The process of filming the piece was even more odd than the final result itself. After realizing that all ants are asleep or just very tipsy at this time of the year I came up with something that leaves everyone's jaws open after finding out, how I became bug puppeteer.
Nowadays one can buy absolutely everything. Finding a place to buy live bugs was easier than purchasing a wrapping paper on Holiday season. The tricky part started when these little bugs had to be animated. And ironically in order to animate such a jumpy creatures I had no choice but to make them inanimate.
Hundreds of souls of crickets are still haunting my cold blooded conscience.
Colour scheme plays a significant role in the film as we se the subject being coloured by the liquid every time it falls into it. This is not just a visual decision. The changes of the colours symbolise the subject constantly being altered and acquiring different qualities of the environment.
Humble setting of high speed camera Phantom shots.
The shots of water splashes were filmed in 1500 f/s dropping a cherry tomato into tiny container of differently colored water.
Shooting in front of green screen
This was a great experience as green screen enables one to create nearly anything. The shots of a jumping girl were composite in after effects in order to make it a silhouette.
After seeing a documentary by Oliver Hodge on self-sustainable houses I was determined to use this idea in my super8 film, that's when I decided to film ants as a main subject them representing a self-sustainable community, however due to cold season I was unable to find a 'working' anthill, which made me alter my idea significantly. Despite difficulties I was determined to film ants no matter in their natural habitat or not. As a proud Lithuanian and a great animation lover I simply couldn't avoid drawing inspiration from the pioneer of film puppetry named 'bug puppeteer' Ladislav Starevicz. I was always a great admirer of his impeccable storytelling manner through animated bugs and as soon as I've heard about the opportunity to work with film images from 'Cameraman's Revenge' started flooding my head. That's why after failing finding anthill I decided to use animated bugs in order both to maintain my initial idea and to try something new and interesting for me. Not only I found inspiration in this filmmaker's work, but it encouraged me to further research on more unconventional ways to creating animation on film. That's how I rediscovered long forgotten filmmaker Len Lye, who created extremely dynamic films by painting over the film stock. These mesmerizing images were quite influential in my choice of editing and color correction. Speaking of which, I just cannot not mention Peter Kubelka's 'Schwechater'. Even though my film is far behind with abstraction and obscurity 'Schwechater' helped me to realise, that even the oddest and from the first site random looking compilation of images can make a great piece when edited in a masterful way. Finally, ever since I started working on film I knew that the sound (or absence of it) will have to play a significant role in it. Not only i decided to use a sound but I wandered how it could contribute to making this film more of an audio-visual experience rather than a concept or idea. However, I think that the concept does come through because of strong contrast between animated and live action sequences and the use of bugs for a main subject. Even though I am tackling a problem of restriction, control, co-dependency and living in a community, I would like to think that the viewer is not completely bombarded with ideological ideas rather than being involved in the overall experience of the film. That's why I chose to screen my project on a tiny projection in order to create very personal, individual experience for a viewer, to let him decide whether he is the controlled one ore the one in charge.
