Directors Carolina Melis & Susanne Flender
Music Metronomy

A bird migrates across drawings from 500 members of the public.

A bird migrates across drawings from 500 members of the public. In a visual version of Chinese whispers the image transforms producing an unpredictable narrative flight.

An image of a bird migrates across the drawings of 500 members of the public. In a process akin to Chinese whispers the initial picture transforms and develops, producing an unpredictable narrative flight.

An image of a bird migrates across drawings from 500 members of the public. In a visual version of Chinese Whispers, the participants briefly observed and then redrew a simple line drawing from memory before passing it on to the next participant. The image transforms producing an unpredictable narrative flight. The film tracks the drawing as it moves from hand to hand and town to town on a journey from Brighton to Aberdeen via London, Oxford, Birmingham, Leeds, York, Newcastle, Durham and Edinburgh.

This was the text of the explanatory sheet handed out to members of the public who attended the workshops:

Members of the public in fourteen country-wide locations (please see map) are invited to contribute to a game of visual ‘Chinese Whispers‘.

An illustration of a bird will be shown briefly to the first participant in the first workshop in Brighton – that participant will be asked to redraw the bird as accurately as possible from memory. This drawing will then be passed to the next person and the whole process will be repeated over and over again.

This process will continue, travelling northwards all the way from Brighton to Aberdeen and we hope to create up to a thousand drawings. These drawings, a single series created by up to a thousand ‘public illustrators’, will form the key frames to our three minute animated film which will in turn, through our own interventions, reflect the journey of the image as it is passed from hand to hand, from town to town, from region to region.

Families who work with us on this unique project can share our excitement as the ‘public illustrators’ become the artists behind this innovative project and see their work screened on national television, in cinemas and at international film festivals

By taking part in this project each participant will become an official illustrator of As the Crow Flies and his/her name will be included in the film credits. If families would like to be kept up to date with the progression of the project and be notified of the animation’s screening time and date, parents or carers will be invited to give us an email contact address which we will add to our database.