It has been a busy summer with lots going on at Winding Snake. The two recent animation films I've been directing recently for Winding Snake include Merthyr Views and Listen to Me.
We've based the film Merthyr Views on 'Merthyr Blues', a painting at the National Museum of Wales, in Cardiff. It's a very colourful and vibrant painting by Heinz Koppel and tells of morning, afternoon and night in Merthyr bus station in the 1950's.
Hanging above the images of buildings, a vagrant, dogs, a woman in a pram and buses, is a blues singer. She looks like she is commenting on life going on below her, and included in the painting are lines from her blues song. So we are working with Forsythia Youth Project in Merthyr with young people to recreate an animated modern version of 'Merthyr Blues', about life in the town today. The kids came to the National Museum to see the 'Merthyr Blues' painting, and also to meet artist Tim Davies, who kindly showed the young people his 'Postcard' series II as the Merthyr Views film will also include animation based on ideas around Tim's artwork. Tim was great at making his work accessible and explained his ideas behind the postcards, where he has carefully cut out and removed areas of people are dressed in national costume, and his work is about national and cultural identity.
The idea for the project Merthyr Views came from working on film projects in Merthyr over a number of years and seeing how people in Merthyr were often stereotyped. There always seemed to be bad news stories about Merthyr, although personally I found people to be friendly and proud of where they came from. So I thought it would be great to create a film about the young people's own views on where they came from.
So far the young people have come up with some brilliant lyrics while working with Mel, a performance poet. These have been turned into a blues song by Victoria Ashfield of the Royal College of Music and Drama. This is going to be the soundtrack for the films, here's a snippet of the lyrics:
I wake up in the morning and I need a cup of coffee
Dw'in hoffi frothy coffee before I'm off to the Bothy
Brish brush brish my teeth and have a little swill
Listen to the church bells at the top of the hill
I see the drunks from the night before
Some are still sleeping on the floor
I do my hair and also my make-up
Whilst drinking my coffee from a half-cracked cup
We have done the animation workshops for the 'Merthyr Blues' painting style, and Ben from Winding Snake is working hard to put it together and lip sync the blues singer to the animation. In September film maker Gustavo Arteaga is going to work with more young people from the Gurnos to create the rest of the film, in his pixelated style, basing the ideas and images on Tim Davies postcard style.
The film for Save the Children, Listen to Me (working title) is currently underway, and we are now creating the animation based on the children's artwork. We have had a lengthy consultation process where we have travelled to the four corners of Wales to meet young people and work on the script. It is amazing to me how eloquent and informed some of the young people were, and we worked with them to express their ideas based on their own experiences of discrimination. The process could have been a difficult one, because of the issues the young people had come up against, but it seemed to me they welcomed the experience of expressing themselves about these events int heir lives.
We worked closely alongside the team at Save the Children on these workshops, so that young people felt safe and secure that their ideas and experiences were taken on board. The underlying theme of the film on discrimination is about listening, as many of the young people felt that they were not being listened to affected them, and how if people listened on both sides, the world would be a better place.
I have used the idea of a motif of a wall going throughout the film,to represent the barriers people put up on both sides when trying to communicate. Here is a bit of poetry one of the young people wrote:
If you listened there would be my favourite smell of the best foods in the air
I would be over the moon and Jupiter too
That's how it would be if you and me talked, about worries, decisions that affect me
About what you want from me and what I need from you
We'd be together, you helping me and me helping you.
By Jane Hubbard, Winding Snake's Creative Director
