“An Enchanted Exploration of the Military Archive”
An artist residency at the Military Archive in partnership with The Department of Tourism, Culture, Arts, Gaeltacht, Sport and Media as part of the Decade of Centenaries Programme 2012-2023
The Call Out & Our Proposal
Myself and John first heard about this opportunity early in 2021, and straight away we were interested! Our path to animation has been varied, we worked for visual artists and designers before formally starting our studio in 2017, and this residency seemed like a perfect fit for our unique skills. It also seemed like a great opportunity to take a deep dive into the history of Ireland and the foundation of the free state.
In 2020 we completed a project with The 100 Archives which required extensive research, collaborating with multiple stakeholders and reducing large amounts of information into a short, engaging animation. We were delighted with the results of this and we eager to take on a project in a similar vein.
In the Call-out they specifically wanted to:
“…invite an artistic response to our rich primary source material with a view to bringing it into the public domain in new and imaginative ways”
We felt that animation would be a brilliant tool for this, and with our unique skills and experience, we could do a good job!
In our proposal we stated:
“What we find most interesting about the archive is the juxtaposition of the individual experience and shared identity - that it is a collection of individual stories that come together to inform our collective Irish identity – a shared history.
There is a symbiotic link between the Archive and Irish culture – our culture has been shaped by the events catalogued in the Archive and our developing culture has informed the Archive.
By pursuing this area of research we aim to show that the archive is relevant to us all - that these stories, events and individuals have had a profound effect on how we all live our lives today.”
Year 1
A phone interview with Daniel Ayiotis, the Director of the Military Archives and a commandant in the Irish Army, allowed us to explain our process a little, how we would approach the residency, and how we would utilise our diverse backgrounds to add something new and original to the normal narrative from this period of Irish history.
After receiving the good news that we were awarded the residency, we started the project with a site visit. Dan was a world of knowledge and it was amazing to see layers of history unfold through his stories as we walked around the barracks.
The Military Archive building is really beautiful. It was designed by McCullough Mulvin Architects and the build was completed in 2018. It was a little mind-blowing to take a tour of the interior and see the two stories of climate-controlled storage! For the first time, we began to understand the task at hand, and, to be honest…we were a little daunted!
Our initial approach was to make a series of stand-alone animated clips that would tell the story of some of the artefacts in the archive relating to the Decade of Centenaries. Through conversation with Dan we decided, taking our skills and experience into account, that we would aim the animations at a younger audience (approximately 8-12 year olds). As we developed these ideas some problems started to emerge.
“Once we decided (in conversation with the Military Archive staff) that the target audience was 8-12 years old we realised it was not possible to create stand-alone animated clips without setting the context. We wanted to create an animation that had real educational and cultural value and that would connect with the target audience. To do this we needed to take a more traditional approach to animation, creating characters that the audience could identify with and creating a story that set the context and engaged the viewers”
Over the next nine months, we set about trying to learn as much as we could about the archive, and specifically how the period 1912-1923 was represented within it. We had more site visits, many patient meetings and calls with Dan and his team, and lots of sketching and discussion as we tried to find a way forward.
Working with the Military Archive team made our jobs significantly easier - they were all so knowledgeable about all there artefacts they housed and helped point our research in the right direction. We formalised our research in a Development Document that we presented to Dan and his team to check that everyone was happy with our proposal:
“We are proposing to make stop-motion animations that will bring some of the stories from the Archive to life for an 8-10 years audience. Our process around this will be to write factual scripts for every year 1918-1923. We will then chat with some historians, as well as Dan and his team to check that these are accurate. When we’re happy with them we’ll collaborate with our script writer Saoirse Anton to find the right language so that these stories will engage and excite a younger audience.
We are fortunate enough to be working with Saoirse for several years, and have developed a lovely collaborative work process! We were also very lucky to have two interns working with us that year (Nadia Tai and Simona Vaitkeviciute) and they did fantastic work helping to design the characters and storyboarding the scripts.
In the studio, myself and John turned the character designs into puppets, built some sets and assets, and did some animation tests. Initially, we thought this was promising direction, and were happy with the tests that we were producing. However, as we continued down this path some further problems presented themselves. As we developed stories for each year we realised that the narratives were becoming a little repetitive! We were worried that the finished animations wouldn’t grab the attention of a younger audience and would only be of value as a research tool.
These issues were compounded by the fact that we were coming to the end of our residency, and, while we had conducted a lot of research and developed characters that we liked, we were still far away from producing a usable animation!
So, myself and John made a brave decision…to go back to the Military Archive and the funders, and to ask for an extension! We explained our rationale - since we have invested so much time with the research it would be great to have more time to spend on the animation! We really wanted to honour our time at the Military Archive, and produce an animation that we would all be proud of and that would bring the material in the archive into the public realm in a new and interesting way.
Year 2
We were delighted to be awarded a second year with the archive.
Dan always said that this was an artist led project, and it was really great for us to see him reiterate this! For us, an artist led project meant that we had the freedom to change our minds and direction as the research and development required.
Taking everything that had learned so far, we rewrote the brief again.
“We’re proposing to create one 5-minute animation that includes the introduction and a conclusion and highlights key events from the whole decade by looking at relevant artefacts in the archive.”
Once this was agreed, we spent some time sketching our initial thoughts on this new approach.
Sketching is still at the heart of our practice - it is a way of thinking for us and developing ideas, as well as a method of communicating these ideas to our team or clients. Its also quite an immediate process! We started to think about the story differently and had the idea to magically shrink the characters down so that they can go on an enchanted explanation of the archive. With this approach, the characters could explore the actual artefacts in the archive as they walked along the table top. We loved this idea, and thought it was a great way to work with the media in the archive - by enlarging them we could really focus the audience's attention on them.
We had another meeting with Dan and his team, and explained the new approach. Again, we were met with enthusiasm for the idea and excitement to see the final film.
Back in studio we made new puppets that were bigger and would facilitate more movement and expression - giving us the opportunity to bring more emotion and subtlety to the finished animation.
This year we had a new team of interns who were a big support in building all the assets.
(Giulia Colombo, Lisa Lamprecht, Natasha Walker)
Conclusion
Collaboration is very important for us here at Studio 9.
An ideal collaboration for us is when everyone has space to learn and grow and develop…where everyone commits and gains from the project.
We consider this project a real success as there was a sense of respect between everyone…and trust (and patience). Collaboration enables myself and John to make more ambitious work, and it was a real honour to be trusted with telling stories from this momentous period of time.
We also consider it a success as the finished animation now sits proudly on the Military Archive’s brand new website and we are really delighted that it is now considered a useful resource by the Archive!