minuet

<the technique used was a combination of handmade art papers (bought in London) and ink for glass on cel. All the transparent foreground elements had to be cut out and attached to the cel using sellotape. This made the whole delicate construction extremely prone to falling apart which made me pretty unpopular with the rostrum camera department../>

<the animation elements could not be handled in the same textural manner as the backgrounds so some compromises had to be made. To maintain some degree of softness the characters were traced using wax pencils, which occasionally meant the outline became a bit crude and inaccurate.
It also tended to wear away progressively during the shooting process leaving a nasty residue on the platten glass.../>

<since the music was to be written post-shoot, I needed a guide track to get accurate timings for the dance sequences. Ondra and the Princess started life dancing to the minuet movement of Mozart's Eine Kleine Nachtmuzik. Constantly rewinding the track on the editing bench while making the breakdown meant knowing the piece inside out and quite literally backwards, which I discovered is remarkably similar to forwards.../>