Laragh Murphy
A short film adaptation of a traditional Irish fairy tale presented in the style of renowned 20th Century Irish artist, Harry Clarke, most noted for both his stained glass and print work.
This film aims to truly wow its audience by incorporating much of what made Clarke's work unique - dynamic relationship of glass' physicality with colour, elegantly gothic illustrations and dynamic composition - with a return to classical Irish storytelling through its adaptation of the old Irish oral mythos. A project intentionally designed to both push myself as a director and also a love letter to the cultural elements of the Gaelic Revival, of which Clarke and his creations helped mold.
In order to achieve this, the animation of much of the cast is primarily done using Lost Marble's software, Moho, a rigging based program that allows puppet-based manipulation of both vector and bitmap-based images. Early on during the project's development it became clear that due to much of the source work being glass, more three-dimensional motion would break the illusion of a moving illustration. The final film is intended to have the audience believe that they have witnessed a moving fairy-tale rather than a film, thus it became necessary to employ a production method that allowed this, rigging illustrations drawn in Adobe Photoshop in Moho.
From its inception this film was designed to push creatively, to be an opportunity to both return to what previously worked but also discover something new. From a technical level the decision to work with Moho, a software I had no prior experience with and was predominantly self-taught, added to my software arsenal by broadening fundamental skills. From a design standpoint I wanted a challenge. To test myself as a director by incorporating more stylistic cinematic decisions by not only working to adapt a story but adapting an art style.
Despite how tragically short Clarke's life was, it became apparent that there was so much more to his work than solely stained glass, the area I had originally intended to limit the film's style to. He truly defines himself in his broader works, particularly where more grotesque visuals, like that of Edgar Allen Poe's short stories or Faust, lend themselves to his more intricate methodology. The film's style subsequently deepened, forming an amalgamation of the best features of Clarke's work, intrinsic detail paired with vibrant colour shadowed by a haunting underbelly.
Laragh is a Film Director and Designer currently based in Dublin. Her design work is particularly focused on Character Design, Background and Style Development. She is open to any and all art styles, as reflected in the diverse look of her grad film ‘Doctor, Doctor’, a film homage to the work of Dublin Glass Artist and Illustrator, Harry Clarke (1889 –1931). The connection between her various areas of interest is a love story, in particular story with meaning.
