AN aspiring young Holywood filmmaker has been nominated for a prestigious award for her stop motion film.
Charlie Beimers has been nominated in the Animation Ireland category of this year’s Ireland’s Young Filmmaker of the Year Awards (IYFTY) for her stop motion movie The Volunteer.
The 19 year-old made her 10-minute stop motion film over a course of six months as part of an A-Level project last year at Sullivan Upper School.
Charlie said: “A lot of it was solid filming for me. I would have to leave school and film it and my teachers were really accommodating for it which was nice.
“I made it all at home in my garage with a bit of help from my dad. I handmade it all and animated it all.”
Charlie explained that the general message of the movie was to ‘leave no trace’.
She continued: “The film is about a volunteer. Earth has basically completely destroyed itself – we are using all the natural resources and we aren’t really caring about the world around us – everything is monetary and nothing is looked at just for its beauty.
“So they put out a call for volunteers to go out and find new planets to inhabit in space because we can’t really inhabit our own anymore.
“So a guy is up in space and searching around and has been to a bunch of other planets, when he gets to one that is really beautiful and he starts to gather samples to see if it would be good to inhabit.
“He begins to notice the beauty of the planet – something he hasn’t seen before because he is from this really awful place – and in the end he comes back to his ship and has to make a decision to say if the planet is habitable or to lie to save it.
“In the end he says no and sends that message back to Earth and saves it.”
Asked about her inspiration, Charlie said the topic of climate change had been discussed in school and she had just watched ‘Mad God’, an adult stop motion animated film, directed by Phil Tippet.
“His animations take stop motion to a new level. They are so beautiful and his use of puppetry and stop motion and set design – I wanted to emulate that,” she said.
“Compared to my AS film I put in a lot more effort into world building and soundscape and just making everything feel atmospheric.”
Charlie made her own puppet for the film, using recycled materials found at home.
Looking to her future, the aspiring filmmaker said that she felt university was not a pathway for her and was currently focusing on making her films at home and submitting applications into awards and festivals.
The film has been accepted into Animation Dingle, the island’s biggest animation festival.
“I would love to go into the industry and I know in Northern Ireland we are very big for film but because stop motion is quite niche there is not an abundance of opportunities, so it has been difficult to find my feet in that,” Charlie said, adding that working in stop motion was her dream.
“I think that stop motion is a really underrated medium and I think it lost a lot of traction when it stopped being used as the old way of making special effects.
“I really like it and if there is not many stop motion companies in Northern Ireland – maybe that could be me, maybe I will.”
Noting that the awards will be awarded based on audiences choice, Charlie said: “Stop motion is really underappreciated in terms of animation, which is a male dominated industry.
“I’m really proud to come as far as I have so far as a young woman working in a male dominated industry and from that, a male dominated medium within it.”
Celebrating its 30th year, Ireland’s Young Filmmaker of the Year Awards, part of the Fresh International Film Festival produced by Fresh Film, are globally regarded as one of the world’s leading annual film events for young people.
The award ceremony will take place on March 26 in Dublin and all shortlisted films from across the island can be viewed from Monday, March 9 on Fresh Film’s Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/freshfilmfestival
