The Flooded Playground

 

Synopsis

Technique: The style of animation is hybrid, consisting of stop motion photography, cutout, drawn, and digital effects. In addition to the photographic and digital work, I also sculpted and painted many characters and other elements.

Country: USA

            In this allegorical fairy tale, a young child resides in a house with a darkly disturbing force that oppresses him in body, mind and spirit.  The wallpaper torments him, a malevolent wind deters him from eating, and thorned vines erupt in his bedroom. A sudden cataclysm throws him into a craggy wonderland where he wanders into deep forests and through his inner inferno in a quest to mend his damaged spirit.

Written, Directed and Produced by Lisa Crafts

Lead Actors Alva Rogers, Caroline O Moses (voiceover)

HD Animation, USA

Click to read more: Biography of Director Lisa Craft

Director Statement

THE FLOODED PLAYGROUND 
directed by Lisa Crafts

I have long been fascinated  with the emotional complexities of early childhood, the mixture of helplessness and invincibility, sweetness and brutality, and the edge where the lines between the real and the imaginary are blurred.

The Flooded Playground is concerned with childhood sorrow, magical thinking  and transformation, the meaning of home, and the resiliency of the human spirit.
           
I have been making animated films for many years, and I have been inspired by the immediacy and range of possibilities for artistic invention that digital technology presents. The hybrid technique I utilize in this film  allows me to seamlessly incorporate photography, painting, sculpture, and digital effects, to create rich atmospheric visuals. 

I have attempted to make a fairy tale with an emotional truth and sense of wonder that will touch viewers of all ages.

About working with HD

Coming to computer generated filmmaking from film, I knew I would want to see my digitally created animated images as radiantly beautiful as 35mm film. I attended a lecture where 35mm and HD were screened side by side. I was so sure it would be easy to tell the difference, so I was astonished when I couldn't differentiate. Although HD films were not commonly screened, I thought they would be by the time I finished my film. Years later when I finished The Flooded Playground, I only applied to festivals that said they screened HD. I was fortunate to get into many festivals, but they usually had only one screening room for HD, and my film was screened in other formats. Cinequest was the only festival that showed it in HD, so I flew across the country so I could see if projected huge and dazzlingly vibrant. I am thrilled that HDFEST exists, and that audiences can see these films in the format they were designed for.