Red Thread
SHARON LEE
FANI7011 - Project Delivery and Professional Context
Brief Synopsis The film ‘Red Thread’ is an animated documentary. I combined the narrative story with the voice over which conveyed the true stories. I hope audience could experience a unique way of understanding a film story. From both the character’s story in the film and also people’s true stories in real life. Audience could link some parts of the story to the voices ; on the other hand, audience would not be able to picture a whole story if there were only voices. The whole story is about the character who was finding his identity. Whenever he felt lost, the red thread would appear and lead the main character to the next step; The red thread was a symbol of the direction of his life. During the war time, there were not many choices. He could not make the choice; it was the whole situation forced him to make a choice. At the end, he still could not find his true position which he believed.
The main character went through the time from the Japanese colonial period to the defeat of Japan. He grew up from the chaotic era ; he was always doubting himself. He could not find where he belonged to. For better life, he cut his hair, wore Japanese outfit, and changed to Japanese name. However, he found out he could never become a Japanese. Taiwanese could never get a equal right and opportunity as Japanese. After the defeat of Japan, the Nationalist government from Mainland China came to Taiwan. At first, the Taiwanese were cheerful about their coming; they thought they finally could get back to where they belonged to. However, due to Japan, Taiwan became a high developing country and Taiwanese were high-educated. The Taiwanese found out the people from Mainland China were uneducated and lacking of hygienic knowledge. On the other hand, mainlander hated islander dressed like Japanese, which reminded them their enemies back in China. The people from Mainland China could always get better jobs and rule people even they were uneducated. Because mainlander were incompetent and the system was corrupted, mainlander and islander started to hate each other. Due to the disappointment of Nationalist government, the main character decided to follow western culture. Most of the Taiwanese thought that they could get better life if they followed western countries. At that time which was called White Terror Period, people gave any different opinion from Nationalist government would be assumed as a traitor. A lot of knowledgable people were arrested as communists. Even pursuing western culture and new knowledges could not get better life. The main character was completely lost at the end and decided to end his life.
Film Concept I got an inspiration while I read the books ‘Orphan of Asia’ and ‘Potsdam Section Chief ’ were written by Wu, Zhuoliu. These two books inspired me to think about Taiwanese identity during different certain situations. I could see Taiwanese were struggling about being a Chinese, Japanese, Mainlander, Islander or pursuing western culture. Besides, compare to other countries, I found out Taiwanese don’t have strong sense of belonging to Taiwan. Sometimes we don’t really know our culture and some people don’t like our country. Quite a lot of people have been pursuing western culture. They think that if they could go to western countries to study or work, which means success. I had a thought that maybe it is because of the history; we have involved Japanese culture a lot and we have never felt we belong to Mainland China since the Nationalist government came. We are lost because we have always wanted to become stronger and then followed the way other countries did. However, we still haven’t found our own way to do thing.
Orphan of Asia, Wu Zhuoliu, 1946
I hope this film could bring something to Taiwanese; to treasure the things we have and do something to keep our own culture and make it shine. This is why I did the film ‘Red Thread’; this is also the way to keep our history and bring the true local stories into different media. To show our culture and history to other countries.
Potsdam Section Chief, 1948
During the whole production process, I have been making this film and also knowing it more and more at the same time. I kept looking back again and again and question myself do the voices make sense with the story. Besides, I have been asking myself why I wanted to do this film. After making this film, I know more about myself, I found the very fist motivation of the idea was because I was suffering the same situation like the main character; even we live in a different time but I don’t really know my true identity. I was pursuing western culture like other Taiwanese did; I came from Taiwan to the UK and wanted to be successful. I wasn’t proud of being a Taiwanese and I didn’t know specifically what is our own culture. After making this film, I felt that this kind of situation make us different. We couldn’t really distinguish which part is Chinese, Japanese or others. However, I assume if it was without anyone of them we could not say that is Taiwanese culture. Culture is consist of people, life, and history. That’s why I did this film to record the history and bring the true stories into screen.
PreProduction Character Design In the character design process, I followed my instinct and imagination. I drew what I had in my mind when I had the story. I did some researches were about their clothes. Because the main character would go through the time from 1930s to 1970s, I did research about different clothing of Qing Dynasty, Japanese, Mainland China, and local Taiwanese. In production, when I drew the character, I found out sometimes it was hard to maintain character’s shape from different angle. Since I had to draw the character from little to adult, I should probably draw and try more different angles of the character first instead of directly drew what I imagined.
With traditional Qing Dynasty’s outfit
Traditional Qing Dynasty’s outfit
Traditional Japanese outfit
Japanese police’s outfit
Taiwanese in western suit
Mainlander army’s outfit
Scene Design The whole film went through Japanese colonial period to Nationalist government. I did quite a lot of research of their street, houses during different era. There were traditional Qing Dynasty Chinese scene, Japanese on the street, and World War II, etc. The most difficult part of scene design was to find the right reference. Since these photos were all very old and some of them I could not make sure when did it be taken, I spent quite a lot of time on searching photos to find the correct scene reference.
Qing Dynasty scene
Qing Dynasty scene
U.S. aircraft
U.S. aircraft
Flour sack from U.S.
Taiwanese street amd houses in 1950s
Taiwanese street amd houses
Nationalist government
Storyboard Animatic When I wrote my story, I assumed it will be 7 minutes long; fortunately, after I did my animatic, it’s 5 minutes. I did not have that much concern about my length when I did my first animatic. During the production process, however, I found out I spent too much time on frame by frame embroidery. I decided to reduce the amount of work of thread and focus on drawing first. I also decided to cut down my film a little bit. I changed the dancing scene into drawing western stuffs. Due to the difficulty of the dancing scene, it would be much easier to draw the western stuffs’ scene. Besides, I also found out the dancing scene did not match my story very well. That was the girl pursuing western culture but not the main character. I hope it was the main character finding his identity through out the whole film. For voice over, aside from some interviews I did by myself, I collaborated with a national organisation called ‘Story Taiwan.’ They have been collecting local Taiwanese stories and also encouraging people to upload their own stories for documenting our history. I found quite a few suitable local stories could work with my film. However, it was not that easy to get people’s agreement to put their voices on my film. I received several rejection, but luckily I received some people’s agreement after several tries. Besides, I also collaborated with a documentary film for February 28 Incident; The director granted my authorisation to use the voice over from that documentary. From Vida’s opinion, she suggested me to rearrange some voice over because there were some conflicts between images and voices. I agreed with her opinion I also felt some part of voices did not match the animation images. I changed some voices to match the film better and I also rearranged the voices to let audience to have more breaks. However, I still feel the final result of voices still a bit too intensive. It is still a bit difficult to let audience follow every images and subtitles.
Dancing scene
Western stuffs scene
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Shot List
Shot List - 1
Shot List - 2
Shot List -3
Production Colour Testing Since I wanted to challenge myself to do traditional drawing animation on paper which I have not done it before, I decided to draw watercolour animation. The first result I felt it is too colourful and too bright for my film. Hence, I edited it to black and white in photoshop and composited it with black thread. However, I don’t want my film is only mono tone, so I also added some blue and red tones to make image looks more interesting. At the end, because I am doing black and white film, I decided to use Chinese ink to draw instead of watercolour.
Watercolour on paper
Watercolour on paper, Photoshop
Watercolour on paper, Photoshop
Line Testing At the first time, I didn’t count the frames correctly, and it didn’t look well. Therefore, I added some frames to make it smoother and adjusted speed in After effects as well as followed the list of every shots to check how much work I had to finish.
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Shot9- 8 (Extra)
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Embroidery It was my first time to use sewing machine and I didn’t know how to do free-motion embroidery, so I spent some time on testing sewing machine. After several practices, I could handle sewing machine pretty well and I am quite happy with the result.
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Shot8- 2 Shot14
I have to point out that I spent most of my time on modifying this shot which is about Chinese and Japanese word characters mixing together. I tried to sew frame by frame at the first time, but it didn’t work well. Therefore, I decided to simply use thread stop-motion which I think it looks better.
Sewing frame by frame
Stop-motion
Stop-motion
Frame 001
Frame 063
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Frame 063
Frame 063
Digital Drawing After I found out I spent too much time on embroidery, I decided to focus on drawing. However, I still felt my progress was too slow when I drew watercolour on paper. Thus, I decided to draw half of my film in digital which was so much quicker than drawing watercolour on paper. Besides, I found it was easier to get more texture in digital; I tried out different brushes in photoshop and I’m quite happy with the result. I think it was a right decision to draw in digital which saved a lot of my time.
First watercolour style in Photoshop
Second watercolour style in Photoshop
Watercolour brush mixed with pastel brush in Photoshop
Pastel brush style in Photoshop
Second watercolour mixed with pastel brush in Photoshop
SHARON LEE UCA FARNHAM 2016