When the Tides Went Down: Barebones’ production techniques for independent animation
- Submitting institution
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University of Portsmouth
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 25176209
- Type
- L - Artefact
- Location
- The Turner Contemporary Gallery, Kent, England
- Open access status
- -
- Month of production
- November
- Year of production
- 2019
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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-
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The research artefact is a single-item 3-minute short animated film directed and designed by Jordan Buckner, which is submitted with contextual information that documents preproduction/production design content. Submitted via USB, requestable from REF archive.
When the Tides Went Down originated as a New Creatives commissioned project funded by Arts Council England and the BBC in 2019 and produced a film exploring our different responses to climate change and the future of our planet. It interrogates the specificity of modes of minimal production and demonstrates the heightened aesthetic innovation it can afford. The film is an example of an animation production schedule at its most intense, produced independently within 8 weeks. The project was designed more for live-action film than for animation, making it technically challenging from the outset. The key research question, though, was provoked – can compelling animation be produced under a ‘barebones’ production schedule? If so, what techniques are best suited to achieve this?
Using original digital paintings by Buckner the film fuses tableaux of the British landscape with a constructed and evocative soundscape. This approach leant heavily on the use of ‘faux’ animation. Instead of complex character narratives or animated motion, landscape paintings were animated in Adobe AfterEffects. Rather than using voice-over or character performance, storytelling was facilitated instead by using fragmented sound clips and archive audio. The result was a narrative animation that extended the possibility of the form by creatively exploiting the constrictions of ‘barebones’ production. The film expanded beyond traditional narrative animation and became something ‘other’, that found a home in the art gallery.
The film premiered as part of Late Night Live: Turner Prize 2019 at the Turner Contemporary Gallery Margate, later aired on BBC Four + iPlayer in 2020 and was selected for screenings at Screen South for Future New Creative events.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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