23 thoughts on “Making music”

    1. Thank you for that. How on earth do animators keep ideas in their heads for years and years and then develop them into convincing life, moving seamlessly, constructed micro-movement by micro-movement?

      After you sent me ‘The Lighthouse’ film, I looked up the animator, Simon Scheiber. I read he made The Lighthouse with more than 14,000 photographs and, when you see the working process for each shot, it’s even more impressive https://seethelighthouse.com/

      Have you ever seen ‘Hedgehog in the Fog’?:

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      3. Hi, yes. Record-breaking heat combined with scant rainfall. The photo of the field is from a Finnish news-service. The article link is in Finnish but the other #crazyFinnishweather tags link to an English language site, the Finnish Meteorological Institute. Their press briefings are usually in retrospect but the articles are very informative.
        Harvest yields will be off significantly – only 1/5 the usual. Not a good time for farmers, growers & gardeners!

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      4. That must be worrying. It’s always unsettling when the weather doesn’t do what it should, or what we expect. I hope all the rain gods of the world turn their attention to Finland – and to your new plants! The house you’re making is gorgeous, by the way. I’ve been following your progress with admiration.

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  3. What a beautiful, bittersweet little film. I love the creativity it takes to make these creatures emerge from discarded bits … but also the sensitivity it takes to eulogize the little performers even as they are “playing” the single performance of their lives. Thank you so much for sharing this …

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    1. Really glad you enjoyed it.

      Ainsle Henderson, the filmmaker, says here that: “It was the most improvised film I’ve made. I had no script or plan. Poppy (Ackroyd, who made the sound and music) would send me some noises, and I would make instruments or characters who looked like they might have made those sounds, then I would send her pictures and she would send more noises back. I didn’t have a clue what I was doing for quite some time, and I let myself be lost, which was ultimately really valuable.”

      Did you see the unravelling video?: https://vimeo.com/92767692

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      1. I somehow missed the unravelling video … but now I’m crying buckets. How beautiful, how heartbreaking. But mostly beautiful. Thank you, E. xx

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      2. It’s real catch at the back of the throat stuff, isn’t it? I read an interview (here) with Ainslie Henderson, the animator and Tim Booth from the Manchester band James, who composed the song Moving On:

        “It is 2014, I’m on the phone to Tim and he is describing how they came to write this song, and what the words mean to him. The story he tells me is deeply moving; one thing that stayed with me is his describing death as a birth. Some days later this conversation echoes around my mind while I’m listening to ‘moving on’ I walk past a typical Scottish woollen knitwear shop. My eyes flit over a ball of wool in the window while the word ‘unwinding’ is sung. Pretty quickly I’m leaving a garbled, over excited message on Tim’s phone about the music video I have in my head.”

        He makes it sound so easy!

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      2. I’m full of admiration for animators – attention to microscopic detail woven into powerful invisibility in the final film. And, unlike singers, their subconscious self can’t help them in painting in a shade of sound or a millisecond of pause or extra attention to a single consonant. It’s all conscious, indefatigable effort.

        The final Bad Medicine film is wonderful, isn’t it? I didn’t know that miners got paid in alcohol for gold that they discovered https://vimeo.com/38983159

        Did you see the Paloma Baeza animation Poles Apart?

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      3. This conversation could go on for ever! I think animation is magic and obsession and skill. Animators inhabit their work … feel it physically and so on. Oh I just wish I could do it like this too…. 🙂

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      4. I’d guess that all those animators wish that they were better. All of them will be reaching for an effect or an ability that just exceeds their grasp. To keep moving forwards.

        I like the Hokusai attitude – that you keep doing, every day:

        “Hokusai’s fervent belief was that the older he got the greater his art would become. In 1834, when he was 75, he famously stated the following in a postscript to volume one of his extraordinary illustrated book One Hundred Views of Mt Fuji (Fugaku hyakkei):

        ‘…until the age of 70, nothing I drew was worthy of notice. At 73 years I was somewhat able to fathom the growth of plants and trees, and the structure of birds, animals, insects and fish. Thus when I reach 80 years, I hope to have made increasing progress, and at 90 to see further into the underlying principles of things, so that at 100 years I will have achieved a divine state in my art, and at 110, every dot and every stroke will be as though alive. Those of you who live long enough, bear witness that these words of mine are not false.’

        [translation by Henry D Smith II]” Quoted from this: https://blog.britishmuseum.org/hokusai-old-master/

        Or, to paraphrase Dory – ‘just keep animating’ 🙂

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