Today I have completed my graduate film and I am incredibly pleased with how it has come together. I spent the last week editing, refining, adding sound effects and completing the credits and finally my animation feels like an official film. This experience has been incredibly challenging due to personal circumstances and the pandemic. Therefore, I am very proud that I was able to complete this film and be satisfied with its outcome.
I was unsure what the title of my film should be however I eventually decided on the name Fly. I chose this title since it is the metaphor running throughout the film with the toy plane and the housefly and the protagonist Neo wanting to run around and be free to play.
Film Synopsis:
The film Fly follows young protagonist Neo and his vast and creative imagination. The film begins with a housefly that leads us to Neo running around a confined room playing with his toy plane. However, he suddenly trips and falls causing his toy to break. Before he can react, his father comes to see what has happened but does not notice the broken toy and instead places Neo on the sofa and distracts him with an iPad, to keep him from causing a ruckus. The fly swiftly returns and distracts Neo by landing on his nose. Suddenly, before he knows it, he’s transported from his home to a vast canyon in the middle of nowhere. In attempt to understand how he got there; he decides to chase the fly. The fly leads Neo through vast and surreal environments that all have a connection back to the room where we initially met him. The canyons mirror the colours of the sofa, his toy plane is crashed in the middle of a forest and his pet goldfish is swimming through the trees. These subtle hints back to reality suggest to the audience that the environments he is exploring are in fact in his imagination. This concept is revealed at the end of the film when we abruptly return to reality, with Neo’s head submerged in the fish tank and surrounded by a now messy room. Neo’s father pulls him from the fish tank and begins to scold him until he notices the broken toy plane. He quickly fixes it for Neo and in that moment realises his son just wanted to run free and play.
Throughout the film the fly and the toy plane both act as metaphors of feeling free and I believe flight is the epitome of freedom. Many young people today are confined to technology and therefore are losing touch with the young imagination and how boundless it can be, and this film aims to showcase how limitless the young imagination can be.