Official Selection at London International Animation Festival

Screening at the Barbican

I was dead chuffed to hear that Blood, rats and anticoagulants made the official selection at this year’s London International Animation Festival, to be screened at the Barbican.

It was amongst a fantastic line up of films and I was particularly chuffed to get a science story in front of a non-specialist audience.

The film was comissioned by Nature, working with the fantastic Shamini Bundell and with the awesome animator Jules Bartl at Dog and Rabbit.

Blood, rats and anticoagulants: The story of Warfarin (video commission)

This film I produced and narrated for Nature tells the story of how a bloody beginning gave rise to the life-saving medication, warfarin. This anticoagulant is one of the worlds most widely prescribed drugs and its history is littered with the bodies of sick cows and poisoned rats...

Experience Composite (Video Commission)

What is in the contents of your head at the moment of the beep?

This film was commissioned as part of a residency within the Wellcome Collection’s Hubbub Group and exhibited at the “Rest & its discontents” exhibition at Mile End Art Pavilion, London October 2016.

Using playful imagery the film presents a collection of short vignettes that explore the strange and often abstract nature of our everyday inner experiences.

The experiences were documented through a process called descriptive experience sampling (DES), a technique developed by American psychologist Russel Hurlburt that aims to document inner experiences – the thoughts, feelings, sensations and bodily experiences that constitute our everyday consciousness.

Participants of DES wear a small beeper which sounds randomly throughout the day, at the moment of the beep, individuals are instructed to note down the exact contents of their experience (this could include internal monologues, physical sensations or visual imagery).

Follow up interviews tease out the information of the experiences and distill them into short summaries. These so called “beep summaries” provide wonderfully vivid depictions, almost like a dream diary, for seemingly mundane everyday experiences.

Using material gathered by several members of the Hubbub team, this film translates and re-interprets the contents of the beep summaries, referencing the distortions and adaptations that occur when we try to conceptualise our inner experiences with others.

The film was shot over the summer of 2016 on a Sony A7s. I used old M42 lenses to help give the piece a faded, dream like quality – which was further aided by adding film grain and muting the colours slightly in post. Most of the portraits were shot on an old Takumar 50mm 1.4 lens which has a beautiful vintage bokeh, which is full of character and lacks the somewhat clinical precision of a modern lens.

Find out more about the Hubbub Research group here: hubbubresearch.org

Animation: Marie Tharp – Revealing the Secrets of the Ocean Floor

Mapping the ocean floors

An animation I produced last year with animator / illustrator Rosanna Wan for the Royal Institution.

Rosanna’s distinct visuals incorporate a hand drawn style that tell the story of cartographer Marie Tharp, whose work helped to detail the complex geography of ocean floors around the world.

Her maps helped to demonstrate that the ocean floor was in fact a complex assortment of peaks and troughs – which went against conventional wisdom at the time. Despite fierce opposition, she stuck fast to her findings and as more data was collated, the tide of opposition turned, paving the way for our modern understanding of plate tectonics.

Directed and animated by Rosanna Wan.

Produced and scripted by Ed Prosser.

Narrated by Helen Czerski.