Loop De Loop
A short experimental animation of a flying bird
Film analysis
REFLECTIO
In this project, I created a 20 second film based on my impressions of my mother.
She is a very admirable and kind person who I am close with but cannot say fully understand. In the video I used elements such as paper masks, 2D animation combined with film footage, portraying my mother as a witch who loves flowers and preforms magic while cooking.
In most films, witches are stereo-typically portrayed as a wicked evil woman, witchcraft is often associated with bloody sacrifices, animalistic body language and insanity. But in reality, most Western films that shaped the stigma of voodoo and spell casting are heavily defaced for propaganda use during the eras of African colonization. Such as the Pet Sematary and Poltergeist. As time progress, and culture appropriation came to justice, it is time to break the stereotype for misleading witch images. Recently there have been more global recognition for health benefit that comes with meditation. Manifestations of beliefs are widely approved in areas of mental health; us humans also subconsciously practice every day. Voodoo rituals are mostly used for good luck, protection and connecting with nature. Rituals and potions was a median for manifestation and sometimes meditation. Sure, there are curses and evil magic, however as someone who personally enjoy lighting candles with crystals, meditating in moonlight, this project urges the audience to recognize the brightness of Witchcraft, overcoming the imposed evil light cast on women.
I have always associated my mother with nature. She always dreams of a garden full of flowers and her ability to grow anything makes me wonder if she uses plant magic. In my memories she is always in the garden, during covid time, she even made friends with a Robin that was attracted by our flowers. As she talks with the bird and her plants slowly fill the world with green my mother appeared magical to me. The second element in my film is food. In the context of witch-crafting, I associated her cooking with potion making. She enjoys experimenting with all sorts of delicious healing food. It is also a big part in my Chinese culture. Food is a symbol of connection. Love and respect is expressed through food. In this film I aim to include magic and share my admiration towards her strength her kindness.
In this project I experimented with filming and 2D animation. This is my first filming project where I tried to use montage and thinking about composition. I have always been quite dissatisfied at my own camera language. I watched a lot of short student experimental films and analysed the proportions of frames, people and their positions. The style I intended to appeal to is quite abstract, full of jumpy empty shots to make the film playful. Therefore, I added a lot of flowers blossoming in the video. Originally, I also wanted to try time-laps to record the process of the blooming of a flower to indicate beauty of plant magic, however due to the time restrains it wasn’t possible. It was also made more difficult to narrate a full story due to the 20 seconds time constrains, which resulted having to cut a page in the story board and minimize the connection of my mother with witchcraft to only potion making and plant magic (there were originally a section of using stop motion to record a portrait of her being painted in progress, which was too long and too unfocused).
There had been many difficulties in pace control to make the film concise but not rushed. One factor that I realized in all the student films I researched in was that no shot was longer than 7 seconds to engage the audience with a mix of flashy images and longer, continuous shots to contrast with the central important story-line. After editing the film, I edited them in premier adding effects, later importing them into Photoshop to draw on top of the video using a video layer. I used 2D animation to differentiate the stereotypical image of witches with my mother’s powerful, kind image. I used opposite colour, mainly green and purple appeal to the mysterious light, also asked my mother to wear a mask made of black paper then later unmasking herself as a symbol of revealing the truth.
The result fulfilled my visions in terms of colour and storytelling. although I am quite dissatisfied with the 2D animation as I re-watch them it still lacks power and precision in the line art which will come with practice. Overall the result of this project was pleasing.