Written & Directed by Carol Freeman
The Bird & the Whale
SYNOPSIS
The Bird and the Whale is a story about a young whale struggling to find his voice. After straying too far from his family to explore a shipwreck, he discovers it’s sole survivor, a caged songbird. Together they struggle to survive lost at sea.
The Bird & the Whale was created using a near obsolete form of animation – paint-on-glass. It was created in Dublin, Ireland by a small majority female team. In June 2018, Carol was awarded a Silver Screen award at the Young Director Awards at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.
Credits
Written & Directed by Carol Freeman
Original Music by Chris McLoughlin
Produced by Jonathan Clarke
The Bird and the Whale was created using a technique called paint-on-glass animation. Each frame is painted with slow drying oil paint and shot with a top-down camera in a light controlled room. After a frame is shot, the paint is wiped away and the next frame is repainted almost entirely from scratch. Each new frame created, destroys the last.
The full 7 minutes of animation is made up of over 4300, 24 x 34 inch paintings and took more than 14 months to paint.