Project Hedwig

Project Hedwig is a film made by students of the Graphic Arts and Design BA at Leeds Metropolitan University. The subject matter was randomly generated by finding the 10th word on the 10th page of the 10th book brought to a seminar.
The subsequent film was a mesmerisingly dark exploration into a Silesian legend intertwined with lots of owls!

The generated word was 'Hedwig' (from the book Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), so we spent a few hours exploring what this word could mean in different cultures and contexts...

We discovered the legend of St.Hedwig, a Silesian Princess who could turn water into wine. And of course, our thoughts turned to owls through the link to the Harry Potter series. Everyone loves owls.

We experimented with animating glass and light as a starting point to the visuals, and the group produced some beautiful results.



Then several students went away to produce different elements of the finished film. owl sanctuaries were visited for research and foley acquisition, a haiku was written, a wonderful paper owl was created and a giant, terrifying owl head was constructed.





We then spent a day animating all of the elements together in a dark and tiny room.

Students experimented with their own edits...



Before we settled on this final version...