The Violin

   

   The Violin was a Singapore short animation directed by Ervin Han and was featured at the Rewind/Remind Film Festival, organised by the Singapore Memory Project as part of the country's 50th year of independence celebrations. It depicts the journey of a violin in tandem with the progress of the nation. Originally presented as a gift to a young Singaporean boy by a foreign trader, the violin weathers war and crisis, and lies forgotten for quite some time. It however eventually enters another home, where it inspires two generations of passionate musicians.

   The animation features no voice acting and relies on a rich film score (Centring around the titular instrument itself), the music being the very thing narrating the story itself. and is done mainly in hand-drawn 2D animation to recreate the emotional highs and lows of the nations history. Many of Singapore's iconic landmarks- which are now gone- are featured in this animation. Ervin's goal was to create an animation that different generations can enjoy, and evoke their own meanings and memories from, based on their life experiences.

   While a majority of the character animation is hand drawn, I have noticed some inclusion of After Effects when it came to the camera movements and some CGI for certain effects such as fire and explosions. It is very possible that several of the vehicles featured in the animation are 3D renders, the violin especially was confirmed by Ervin to have some 3D elements to it. The 2D animation seems to change at certain times as well, some a little more stiff if not less fluid than others. But what is certainly caught my eye is the fact that the 2D animations were actually hand-drawn and animated on paper, before digitally scanned in for clean-up and colouring. Not many local productions still do this (Another aspect that I really love), but the idea was always to adopt a more classic look, especially as 80 years of history is being retold.

   As there wasn't an actual script written for this save for a detailed story treatment (A similar thing I did for my Extended Practice animation), Ervin had to work very closely with the storyboard artist while also giving him some room to explore and visualise. The storyboards changed many times and the production backgrounds had to be delivered even before the story was locked. Thankfully, however, only one background design was left unused. Making a silent film was both liberating and restricting. On one hand, time was saved on crafting dialogue and exposition, but on the other hand, it had to be pure visual storytelling- using action, performance, staging and cinematography to convey the story.

   Ervin from here on out aims to produce another short animated film for next year, and is starting to sound out potential partners and sponsors. His aim is to actually produce one animation a year around National Day and over time, develop an anthology of high quality, animated shorts about Singapore. The fact that Ervin's heavy emphasis and appealing to a local target audience feels like a rarity during this period, and in fact resonates something in me. As one who has closely followed LeSean Thomas' journey as an animator and his deep love for anime and more traditionally done 2D animations, I am pleased to know that someone like Ervin Han resides in Singapore and I will definitely be keeping a closer eye on him, especially when I return to Singapore after graduation.