Films : doubled up : all
animate! synopsis
Sam’s film is about her own attempt to impose order upon chaos in the context of recently becoming a mother of multiples (twin boys).
Acknowledging Mary Kelly’s Post-Partum Document , the work uses diagrams, layers and multiple perspectives to process chaotic information into a recognisable and functional structure. Sound by Prix Italia-winning Adam Goddard , Toronto.
one sentence synopsis
An autobiographical animated film about coping with twins.
short synopsis
A short autobiographical animated film about the chaos that a multiple pregnancy and birth can bring, and the filmmaker’s bewildered response.
long synopsis
A short autobiographical animated film about the chaos that a multiple pregnancy and birth can bring. Using multiple layers and perspectives from mother, artist, children and medical professionals, the fractured experience is unravelled and collaged to make a workable order from the pandemonium.
Created digitally, the film is an opulent and multi-faceted reworking of home video, children’s artwork and found objects.
key credits
- director
- Samantha Moore
- voice
- Stanley Anthony Bates
- Archie Samuel Bates
- Jane Denton RGN RM
- live-action
- Jonathan Bates
- soundtrack and original music
- Adam Goddard
Samantha Moore
short biography
Sam took a BA in English & Art at Exeter and then moved to Central St Martins in 1993 for a post graduate Diploma in Fine Art Film. One of her early oil-on-glass films was Glasgow Kiss for Channel 4 in 1998.
She recently completed her first digitally-based film Success with Sweet Peas and meanwhile is Senior Lecturer in Animation at the University of Wolverhampton. She is based in Shrewsbury.
14 May 2003
artist’s website
Samantha Moore’s website
a film by Samantha Moore
direction
- director
- Samantha Moore
voice-over
- voice
- Stanley Anthony Bates
- Archie Samuel Bates
- Jane Denton RGN RM
live-action personnel
- live-action
- Jonathan Bates
sound personnel
- soundtrack and original music
- Adam Goddard
support
- primary funding
an animate! commission funded through Finetake by Arts Council England and Channel 4
© Samantha Moore 2004
doubled up title card
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Another image from the opening sequence when the doubled image breaks up again as Stanley throws his head back and laughs. He is looking at his father.
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Multiple fertilisation – layers of eggs, sperm and splodgy purple painting.
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“…baby number one… that’s my number!”
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Getting out of bed in the night, layered and repeated in After Effects.
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Pouring (powder milk) formula into lined-up bottles.
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Woken up in the night… where the hell am I?
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Baby twins bobbing around – based on footage of them in a Jacuzzi in France.
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Piglets ram raiding a very tired sow. Treated live-action with digital watercolour painted over the top.
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“Archie be quiet OK? I’m reading a story.”
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Wrestling boys against a Rice Krispie and felt pen background (by Archie).
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“...and then it pops.” Bubble-wrap clouds on a airbrushed sky (by Stanley).
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“I’m the winner!!”... the wooden spoon ‘sperms’ make it into the plastic bowl ‘eggs‘.
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My house. Collated in After Effects, includes the Karma Sutra of breast feeding.
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Layers of bottles being filled against babies being fed.
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1 breast pump – although two should be used simultaneously to get the full bovine effect.
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18 vests on the washing line.
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Getting up to visit the doctor, I love the look of this sequence.
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Image of Stan’s face on a mobile, nicely blank and surreal.
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Scan of a walnut. I really enjoyed doing this sequence. I used lots of scanned nuts to mimic the grainy, surreal look of the image you see whilst the foetuses are being scanned with ultrasound.
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Scary skeleton foetuses – you really can see their skulls and inside their bodies during the scans. Multiple pregnancies have to have lots of scans as the normal blood tests done on singletons don’t work.
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Montage of walnut images. In one of the images you can see the foetuses pushing each other – during a scan we actually saw our twins kicking and pushing each other inside my belly.
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Impression of a baby miscarrying, falling through visceral images. It was amazing how many of the twin’s paintings could look like graphic violence.
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Broken egg. I cut out lots of frames and painted over the top of the live action sequences to integrate them into the animated main body of work.
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Me and babies in the swimming pool. Background layered painting colour keyed and layered again.
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Multiple image of Stan wailing – crying because we were holding him up to a mirror!
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Stan trying to breast feed from a fake gerbil in a plastic ball.
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Archie and Stan at two-and-a-half, haemorrhaging numbers from the back of their bikes. This sequence was 6 layers composited in After Effects and Painter.
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Images by Archie and Stanley laid under Archie who replicates himself halfway through the sequence.
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Me heavily pregnant – the size of a woman who had been pregnant for a year (and it felt like it).
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Recurring meatballs. We do eat a lot of these.
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The mad woman in the attic. At times this is how I felt making this film, squeezed into the box room whilst outside chaos reigned!
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Me in studio making film.
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Me hugging Stanley whilst Archie waits… this was probably the hardest sequence to do. It illustrates so clearly that one parent only has two arms for hugging, and that one child must always wait. The guilt is immense!
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My house reprised. Final image. Hopefully this resolves the madwoman in the attic scenario, allowing space for sanity.
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technical
process summary
doubled up was created in Painter 8, After Effects 5.5 and Premiere Pro. It was made on my home PC using a graphics tablet to ‘draw’ the images onto the screen. I also used a scanner to import the children’s artwork as background.
It took 13 months to make the work and edit it to the sound track, which was recorded first.
master copy format
- format
- DigiBeta
- colour or black & white
- colour
video distribution format
- video format
- DigiBeta
- screen aspect ratio
- 16:9
- video standard
- PAL
- sound type
- stereo
distributor
LUX
info@lux.org.uk
+44 (0)20 7503 3980
www.lux.org.uk
pre-history
working title (initially known as)
Two by Two
