"BUBBLEGUM"- by Caroline Holtgrewe
A short film made over the course of 16 weeks, learning while doing and balancing other responsibilities!
Pre-Production
From an outside perspective, Bubblegum is the story of a little girl that uses a make-believe, bubblegum-like force field to protect herself and her loved ones from the intrusive thoughts and anxieties in her head that never really go away as she grows up.
From my perspective, Bubblegum represents a fragment of personal history with mental health and learning how to open up to others.
Final Render (uploading)
The process of making my film began with the desire to create a dialogue about the expiration date of anxiety. There’s no magical cure or quick fix for mental health, there’s only how we adapt with time and support. While occasionally unprompted, anxiety can be anticipated and mitigated under the right circumstances.
In a covert attempt to express my feelings to my loved ones, I wanted to make a quirky short film about a little girl- that definitely wasn’t me- showing how she saw the world in color. That initial idea quickly unraveled into the truth, which at first scared me into choosing a different concept for this project.
Production
Original textures for the car, and the end result! Playing with reflective materials was a huge weight on my computer, but super fun for me.
Since a majority of short films like to explain anxiety by focusing on how it acts as a visibly disruptive force, I wanted Bubblegum to differ by being representational of how anxiety can cause stress in silent, unseen ways. The imaginary bubble-shields in my film don’t function as a personification of anxious thought, rather they represent a literal translation of how the main character sees the world.
The quiet moments and settings present in my short are intentional. I could have told a bigger, relatable story about Lucy getting nervous to go to school, talk to an adult, or move away, but I wanted to emphasize that, while predictable in some circumstances, anxiety can also be blindsiding. Intrusive thoughts are capable of conjuring up the wildest, most impractical scenarios at the behest of no one.
Iterations of the bubble material-- I ended up using an Arnold Standard Suface shader after a power outage simultaneously wiped my progress and my memory of how I achieved the look.
Final renders from Scene 2! I think one of the most magical stages in animation is the lighting phase, which is why I jumped at the chance to use just a hint of blue light during these shots. Coming from a background in theatrical photography, RGB lights are my metaphorical bread and butter.
