Visiting Speakers

I really liked the visiting speakers this year, especially BARRY PURVES. I'm not especially interested in stop motion but I wrote down some of the advice he gave us about character and storytelling.

He talked a lot about a story told with a "character in a pool of light" where it's stripped down to the bare essentials to convey the message. I liked this a lot. I think I could produce a lot more good stuff if I stopped thinking about it all so literally and was more abstract in my message. 

He told us to find the object that defines the character, but we mustn't make it too literal. I always make everything too literal to the point where all my films look exactly the same. I would like to branch out into something a little more complex next time. Barry Purves uses every tool at his disposal to convey his characters in a more abstract way, with lighting and sound and staging, positioning his characters in relation to other characters etc. That was my most important takeaway from his talk.