Guided by celebrated filmmaker Emily Hubley, explore how to take viewers on a journey into your interior world.

There are no available registration dates at this time.

Note: This class will be held in a live, Online Format using the Zoom platform.
Class meets for five Saturdays, Feb 3, 10, 17, 24 & Mar 9 from 10:30am-12:30pm ET + 1:1 by appointment. Class skips Saturday, Mar 2.

Emily Hubley is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and has been making animated shorts for forty years. Her hand-drawn films explore personal memory and the turbulence of emotional life.

Emily Hubley has been making animated shorts for over forty years. Her films visit the world of dreams and distant memories and contrast her inner, remembered, or imagined world with her outer and more objective experience. 

This workshop will focus on participants’ individual projects, allowing them to explore their unique expression by developing scripts, storyboards, and animatics to provide windows into the distinct, handmade worlds drawn from their own experiences, dreams, and imagination.

Each session of the workshop will focus on a different aspect of the creative process and include a brief technical demonstration followed by a review of the projects in development. Participants will have the opportunity to hear collective feedback and share their investigation of the elasticity and power of the animated medium. Experimentation with story-telling and visualizing choices will be encouraged to arrive at the truest version of each particular project. Be prepared to play and discover.

Drawn frames will be created in Photoshop and edited using Adobe After Effects or editing software that you are fluent in (Adobe Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, etc.). Experience with animation is not required but please note that only a small portion of the workshop involves teaching animation skills and techniques. This workshop is about the inner landscapes we are working to discover (not about learning how to use the software). The goal is not for students to produce a fully animated film but rather to create works that incorporate highlighted animatics (filmed drawings or storyboards), partial animation, as well as still images, and creative use of sound. The level of your drawing ability is not important here. A dot or a line on a page can be expressive.  The class objective is to determine and practice using your individual voice and artistic style for the purpose of owning your story.

While the complexity of the final projects will be determined by the maker’s level of animating experience (if any) and the time they can commit, participants will create a video of fewer than three minutes, illustrating their story with drawn and/or found images, original sound elements, and the strategic inclusion of animated footage.

Course Schedule

 Week 1 – Scripts/words/poems. Participants will bring two short stories to share with the group ─one from memory (a true story from your life) and the other from imagination (an invention). We will consider: how these stories differ. What might it be like if they were combined? We will explore inventive ways to combine true and imagined elements.

Week 2 – Hand-drawn imagery, self-portraiture, and symbolic language. Participants will bring revisions of their selected stories, along with a group of related images. We will explore how can images augment, comment upon, or contradict the meaning of words. How can we combine and juxtapose abstract/symbolic imagery with references to a more objective reality to create a hybrid inner landscape? 

Week 3 – Creative use of sound ─ including voice, music, and effects and placing our stories in time. Here, the participants will experiment with timing and the juxtaposition of image and sound, and experiment with how animated details in concert with shifts in sound, can specify the reality of their inner worlds.

Week 4 – Editing ─ ordering, timing, and embellishment. In this session, continued feedback and discussion will inform further changes and developments. Trim the fat, revise drawn elements, and finalize the key moments/scenes that include animation. 

Week 5 – Presentation and review. The workshop will conclude with the celebration of our distinct imaginative faculties, having learned from the myriad stumbles and leaps along each particular path. Each maker’s project will provide a glimpse into their creative self. We will observe and participate in the process of constructing these various worlds, sharing our struggles and epiphanies.

In addition to the Saturday class sessions (10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m. ET), the instructor will be available, by appointment, for one-on-one meetings regarding the work-in-progress.

Requirements

Participants should be fluent in Photoshop and an editing software (e.g. Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere, DaVinci Resolve, etc.). As this course is remote, you must have Photoshop and your editing software of choice installed.

All images & videos:  ©Emily Hubley

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Instructor: Emily Hubley

Emily Hubley’s films are in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, Department of Film. She is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and was in the first class of Annenberg Film Fellows named by the Sundance Institute. Ms. Hubley has been making animated shorts for forty years. Her hand-drawn films explore personal memory and the turbulence of emotional life.

Hubley’s feature, THE TOE TACTIC, was developed at the Sundance Institute's Screenwriters’ and Filmmakers’ Labs. THE TOE TACTIC had its theatrical premiere at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC and was released on DVD by Kino International. The film screened at many prestigious film festivals including SXSW, New Directors/New Films and the San Francisco and Rio de Janiero International Film Festivals.

Ms. Hubley recently created a series of animated segments for ON MY WAY TO WHERE, Julia Greenberg’s documentary about the singer/songwriter Dory Previn.

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