What is the film about?

Waste Away is my MassArt BFA thesis film. It is a surreal stop motion short about a homeless woman who becomes pregnant with a fish. The responsibility of motherhood gives her the strength to fight for survival, while the forces of nature threaten to overtake her. The setting of urban neglect emphasizes the pervasive alienation between people, and humanity’s destructive impact on their environment. Relevant to today’s crisis, at a time when nature is undermining our position as its ruler, this animation tells a vivid story of disaster and rebirth.

What influenced it?

My biggest influences are female animators such as Allison Schulnik and Suzan Pitt. They use beautiful surreal imagery to disguise underlying themes and bring emotion to the forefront. They both touch on issues that are important to me and appear in my work, such as female issues.

A little background information...

I’ve always lived in big cities, and have grown up observing city life and how poorly the urban environment and those living in it are treated. As a child I would always pick up things on the street that would excite me, treating every piece of trash as a treasure. This eventually led me to think deeper about the the waste in the world. I believe everyone should treat the space they live in and its inhabitants with respect. In a world where our compassion for the planet is dwindling at an alarming rate, I wanted to address these themes in my film.

How was the film made?

My film was executed with a mix of stop motion and digital compositing in After Effects. Some of my shots were made completely in-camera, some were in-camera with green screen keying in post-production, and some were more heavily digitally composited from multiple stop motion elements.