Starting up the project

So, finally the blog is up and running! A short introduction for it might be in order...

"The Forest" is the working title of a Bachelorfilm from The Animation Workshop, set to be finished summer 2009. I (Tobias) am directing it, and along with me are a bunch of talented students and supervisors from the animation industry.

The film is inspired by, and with music from The National, a band from New York. The short film is done with stop-motion, shot on-location in the forests surrounding the town of Viborg, in Denmark. There is no dialogue, only music. That might sound somewhat like a musicvideo, but narratively it's much closer to a shortfilm, and works on it's own premises.

However, the main inspiration for the project IS music. It all started last summer when my flatmate came home with The Nationals "Boxer" after having heard the band play at the danish Roskilde Festival. I heard it a couple of times, at first I thought it was good, then I though it was GREAT, and all through the winter last year the album was on repeat.

Then came summer, and I had to figure out some ideas for my bachelorproject. I worked on a number of them, but nothing really good came out, so I put on "boxer" and started doodling as I usually do, and all of a sudden I was drawing rabbits and forests and chandeliers and whatnot, and I thought that that was much more interesting as a potential movie than any of the other things I had been doing that day. I really wanted to try to make the pictures, or associations if you may, that I was getting from listening to this great music. Trying to do something that "resonated" with me. I know, it sounds artsy :)

Althought the school was reluctant at first, making a "non-dialogue stop motion movie in a night time forest", they're pretty hot on the idea now. We've had contact with the manager of the band, and I met briefly with some of their members when they were playing in Denmark, and it looks like they like the idea and are willing to borrow us their music. But let's not sell the skin before the bear is shot, as it goes in Danish.

Two weeks ago we started preproduction, and now finally we have a blog. So during the next year, those interested have the possibility of following the process. Enjoy!