Winter in the Rainforest will be the first short animation in a bigger long-term project. It is a nature film with surreal creatures – animals, birds, insects, plants made of porcelain living in the tropical rainforest. It will be realeased in January 2018. Until then you can see the trailer and follow the making process here.

It will come to be a composition of short animated films consisting of 3 individual films each one shot in a different location in the World. Different climate, natural features and music coming from those places contrast and blend with each other.
The film will be shot outdoors in the nature with a 16 mm film camera.

This summer I spent two months in the Peruvian Amazon in art residency Sachaqa Centro de Arte in a small village of San Roque de Cumbaza. Living in a village in middle of the forest I was gathering ideas for the film, exploring the jungle for finding locations for shooting and practicing how to animate puppets in the nature. Here are a few shots of my jungle-animation-set with the cameras and puppets right in the middle of wilderness.

Self portrait with the puppets, Bolex 16 mm camera and my house.

Sets in the nature and stills from the animated scenes.

Five minutes after an attack of the giant ants and a plunge into the river to get rid of the biting ants in my hair. The pictures are taken by Daniel from Sachaqa Centro de Arte who was kind to show me around in his forest and search for locations.

Animating the grasshopper in the middle of the river, going back and forth through the water between the cameras and the puppet.

PROJECT INFORMATION

Director, script, design, camera: Anu-Laura Tuttelberg
Producer: Andrus Raudsalu, Anu-Laura Tuttelberg
Composer: Maarja Nuut
Production studio: Studio Nukufilm
Duration: 6 minutes
Stop motion animation

ANIMATION TESTS IN THE STUDIO

AWARDS

First Prize at Baltic Pitching Forum (Lithuania, October 2015)

Selected to European Short Film Co-production Forum EURO CONNECTION at 38th Clermont-Ferrand International Short film Festival (France, February 2016)

CHARACTER DESIGN

The characters for this film will be porcelain animals, insects, birds. Here are some pictures of sculpting, making molds and the porcelain details that will be assembled into final puppets.

Designs for puppets

Grasshopper

Spider

Small woman

Flower

Carnivorous plant

Frog

Opossum

And the final puppets. The photos are taken in a botanical garden and in the nature on a wintery beach.

I will produce porcelain sculptures of the characters as independent artworks aside from the film. If you wish to have one of the puppets you can contact me and let me know of your interest!

STORYBOARD

In a hidden corner of the world there is a place where all impossible dreams come true. In a rainforest amidst lush nature fragile porcelain animals can be found. Strange white stony creatures are born in wild river streams, birds with feet like human fingers hunt for flying fish, vicious spiders catch miniature dancers into their traps…

This is a surreal world inhabited by creatures never seen before. Time here passes in a strange way moving in an unexpected paste. As the film is shot in nature the changes of light create a strange shift between the passing of time and the movement of the characters. Tropical nature, ceramic creatures, Estonian music and sounds of northern nature form a surreal world with bizarre sensation of seeing something unknown but familiar at the same time.