The Sandman

Last Friday we watched a short "kids" horror film called "The Sandman". It was animated by the Brothers Quay. (Stephen and Timothy Quay)

The video is made up entirely of puppets, i think stop motion is used to make the puppets look like they are moving, i say this because it does not look smooth and fluent enough to be computer animated but im not entirely sure. Either way it's pretty creepy and it gives the film a unique feel and style.

The first time we watched it without sound and a little innocent boy goes to sleep, but little does he know that the devious Sandman is going to rip his eyes out right from their sockets! Also the Sandman himself is a very pointy kind of character with sharp edges, much like the logo for the film. Without sound i focused more on the characters movement and the setting. The boys face is especially important, the camera often zooms in on his face to show you how scared he is. The camera angles are also positioned to make the boy look very small compared to the enviroment. Most of the scenes use earthy soft colours and have very low key lighting with more light on certain parts of the scene to draw your attention.

We watched it with sound afterwoods and the creaks of the stairs and other sound effects helped build tension. Its actully quite scary, but everyone was laughing we could not believe it was a kids film.