Juulia Valkola: Puppet animation "Jazz Bar"

Our short puppet animation film is in production at the moment. Its working title has been a variation of the words “Jazz Bar”, “Anteater” and “the puppet film”.

The film’s protagonist is an anteater, who owns and works at a jazz bar, but dreams of being a musician. The location is the jazz bar itself, shown both during the day and the evening, as well as from the outside. The bar is thematically centered around ants. All the characters in the film are anthropomorphic animals, such as a woodpecker, hedgehog, gecko, raccoon and wild boar.

Our film has been a group effort from scratch, with altogether six people working on it. The trickiest part for our group was to create a script we felt satisfied with. We spent the spring of 2012 brainstorming and coming up with different versions for various ideas, and eventually we envisioned the story we wanted to actualize into a puppet film. At this point we were behind schedule with the production, but all the more motivated and ready to work hard.

Before the summer holiday, we were able to begin working on the sets and props: building walls and furniture, crafting instruments for the bar, designing the general appearance of our film, etc. After summer, we finalized our storyboard with the help of a teacher and our classmates, and took part in extremely useful courses on puppet animation and set lighting. From September onwards we’ve focused on bringing our work to a finish, so that we can start shooting. Nearly all of the visual elements in our film have been created by hand, which has been laborous, but very satisfying.

Right now our sets are nearly finished, with just the final touches remaining to be done. We still need to work on the puppets, but aim to begin shooting as soon as possible.

It has been an immensely educational process so far, not only concerning the production of a puppet film from scratch, but also as a learning experience of working in a group. We’ve been able to overcome difficulties and become closer. After all, we share the same goal: creating a film that we can be proud of. However, at the same time we realize that as students, it’s okay to make mistakes as well.

Our puppet animation is a short exercise film made by Sirpa Loivarinne, Kalle Rantakallio, Juulia Valkola, Claudia Hidvégi, Inga Nospickel and Tuuli Sihvonen. The film will be completed in the spring of 2013.