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This film is part of the UK official entry for UNICA 2003
 This movie was
originally made for the North v South Competition for the theme 'Gone with
the Wind'. It was made using animations done on the Amiga Computer with
DeLuxe Paint V using a butterfly drawing done by William Davis our artist
member. Garth Hope our After Effects expert did some of the keying and special
effects and the animation and some of the live action filming was done by
me.
The film shows a butterfly collecting nectar and pollen from genetically
modified rape and then feeding from dandelions. The result of this causes
mayhem first to the UK, then Europe and the world.
As usual this was a last minute collaboration which
involved using the IAC network. We deliberately chose the rape crop
as it was yellow like the dandelions and also the name suggested the
rape of the countryside. The rape crop was over in this part of the
world but a friend suggested that it may still be in flower further
north . So we telephoned Brian Dunckley in Newcastle on Tyne and asked
if he could get the rape shots for us.
Brian drove around looking for yellow fields without much luck travelling
up into Scotland and heading for high ground for an overview of the
fields! After about 160 miles he gave up and went to the pub for lunch
and the publican told him of a field of late planted rape just up
the road. Brian got the shots but by then the dandelions were over
as well and I had to go down to the Mersey Valley Nature Reserve and
ask them to point me to some dandelions! They suggested areas where
there may be some and in fact we did find two. We used hawkweed, which
is similar for the long shots. They were very helpful suggesting websites
dealing with the locations of genetically modified crops.
One we had the background shots we needed I created an animbrush
of a large and small butterfly and fed the images of the plants into
the Amiga though a genlock and literally painted the butterflies over
the live action shots. The sequence had to be repeated for each butterfly
to create the animations. The animations were done on a blue (255)
background and were
then keyed in using After Effects. The final movie was put together
in Adobe Premiere using BBC special effects discs and library music
from John Fiddy.
The animation and finally compilation of the movie was done in two
days which was a bit of a record but we had a closing date to meet.
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William Davis with the glasses is front left, Garth
Hope next and I am at the back. The iMac screen has the Adobe Premiere
timeline with the movie on it and the Amiga Computer (A speeded up
Amiga 4000/030) which could be getting on for ten years old with the
blue screened butterflies on screen in DPaint V.
- Valrie Ellis July 2003
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