An animated journey into the hidden ecologies of the River Avon as told by the children of Victoria Park Primary School, Bristol, using their drawings, ideas and voices. Funded by the AHRC's 'Towards Hydrocitizenship' project, and part of Water City Bristol. In association with the Nova Creative Lab - lead artist for Water City Bristol.
novadada.net
'Protect The Eels' is a film made by Pinch Me! Productions (Lucy Izzard)
Lucy explains:
“I was contacted by Antony Lyons from NOVA Creative Lab (creative consultants for the research project “Water City Bristol”) about making an animation with two classes of pupils from Victoria Park Primary School in Bristol to explore the hidden ecologies of the River Avon. I thought it would be really lovely to make the film entirely from the children’s thoughts, comments and drawings then it becomes a real collaboration because the children are a major part of the film making process.
I and some of the NOVA Lab artists did workshops with the classes which involved drawing & sound recorded sessions, role play in the playground and video calls between the children and ‘eel expert’ Andrew Kerr. We learnt a lot about eels along the way – me included! With all the voices and drawings collected from the workshops, I picked the bits that would help create a story about eels. There were so many great drawings, unfortunately I couldn’t use them all … but we did use a lot!
It was quite a lengthy process to make the kids drawings move – keeping the authenticity of the textures and pencil/pen marks is tricky but totally worth while in my opinion. I want the children to recognise their own drawings and feel proud and excited to see them come to life. After the visuals were finished, my business partner from our company ‘Pinch Me! Productions’ Laura added all the sound effects. We collected sound bites from the children during the workshop recording sessions to use for the characters in the film, such as “Are we that old?” The finished sound adds another dimension that suddenly makes everything come alive!
We gave the children and teachers their own film premiere in the cinema at Aardman Animations in Bristol (as I work there as a freelance animation director). I took my 2 week old baby along (it took the same amount of time to make the film as it did to make her!)”
