architecture in motion (workshop1)

The short film ‘An Orange Odyssey’ simply tells ‘the nightlife of the kitchen’ and the hidden orange community that lies within. The film challenged me both artistically and technologically in finding ways to effectively portray to my audience what I was picturing in my head. As usual, however, many issues and obstacles came up which I needed to overcome or find ways around. Through the process though I learned much about how to use a space, explore it and overall I learned much about the ins and outs of my kitchen!

The film dwells on the life of various oranges as they move through different areas of the kitchen; the drawers, sink, tap and cupboards. The first difficulty that came about was how the oranges would perform the impossible tasks that I wanted them to, such as being ‘unbirthed’ into the tap. This first obstacle, overcome by the simple act of drawing each step, became the launching point of the film and made it easier to think of new and different ways to portray each scene. For example in the scene involving the oranges travelling through the drawer my initial action was to simply take photos of real oranges travelling through:




However eventually getting used to the idea of taking a photo of a printed picture I eventually came up with a more surreal sequence using different oranges I had drawn myself, which I thought made the film much more interesting and unpredictable:



Another main issue that came up in the production of the film was the huge need for coloured ink. To print out every frame taken in A4 size and build up on it would have cost me at least 4 ink cartridges. This meant that I needed to be very selective and thoughtful in deciding what to print and what to build up on. The easiest way I found to overcome this problem was printing one background scene and slowly and gradually build up on that, instead of printing many different frames and building up on each of them. This is most evidently seen in the oranges coming together in the whole kitchen. E.g.




In general the film has no deep meaning, no symbolic meaning or hidden message. It is simply a fun and humorous imaginative movie as to what could possibly be happening in the kitchen whilst no one’s looking. In terms of the overall result I am completely happy with the way it turned out. Had I been able to though I would have attempted to make the quality of each picture much better, but in hindsight and considering this was my first ever attempt at making any sort of film I could not be happier with the final result. The whole assessment was fantastic in the way that it allowed me to play with different mediums and ways of expressing an idea or scene. It didn’t need to look realistic and I let my imagination run away with me.