Lockers

The production of the thesis film ‘Lockers’ was not an easy birth. The first proposed story that was accepted by the Thesis committee was discarded as being too technically ambitious. There was then a protracted effort to develop a new, producible thesis Story proposal that met the committee’s requirements. Once an acceptable thesis proposal was developed, the writer then attempted to refine the story; writing over forty drafts in order to reduce the elements of the story into something that made the artistic and narrative statements as well as being technically viable. Working in the professional world of animation while simultaneously working on the production of the thesis helped as methodologies and techniques used by colleagues provided solutions to technical issues as they came up. The issues that did present themselves were not centered around the animation itself but of rigging and modeling problems and challenges getting the animation from one software package to another. Also as lighting and rendering of shots is relatively ‘uncharted territory’, developing desired ‘processor-cheap’ but effective illumination solutions was especially challenging. The total production time pushed on for four to five years, and throughout the process, the story’s theme of confronting one’s fears and overcoming them was the intended message. However, as the production came to a close, another theme became as equally clear to me. The film was indeed about fear and confronting it but it also was about living in the present moment, avoiding getting caught up in the past and realizing that forward movement is the only clear way to redemption. As the film screened in Grad screenings, the struggles and challenges that made up a large part of this film’s production process became entwined, for me at least, in the film’s final meaning