Public Talk On BEEHOLD

What is the films subject?

BUMBLE BEES ARE DISAPPEARING FROM THE PLANET FASTER THAN ANY BEE

MAKING OF THE FILM BEEHOLD

BEEHOLD THE TRAILER

VARROA Destructor Mites are a Serious problem for Honey Bees they are like vampires sucking blood and nutrients from adult and baby bees in the hive. However in our film we learned that Bumble Bees did not get this type of Mite but we liked the Red character of the VARROA Destructor Mite in our film regardless of the science taking a creative leap. This photo is a character design by a 7 year old who made a PIRATE MITE, she told me "my pirate mite will lead the way" and I decided to use her drawing and other mite drawings in the film but
Veroa Mites are a problem for Honey Bees not Bumble Bees just to keep that straight.

THE SICK BEES CAME ABOUT BY ACCIDENT: ONE OF THE SCHOOLS GRADE 5 DID THESE DRAWINGS OF BEESWITH ALMOST LIKE LADDERS OR METALIC BODIES. WE GREYED THEM OUT AND MADE THEM THE 2080 RACE OF SICK GREY BEES FOR THE FILM TO SHOW THE FUTURE IF WE DON'T CHANGE OUR WAYS.

When you start to make a short film The first thing you do:

1. Choose a focus for your story. Endangered Bees
Brainstorm your characters and develop a plot for your story. Sometimes it's easier to focus on a good main character and revolve everything around them.
2. Create a StoryBoard https://www.pollyzoom.com/storyboards.html
Frame by frame planning of each scene, background
3 Storyboard Animatic Moving StoryBoard is followed up by an Animatic which is a moving storyboard https://vimeo.com/233128788 vimeo.com/233128788
https://vimeo.com/64116662
3 Script
Write the entire story adding more dialog, scenes, and characters.
4 Character Design drawing each character in detail
5. Animating the film ( in our case we gathered drawings and animated them)
For BEEHOLD we had over 200 Drawings and 5 middle school age animators in 3 states animated out of my online animation classes. Some kids in my in person classes in the summer contributed but only single bees, the girls one being Ocean Unger, created backgrounds, specific scenes, gave plot input, and designed characters.
6. Editing the Film Editing the film is a long process since when you take some scenes out that don't work you have to sometimes go back t animation and fix and animate more scenes. So animation and editing happen together often.
7. SOUND: Sound is 90% important to any film! Hiring a Music Composer and Sound Designer for your film is essential. We used Bradley Turner http://bradleyturner.net
I send Bradley the silent animation file and give him some direction of where I want the sound and he writes the music, mixes the sound and he gives me the sound file. I edit the file onto the final film.
8. Showing the Film: We are showing our film in small venues like this but it has been entered in Film festivals world wide. If you apply to 100 festivals sometimes you only get in a few.
Why? Children's Film by Children is a very narrow market in the film industry. There are not many festivals that have a category for children's Films.
9. The film can help Bees even though it is not a science film. So it can be shown at
environmental categories for film festivals and gatherings.

Remember your larger animations are created by large production companies with Hundreds of people animating, large budgets and state of the art equipment. That is a different Genre than the single independent film maker who works from small grants to create films with community members using animation.

Think of BEEHOLD like a mural made by hundreds of kids all working on different parts but instead of painting it on a building we made it move and made it digital.

We have started on a new Film On the Olive Ridley Sea Turtle this turtle is not on our beaches but is in warmer waters. Costa Rice, India, California. This species is not yet endangered but is threatened.
1. Research the topic Sea Turtles: Create a Turtle "LOOK BOOK" https://www.pollyzoom.com/sea-turlte-look-book.html
2. Community Partner International: Children from India Orphaned by a large Typhoon last year in Oridisha province in India. They live at a private residential school not far from the Olive Ridley Sea Turtle Nesting area along the bay of Bengal. 100,000 Turtles are killed each year but only 1 in 1000 Sea Turtle Eggs Survive to adulthood. In this region, they have outlawed netting during turtle nesting season but world wide we all need to do so much more.
3. Script
The script for the film is in progress. The children from India have sent us Sea Turtle drawings and my students have started animating them.

Thank you all for having me today!