wmdj - ideas
“this baby becomes a giant and kind of squashes her... and that’s how she’s feeling”
Sammy Reavley It was Mia that posted a short film called Albatross Soup (2018) and it was the animation style that we wanted to go for, which was very transitory, very kind of like characters melting into each other and very kind of surrealist. It was very in tune with the art style that we wanted to go with,…using the audio clips to kind of tell the story, kind of given that the theme of Albatross Soup is like a group of people trying to solve this riddle. And all kind of like adding different bits and pieces, it seemed quite fitting with how the animation kind of melded with everyone's kind of contribution in the narration.
Rosa Mulraney Yeah, that's, that's really insightful actually. They're all trying to figure this thing out, aren't they, that they're all struggling with? That podcast is them trying to figure it out. So that makes complete sense that it kind of, but it's very insightful of you to be able to articulate, that's what you noticed about the film. Do (Mia) you want to comment on that?
Mia Mackenzie Yeah, it was just because when I saw the art style of Cat’s illustrations, it just kind of reminded me of that. And like, immediately upon seeing the presentation, I was immediately thinking, wow we could take parts of the podcast, put them together in this abstract way. And I think everyone immediately kind of had the same idea going.
Rosa Mulraney It just kind of clicked?
Mia Mackenzie It kind of just clicked with everyone immediately. Yeah, Albatross Soup was kind of like my jumping in point like, ah, yeah, it's like this.
Rosa Mulraney So you've got your emotional story, you've got your podcast clips, do you want to talk about transitioning it into visuals, you know, visual storytelling, because this is where it sort of almost a little bit of the surrealist kind of magic realism comes in a bit and it was very effective.
Sammy Reavley Yeah, there was quite a lot of issues with the storyboarding process, because I think we all had like a lot of really cool ideas. I think we had a scene where there's a line, "I just feel like everything's such a car crash down there", where the transition was going to be like a car coming towards the camera, and the headlights would become centre frame, then it was going to transition to the scene in the hospital, where it's the mum, saying, “I can't believe no one ever told me that this could happen.”
Early ideas of an actual car crash
Sammy Reavley And I remember I think it was one of the lecturers said that it would have been a lot better to not take everything so literally, because there were certain scenes that kind of like we stayed with us, from the get go, like the introductory scene with the woman in the bed, that slowly kind of melts to represent, like, wetting yourself in the bed, and kind of that big old tidal wave coming in and swirling. And then that being the transition, that kind of stayed, I don't really think that changed that much. After we got that feedback of "don't take everything so literally", like, I think it was literally "just have fun with it" was the feedback that kind of lightened up a lot of the ideas that we had to be less, oh, we should do this, because they say it was more of a, we could do this, because that would be a really cool way to like metaphorically show that.
Early ideas for visualising feeling like a car crash
Sammy Reavley And I think another example was we got feedback of having a scene with the mother really struggling to kind of like lift the baby, to kind of show like, like the burden of it and like just how how much harder it is to carry on despite that, or what it kind of feels like. And originally we were gonna have it where like the baby would kind of just disappear. And then the mother would fall into a hole that then having the car crash kind of visual line, like really pointed glass, that would then be the transition with like maybe like the sheen of the glass, then turning into the hospital. And then I think we got feedback for that saying that we could go a little further with the baby metaphor, where it is so overwhelming that it literally engulfs the woman, it crushes her. And she's really got to kind of fight out and like, kind of, like slide out of it. And then we interpreted that car crash line with having the actual body crush, which I think definitely fit more with what the lecturers were talking about with keeping it more metaphorical and surreal.
Early concept art for wetting the bet
Still from the final film
Rosa Mulraney Yeah, and it ties in with this kind of, you know, magic realism or surrealism can be used to convey emotions. And like you say, you're showing how it feels to have a baby, like, be overwhelmed. You know, this baby becomes a giant and kind of squashes her. And she's, you know, and that's how she's feeling. And then you're having fun with her tummy, like looking like you're crunching up a piece of paper to discard it. And you know, and then if these women are feeling a bit discarded, you know, they've been kind of let down and, and kind of having to deal with these problems on their own. So that's very effective, but also very simple, you know, and you had quite a simple style, and then you've got these elegant kind of simple solutions, which obviously, they seem easy and seem obvious once they're presented, but actually, like you say, you've been through this process of kind of brainstorming, getting feedback and kind of revisiting it and having some fun with it, but they're, they're very, I think they're very effective. And you could see them working in like posters and things like that with the mum overwhelmed by the baby, and things like that, I think would be very effective. So yeah, I think that visual journey that you took on is really kind of clear, and I think hopefully, resonates with a lot of women who are now able to see this animation, the short film,
