Waiting (Aros)

Details: 2002, 3.5 mins, 35mm, Dolby A

Summary: The denials and delusions of a small girl as she waits for her father to return.

Credits
Discussion
Reviews & add your comments
Awarded
Festivals & distribution
Technique

Credits

Animation – Kevin Richards, & Lucy Lee
Rendering – Hyun-Joo Kim & Lucy Lee
Background Artwork – Annie Gunning & Danny De Vent
Art Direction – Hyun-Joo Kim & Lucy Lee
Composer, Sound Design & Track lay – Sam Sutton
Marimba – Barbara-Jane Waddell
Alto Flute – Caroline Welsh
Man – Ken Polton
Mixed at Inspired Sounds, Cardiff
Edit & grading at Barcud Derwen, Cardiff
Transfer to film at Digital Film Lab, London
Written & Directed by Lucy Lee
Produced at Instinct Media by Lucy Lee
Advisors – Halo Productions, Liana Dognini
A Lucy Lee Production for S4C and Sgrin
in association with The Arts Council of Wales
Made with the support of the National Lottery Fund
through the Arts Council of Wales Lottery fund.
© S4C/Sgrin/ACW 2002

Discussion

A girl sits by a window on a wet winters day remembering a hot summer day when she found her father crying in a field. She is interupted by her mother bringing lunch. The mother remembers the hot summer day when the father left. She is interupted by a glass spilling. Whilst playing with this glass of water the girl begins to fantasise about the father drowning and lost on a stormy sea. She invents a fantastic rescue for him where he finds a rowing boat, when he gets in and rows the sea drains away revealing a little sunny paradise where all three reunite. The girl is awoken by the mother crying, she gives the mother a reassuring hug, and whispers something in her mother's ear to cheer her up. They both sit at the window and wait.
The film is a little ambiguous. But it’s basically about love, loss and ways of dealing with it. Why is it ambiguous? Well the pros and cons of ambiguity could be an essay, which I should have written before the film…but briefly I suppose that it encourages the audience to use their own imaginations and interpret it, as opposed to just consuming it. I’m not sure if I have a good balance between subtlety and clarity. It’s clearer than previous films, maybe not ambiguous enough? I like puzzles, and working out a story and finding my own interpretation when I watch something, but dislike having no idea what something is about.
When something is a little ambiguous, people will hang their own issues on it, they will read themselves into it, which I think is good as it allows them to see themselves, like the ink splat game. However it’s best that they know that this is what they are doing, it’s annoying when they think that they are interpreting me.
Here is one man’s interpretation:
“About the struggle of a family unit to keep body and soul together via materialistic measures.. such as father going off to hunt for food and mum and daughter staying at home (bread and water for sustenance - spill water and then scoop it up so as not to waste it). The scene with the father in the boat represents him "drowning" in the struggle to make ends meet. Then he ends up on an island and the boat becomes less significant because his family are all there around him and the "moral" being that as long as you have your family that is all that really matters.”
I don’t have this experience of making a family and holding it together, so it tells me something about the viewer. I am glad that someone was able to see and understand something of themselves in it. Like a mirror. I think ‘art’ should be like a mirror, not dictatorial. I don’t know the truth about anything, so why should I dictate, the most anyone can do is try to understand themselves, and challenge or encourage others to understand themselves. My interpretation goes something like this:
“The child clings to a delusion that her father is a hero and wants to be with her (leaves with some gallant purpose, the heroic survival at sea, re-uniting out of the blue). But this is a bizarre and dreamlike fantasy (boat appears from no-where, ocean vanishes magically, family appear into frame as if stepping in from the imagination). She is in such a denial about not seeing her father again that she is still prepared to wait for him and even get her mother to, and her mother plays along, probably because it’s easier not to deal with the truth.”
At the end of the day, a story is a story because it can be interpreted by the viewer/reader to show them something about themselves. That’s the joy of fairytales, they so obviously allow this. Although there are people who believe that there is an absolute fact to be portrayed by a story, particularly something like the bible, I'm not sure that is a very helpful approach to stories.

Reviews & add your comments

Click this link to put your comments about 'Waiting' on the Film Network site.

Click this link to put your comments about 'Waiting' on the Super Shorts site.

Awarded

A Corto Di Cinema, Italy, 2003 - Special Mention for film language

Festivals & Distribution
(and maybe more festivals which I don’t know about)

Distrubuted by the British Film Council

Listed in
UK Short Film Database
British Films Catalogue
BBC Film Network site
Screening on the Sony PlayStation Portable site until January 2007

Sales & Broadcast
Broadcast S4C
(possibly soon to be broadcast on the Community Channel UK)

Technique

Hand drew the character animation on paper, scanned it into the computer, then painted up each frame in Painter and Photoshop. For the interior scenes we scanned in oil painting and used that as a texture brush for painting the characters, & scanned in sections of Annie Gunning’s paintings and used the textures to make the backgrounds. The sea scenes where made much the same way, but using Danny De Vent's sea painting as the background and as the texture brush. The grass shots were done by taking a video camera through some long grass, then roughly drawing up each frame onto cell, then refilming it on a multiplane rostrum, with various levels, then touching it up frame by frame (because I changed my ming about something, and added the poppies and characters).