Email1: lauriehi2_AT_yahoo_DOT_co_DOT_uk
Email2: lauriehi_AT_hotmail_DOT_com
Laurie is represented in the UK by Annex Films for commercials, music videos and digital. www.annexfilms.co.uk
You can check out heart-warming older news items by clicking on the monthly links over on the right. Look out for a new website coming soooon!
Ok ok - so here’s a little interview that was taped by apengine -
I’m blethering away merrily there - apologies!
Director:
Laurie Hill
There’s a fun little Q&A I was asked to complete up on the British Council website.
Here’s the link:
http://www.britfilms.com/spotlight/lauriehill/
Director:
Laurie Hill
images courtesy of Getty Images
Film title:
Photograph Of Jesus
Running time:
6 mins 40 secs
Description:
Looking for photographs of Jesus, yetis and Hitler in 1948?
Help is at hand with this documentary-fantasy based on true stories of requests for impossible images.
Real-life archives become the stage where fact and fiction collide, belief runs amok and unruly images have a life of their own.
Aspect ratio:
16:9
Language of dialogue:
English
Director:
Laurie Hill
Film title:
La La Song
Band:
The Kissaway Trail
Track title:
La La Song
Record Label:
Bella Union
Running time:
3 mins 5 secs
Description:
Beneath an innocent exterior, this promo for The Kissaway Trail reveals a darker, maggot-ridden heart. Made on a tiny budget, Laurie Hill directs, animates and stars as the cutout runaway in a tale of near-misses, frustration, escape and its repercussions. A stray rocket out of the blue brings disaster, the heavens offer encouragement from afar and a deluge of cockroaches, maggots, dinosaurs and butterflies makes satisfaction an elusive goal. A digital/stop frame collision with plenty of blu-tack.
Extra info:
The idea was to create a surface-level innocent story of escape but then reveal a darker flip side and its repercussions.
Pure cgi can get a bit sterile - and I was really trying to avoid that. I wanted to try a hybrid approach combining computer animation with traditional stop-motion techniques.
I created my main puppet using cutout photographs and wire ? I?m sure you can still see some of the blue tack and glue if you look closely enough! But it?s those hand-made touches and glitches that give it vitality and character. I stop-frame animated this and the other found objects against a bluescreen, shooting with a digital stills camera. These were then placed within computer-generated 3d environments made with elements by illustrator Tekura Maeva.
Aspect ratio:
16:9
Director:
Laurie Hill
Film title:
My First Taste of Death
Running time:
9 mins 30 secs
Description:
Another special collaboration crossing the barriers of time.
A kind of angsty and tormented take on Hollywood actioner full of surreal detail and humour. Me and the boss discover Dodo island, I face a deadly struggle with my nemesis the demented sea scorpion and the whole adventure can only end in tears.
Miniaturised King Kong but without the ape?
Extra information:
As with ‘My Life At 40?, the script is a genuine document written when I was 12 and left unedited.
BAFTA award-winner Ian W. Gouldstone provides the voiceover.
About the music: ?I wanted a powerful original score to be a key feature of my film and was keen to have a close collaboration with the composer, Andrew Lomatschinsky, from a very early stage in the development of the film. Visual and musical ideas were to develop together and proceed through close dialogue right through to the final dubbing session. Jacquelyn McKay provided the soprano vocal performance.?
Andrew Lomatschinsky comments on the score: ?All the music is original and written for this film. As a point of interest, the text used for the soprano is formed from extracts of writings from Hildegard von Bingen (c.1175 AD).?
Aspect ratio:
16:9
Language of dialogue:
English
Director:
Laurie Hill
Film title:
My Life At 40
Running time:
7 mins 40 secs
Description:
I’m not 40 yet but I’m forward-thinking. A special collaboration between the director, aged 12 years, and his 34 year old self, both looking forward to a glorious future as a 40 year old conservation hero and Lamborghini owner. Made with six years to go!
Note on technique:
This film uses a variety of techniques: real and computer animated cutouts, drawing, photography and time lapse. No moving image cameras were used - just digital stills cameras.
Extra info:
?My Life At 40? is billed as a collaboration between versions of myself at different ages struggling to articulate and realise their dreams. In doing so, a negotiation between idealism and pragmatism occurs. The script is a genuine document written when I was 12, rediscovered many years later.
Directly after completing ?My Life At 40?, I worked on a project for BAFTA-nominated director Osbert Parker? a promo film for the World Wildlife Fund, ?WWF Living Planet?, featuring lots of great cutout animation.
?My Life At 40? describes my desire to become a conservation hero by the age of 40 and so this felt like it was a step in the right direction!
Generally speaking, the drama of Control Vs. Unruly Forces is usually bubbling away at the heart of my work and this can fly off in any number of directions. There is also a tension between the desire to create narrative and another to dissolve it. A healthy dose of (dark) humour and a sense of absurdity are also crucial ingredients in the mix. If I can make myself laugh I know I?m on the right track!
Aspect ratio:
16:9
Language of dialogue:
English
Weather Report is a collage of footage home recorded over an entire year on one UK channel ? weather reports. The supposedly banal is transformed into cultural gold!
Director:
Laurie Hill
Project title:
Weather Report
Individual work titles:
1. Weather Report
2. Chrissie, Sian, Martyn, Robin, and Becky
3. Chrissie
4. Sian
5. Martyn
6. Robin
7. Becky
Running time:
approx. 45 secs each
all together 6 mins
Description:
Composites formed from instances of appropriated TV footage: national and London weather reports recorded over an entire year 2004-2005 on one UK channel.
These home-recorded reports have been cropped to a single video ‘line’ each and spliced together to form new hybrids.
Together the hundreds of linear fragments play back simultaneously, as do the vocal commentaries.
Chrissie, Sian, Martyn, Robin, and Becky is an amalgam of multiple presenters, charting the frequency of their appearances.
Aspect ratio:
4:3
Language of dialogue:
English
Director:
Laurie Hill
Another nice piece of Jerwood news here:
My Life At 40 is one of the eight finalist works up for the Jerwood Moving Image Awards 2008.
There’s a complete streaming version now available online at
www.jerwoodmovingimage.com
There’s also an exhibition of the eight finalist works on at the Jerwood Space in London at the moment, details below
Jerwood Space: 20 February - 20 March 2008
Jerwood Space
171 Union Street
London
SE1 0LN
Jerwood Space opening times:
Monday - Friday : 10.00 - 17.00
Saturday - Sunday : 10.00 ? 15.00
Entry: Free
For some reason items of news keep on dropping off the bottom of these pages so I’m going to try to bring them back somehow!
April / May 2006
East End Film Festival, London, UK
13th Stuttgart International Festival of Animated Film, Germany
February 2006
Finalist & awarded Runner Up in Experimental Animation - Animex Student Animation Awards, Middlesbrough, UK
January 2006
Eat Our Shorts, National Film Theatre, London, UK
Halloween Short Film Festival, Institute of Contemporary Arts / Curzon Soho, London, UK
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