Director Jonathan Hodgson
Director of Photography Mike Beresford-Jones
Live Action Producer Clare Spencer
Animators Tim Webb & Siri Melchior
Editor Tania Trohoulia
Producer Jonathan Bairstow

Voiced visions of the voices in the head as multiform memories of parental paranoia get the heightened reality they require. Case studies committed to celluloid. Sketches of schizophrenia that draw on reality and the time in the big house, behind the trees, too far from the road.

Explores the experience of children growing up with schizophrenic parents. Based on extensive research comparing personal experience with that of others. Using interviews, animation and live action. The live action is based on the director’s own childhood memories. The animation is based on interviews in which people were asked to describe what they remember of their experiences at the time and how their perception of reality may have been distorted by what was going on.

Drawings on paper were treated in different ways. Some were artworked onto Chinese calligraphy paper using paint, biro, chinagraph, Tipp-Ex and ink. Others were hand coloured digitally using the programme Painter. Some sequences were shot using a DV camera with insufficient light. These images were then digitised in low resolution, and the filters of the line-testing software CTP, normally used to clean up the image, were pushed in the opposite direction creating artifacts.

The sequences were then composited and coloured in After Effects. Some sequences were animated with marker pen then scanned into the computer. Again, the resolution was low and filters were pushed in the wrong direction to mess up the image. The live action ‘flashbacks’ were telecined, then digitised and then graded to give a slightly old-fashioned look.

Where there is a crossover from live action to animation, the live action was rotoscoped to become literally a hand-drawn tracing which would be scanned and coloured using Painter and After Effects. The two versions of the same movement were blended together to make a seamless transition, also using After Effects.

Director Jonathan Hodgson
Elder girl Lydia Pala
Younger girl Alice Keane
Younger boy Tom Wallis
Mother Naomi Seekings
Father David Benson
Male guest Johnny Hannah
Female guest Kirsten Peebles
Nurse Clare Spencer
Director of Photography Mike Beresford-Jones
Gaffer Matt Butler
Live Action Producer Clare Spencer
Animators Tim Webb & Siri Melchior
Animation assistance Shelley Revill & Emily Mantell
Compositor Donovan Hide
Editor Tania Trohoulia
Technical support Luke Carpenter
Producer Jonathan Bairstow