Animated film poem created with a constellation of common wayside flowers, gathered during walks on land reclaimed from the sea along the shore of the Laira estuary, on the coast of SW Britain, an endangered habitat now threatened by coastal erosion and climate change. The haunting soundscape uses audio field recordings from this place and evokes the cries of curlews foraging on the mudflats at low tide.
PRODUCTION NOTES
The imagery is created using an innovative, hybrid direct animation method evolved by the film-makers through their project work with watery places, particularly river environments and coastal zones. Moore and Parker develop their response to the chosen environment through repeated visits to the location, becoming attuned to the place and noticing the changes that have occurred during different seasons and weather conditions. The term 'direct animation' applies to techniques in which animated imagery is created through physical engagement with film by ‘directly’ marking, or placing small objects onto, the filmstrip. Through refinement of a hybrid direct animation practice that upcycles unwanted or discarded celluloid film to create 4K digital films, the authors take the everyday and make it extraordinary, engaging with and becoming attuned to nondescript, unremarkable places by walking and kayaking through the seasons.
For Cadence, the film-makers explored the estuary of the River Plym, to the east of the port city of Plymouth, on the south-west coast of Britain, by walking and kayaking along a path used by pedestrians and cyclists by the shoreline of reclaimed land along the west bank of the estuary, known as the Laira.
Moore and Parker harvested common wildflowers and foliage from the verges during their walks in summer and autumn. In the studio, they smoothed the flora onto the surface of strips of upcycled clear 35mm film, with touch as an integral sense involved in the creation of the artwork. The film material is swiftly digitised frame-by-frame using a 4K digital camera before the flowers lose their colour. Persistence of vision gives the illusion of motion. Physical contact effects the transformation of the material. Digital post-production blends the frames and reanimates the vibrant flowers and leaves. The affective interplay between audio composition and the stream of moving images embodies the cyclical nature of the seasons and the twice-daily rhythm of tides, the ebb and flow between the fresh water of the River Plym as it floods into the estuary to meet sea water pushing inland from the ocean.