Arts Council of Wales
Made with the support of the National Lottery Fund through the Arts Council of Wales Lottery fund.
© S4C/Sgrin/ACW 2002
Festivals & Distribution
2002
Wales Film Festival – Wales
2003
Fike – Portugal
Iranian Young Cinema – Tehran
Foyle – Ireland
Malescorto – Portugal
Badalona – Spain
Edinburgh – UK
Edinburgh Deaf Focus – UK
Sicaf – Korea
Odense – Denmark
Anima Mundi – Rio de Janeiro & São Paulo
Message to Man – St. Petersburg
A Corto Di Cinema – Lucca, Italy
Cinema Jove – Spain
Singapore Film Festival – Singapore
Dresden – Germany
Sgrin Shorts Tour – Wales
2004
Soho Shorts – London
Hiroshima – Japan
New European Cinema Week – Italy
Zagreb – Croatia
Bimini – Latvia
Sgrin Shorts Tour – Wales
Avancia – Portugal
Tindirindus, Vilnius –- Lithuania
3FF No Words – Italy
Greace
Cineforum Bolzano – Italy
2005
Festival of Cinema and Technology – worlwide
Int. Film & Vid. for Children & Young Adults – Tehran
Super Shorts Online Festival – London
Multimedia Audiovisual Film Festival Warsaw – Poland
ROSHD International Film Festival, Tehran – Iran
Leicester International short Film Festival – UK
Line Out, Short Film Festival of Leicester – UK
2006
NAF – Neum Animated Film Festival – Bosnia and Herzegovina
Listings, Distribution, Sales and Broadcast
- UK Short Film Database
- British Films Catalogue
- BBC Film Network site
- Screening on the Sony PlayStation Portable site until January 2007
- Distributed by the British Film Council
- Broadcast S4C
Technique
Hand drew the character animation on paper, scanned it into the computer, then painted up each frame in Painter and Photoshop. For the interior scenes we scanned in oil painting and used that as a texture brush for painting the characters, & scanned in sections of Annie Gunning’s paintings and used the textures to make the backgrounds. The sea scenes where made much the same way, but using Danny De Vent’s sea painting as the background and as the texture brush. The grass shots were done by taking a video camera through some long grass, then roughly drawing up each frame onto cell, then refilming it on a multiplane rostrum, with various levels, then touching it up frame by frame (because I changed my ming about something, and added the poppies and characters).
Film Stills
This slideshow requires JavaScript.
