Dinosaurien. En animerad kortfilm om mobbning

Abstract

Although I myself haven’t been bullied per say during my school years. I’ve sure been teased and occasionally felt left out. On the other hand – who hasn’t? And that as well is my point. According to the Swedish anti bullying organisation Friends, almost 20 percent of all Swedish students have been exposed to harassment, and in Sweden alone, more than 45000 students state that they’re getting bullied. Being a subject to important and intriguing to be left aside, and given my passion for animation and my ambition to further develop my skills within the realm, I sought out to make an animated short film which focuses on children between the ages of six and ten, and was mainly to be viewed in schools. The short film itself was never meant to be a solution to the problem of bullying, and I wanted to make neither a public information film, nor a link in the chain of an anti bullying campaign. Instead I wanted to create a film which would treat and pave the way to a discussion about the subject of bullying and alienation. After an eight week long process consisting of researching, script-writing, storyboarding, animating — utilizing a mix of three dimensional and two dimensional animation techniques, colouring, adding sounds and editing I was finally finished; and the final result of my bachelor exam project was Dinosaur – an animated short film about bullying. In which we get to follow the last surviving dinosaur on earth, now living in a human society. He’s an immigrant from another time who’s struggling to fit in. This proves being harder said than done, especially in his profession as a warehouse worker where his short arms make it virtually impossible for him to perform his work tasks. As if that weren’t enough he’s constantly getting bullied by his work colleagues as a result of his physical shortcomings. This, until one day when he finally gets enough and decides to plot his revenge... Dinosaur is a short film about how volatile ours norms are, and they’re constantly changing depending on where and when in life we find ourselves, as well as it’s a short film about having short arms.