Bram Ttwheam is the director of the Aardman animation ‘The Hunchback in the Park’.
A small boy playing in the park almost 100 years ago had an imagination so strong that even today we can share his dreams. An amazing free-form poem that makes you both the observer and the subject, so many layers in so few lines.
This project was a special proposition to me, it was an opportunity to dig deep
into a poem that reveals more with each reading.
The temptation to dwell on the sombre aspects of the piece was there. Feelings
of being an outsider, self-loathing and melancholic nostalgia are all present
but there is also the wonder in nature and the liberation of creativity.
For me it was a challenge to represent this multi-layered work without allowing
any one aspect to dominate. I wanted to make sure that the images were as open
to personal interpretation as the poem itself without being too
literal. Another joyful aspect of this project was the chance to work with
John Hardy and the BBC National Orchestra of Wales to create the wonderful
score. The team here at Aardman were incredible, they all poured their own
creativity into the work.
A scene from a unique short animation of Dylan Thomas's poem 'The Hunchback in the Park'.
We had great fun in the studios building rockeries, underground dens and ponds
as well as filming plants and people at high frame rates. Lots of people, from
our studio cleaner to dancer friends, donated their time and skills. Every day,
for a week and a half, the DOP, camera assistant and I zoomed around Bristol
with the company van to film plants, trees, sky and more. We even found
ourselves racing against the elements to film at night, both fun and
exhausting.
Back in the studio we made environments with computers and the practical
elements we had assembled. We then populated them with ethereal figures and
even created a hunched stop-frame figure, constructed entirely from twigs
gathered in nearby woods.
The result of all this is a kind of living collage that hopefully compliments the amazing reading given by Michael Sheen.
Go behind the scenes with Bram as he talks about the process of animating the Dylan Thomas poem.
When we were approached about the project I was wondering about the possibilities of conveying multiple narratives by the use of double exposures. Double-exposed images have many qualities, not least a sense of half-remembering something.
Amazingly, this project allowed me to try out some of these notions because the source material has such a multi-layered quality. The words and the technique seemed a perfect marriage.
Composer John Hardy and BBC NOW Director Michael Garvey talk about composing and performing the music behind the animation of this Dylan Thomas poem.
Watch 'The Hunchback in the Park' exclusively on BBC iPlayer until 31 October.
