Last semester we have been busy with a little project, which became quite big in the end.. It was supposed to be a warm up, before we would start on our graduation films. Apparently last semester wasn't part of our 'graduation' yet, so instead we had a different assignment in which we could practice possible concepts/ideas that we had for our graduation film. In my case that would be 2d animation, story and the use of color.
School found us a media competition with a nice theme in which we could place these concepts to practice and get warmed up, namely the NTR media prize.
The theme was family history. What historical events had influenced your family, what event changed a family members life forever.
My subject/event wasn't necessarily historical, but it did change my father's life forever.
It was a very hard subject and something that still grabs hold of my father, in terms of guilt and trauma, but it also plays a part in beautiful encounters.
It was not an easy proces and it wasn't easy to transform this lifelong memory into 1.30 minutes, especially with something so delicate as your father's memory of a traumatic experience.
My idea was to describe my father's story, in a poem like story, and try to end with a positive note. I knew it was a heavy subject, but I hoped I could give it this simple uplift at the end. I hope I succeeded.
By now I've sent my film to the NTR and I'm curious as to what they think of it, we'll see :)
Anyway, I'm glad with how it turned out, although there aren't a lot of animations, I think a lot of effort went into telling the story right and using the right images in combination with the color and animation and I'm content with that.
NTR media Ter nagedachtenis aan Anton from Julia Jager on Vimeo.
A translation of the poem would be;
When my father was young,
He went out with his three brothers,
Tall, middle and small.
When my father was young,
Being the oldest, he promised at the door,
'We will not go on the ice'
The silence is broken,
A promise is broken,
The small went under the ice,
One manages to come back on land,
And saves his older brother with a helping hand.
When my father was young,
He smashed the ice above his little brother's shadow,
But couldn't change his fate.
At the age of 10,
My father promised things,
That would never let go of him
and he couldn't have foreseen.
But when I see my father,
I don't think of that,
In those moments, I'm very glad that we can be on the water,
To watch the sunset together,
And that we don't compare the water of the past with the present.
(It was a poem made for Dutch, so it doesn't really rhyme well in English)
