Micro Cinema: A Course for Writers and Filmmakers

This one-day course will model a way of producing stories from visual and literary prompts. You will learn how a story or plot can be drawn from one absorbing word or phrase which, when animated, can turn into an entire story.  Writer Sally Bayley and animator Suzie Hanna will lead you through a morning and afternoon session dedicated to finding your micro story or plot, your piece of micro cinema. 

The morning session will be led by Sally who will offer you a selection of literary examples, including fragments of her own work, as well as from lines of poetry. Participants will practice turning these fragments into voiced actions or emotional moments framed and animated by gesture and  movement. Key to this will be the understanding that story worlds can be born from a random assortment of verbal parts carefully selected, ordered and voiced.  We will play with word-fragments through fortune telling games and miniature verbal cameos. 

LUNCH BREAK 

The afternoon session will be taken by Suzie Hanna who will build upon the morning session to show participants how compressed words can be turned into moving objects producing haptic force (the force of touch, texture, sound, colour, movement). Using analogue techniques and simple paper-puppetry methods, participants will work towards producing a short piece of micro cinema as they turn their compressed word-plots into animated narratives. 

The entire workshop will celebrate the power of producing a structured visual narrative from what seems to be random or even chaotic set of choices. At the heart of the session will be an understanding of creative but productive play.