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NEW SHORT TAKES DIGITAL ROUTE TO THE SCREEN
ON THE WESTERN FRONT Wilfred Owen’s poetry comes to life
Behind the making and post- production of Wilfred, a new 14-minute short, written, pro- duced and directed by Peter M. Kershaw, is a fascinating story of dedication and innovation.
A mix of live-action and animation, the film is about the Great War poet, Wilfred Owen. But despite the title, it’s “not a biopic,” emphasised Kershaw.
He explained: “A beauty of
Owen’s poetry is
that it expresses
the almost incom-
prehensible experi-
ences of so many
men in the horror
of the First World
War, a single artis-
tic expression of a
universal experi-
ence. This gave me
the personal per-
spective for telling
such a powerful
story, where the
sheer numbers involved often mask the intensity of individual experiences.”
So weaving in Owen’s poetry and letters, how did Kershaw settle on a style for Wilfred? “Two film-makers that have been very influential for me are Alan Parker and Stanley Kubrick and I wanted to give my film a visual style that would stay with the audi- ence and treat a period story in a fresh way. From the outset, I and cinematog- rapher Alistair McKenzie had but one aim – to make a powerful cinematic film.
“To create the film’s visual style, starting with Owen’s letters and poems, I turned to other art forms that have survived from the period, now our only first-hand witness. This allowed me to introduce animation, paintings and music to give the sub- ject a fresh treatment yet be grounded in the artistic explosion that emerged from the experiences at the Front in the Great War.
“The majority of Wilfred is live- action [filmed entirely on location in North Yorkshire] into which is woven
two styles of animation. Rostrum cut- out by Robert Jefferson uses soldiers that are reminiscent of the artwork of the German artist Otto Dix and the war machine inspired by the powerful Jacob Epstein sculpture, The Rock Drill.
“The second style, traditional drawn animation, was styled on the prolific poster art of the period and a French poster in particular. Drawn on
said: “Having decided we wanted the quality and flexibility offered by 35mm we knew colour and the treat- ment of the stock was going to play a big part in the final com- plex look of the inter- woven elements at
both the shooting and grading stage. We finally settled on 250, 250D and 64D for the live- action with 125 stock for the rostrum cut-out animation.”
For the final piece of the jigsaw, Kershaw took his edi- tor’s advice and looked at the web-site for Digital Film Labs in Copenhagen who use Discreet’s top-end computer system, The Inferno.
over 1600 cels, this was then generat- ed in the animo computer by anima- tor David Bunting. Finally, in an allu- sion to the startling landscapes of Paul Nash, Yvonne Elvin created a series of memorable paintings of dis- turbing landscapes.”
The human factor is represented by Michael Higgs (from TV’s The Bill) as Wilfred, along
with a cast of
distinguished
voices like
Edward Fox,
Derek Jacobi
and Robert
Duncan reading
great Owen
verse such as
Spring Offensive
and Dulce Et
Decorum Est.
Backing came
from Northern Arts, Tyne Tees Television, Discreet, Fuji and perhaps most crucially of all, the ACE Film Lottery.
Technically-speaking, Kershaw
became
35mm film to pursue this digital post- production route for creating a release print. From making most of the film within a 12 mile radius of where I live in Yorkshire, we’d suddenly gone international.”
Photos clockwise from top: A surreal element in the film in which Wilfred Owen pictures himself being treated in No-Man’s-Land; painting by Yvonne Elvin used in the film; on the Ors canal Director Peter M. Kershaw and Cinematographer Alistair McKenzie; Michael Higgs as Wilfred Owen
“In talking to Mike Fraser, who was to do the film’s neg cut, and Paul Collard at Soho Images, who were to produce the film’s final prints, it soon clear we would be the first UK
“The new process allowed the best of both worlds. We had
shot 35mm Fuji because we wanted that quality for the end product. Now we were also able to enjoy the some of the benefits of digital technology.
“ Martin Wells, the colourist at
Digital Film Labs, did the grading for Wilfred on Spirit Datacine. For the first time on film I felt the grading process realised the film’s intended look, such as allowing us to add colour to the
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