Oona Paukkonen: Puppet animation ”Scarecrow”

Our short puppet animation (working title the ” Scarecrow”) is in post-production phase at this moment. The animated short is about an unlucky scarecrow and a mischievous little boy. There are altogether five people making the film.

Creating a script (in the spring 2012) was probably the most difficult part in our production. Finally the idea came very spontaneously during a course in which we were teached how to make the animation puppets. After the scriptwriting phase we started very quickly to build our set which is a large exterior with a field, a large tree, a house etc.

During the early autumn we drew our final storyboard and finished our set and puppets. In autumn, we also attended to some courses on puppet animation and set lighting. In the end of October we moved our set by car from the Arts Academy to another location, named Trivium which lies about 4 kilometers from the academy. Shooting elsewhere than in the school’s studio is not that difficult but moving a huge set always contains some heavy lifting and unpleasant sore muscels. In the end we have been very pleased with the studio of Trivium. It has kept our total concentration on the shooting process. Also a change of scene is always quite refreshing!

When shooting the film we discovered all kinds of mistakes we had made in the set (some things are a bit too large or small). Solving these different problems has been certainly educational for us. Otherwise the whole shooting phase has gone surprisingly well and fluently.

The puppet animation ” Scarecrow” (working title) is a short film made by Annika Dahlsten, Emma Kunnari, Niina Muikku, Elina Myllykangas and Oona Paukkonen. The animation will be completed in the spring of 2013.