Spotlight: Harriett Bradbury
Harriett Bradbury is a recent graduate and winner of the RTS Student Awards 2020. She was happy to talk to us about her story; getting into animation and falling in love with stop motion.
Harriet told us a bit about her background before she became a UWE student.
“I’ve lived in Bristol for 7 years but was born and raised in Pontypool, South Wales. I left school at 16 and re-entered education at the age of 22, a year after I moved to Bristol.”
how did you discover Animation?
“Like most people, I suppose I discovered animation by watching shows growing up – which is why animators tend to be such lovely people, we’re all big kids! I loved The Magic Roundabout, Trumpton and anything by Smallfilms – Bagpuss, Clangers etc.”
how did that lead you into studying animation?
“I first considered studying animation whilst in the second year of an Access course at City of Bristol college. We did an animation module and I had a bit of a lightbulb moment – like, why has this never occurred to me before?! During that module I made my first ever rudimentary stop motion film using a clay puppet and cardboard set – it was 30 seconds long and consists of an old man scratching his bum and walking to a window, but I’m still really proud of it.
UWE was a complete no brainer and actually the only university I applied to, so it was all or nothing really.
At the time I was still relatively new to Bristol and had no intention of leaving. Bristol is a great place to live as a creative person, there is just so much going on and so many opportunities as an animator. Animation is the perfect combination of tactile art and film. It’s such a unique and malleable medium in which there are infinite ways to tell a story.”
After specialising in stop motion, Love Bugs, her award-winning final year film became her focus. A film about love and insects dating. She described her process in how she came up with it.
“During the summer between second and third year a few friends and I started what we called ‘story sessions’. We would meet up at least once a week and talk about developments in our ideas. Love Bugs was one of three ideas I took back to uni and it went through many transformations, but ultimately I knew I wanted to write an awkward, dry comedy. Writing comedy feels very natural and ideas for Love Bugs came easily – there were around 20 bug/date combinations before I narrowed it down to the three in the final film.”
Love Bugs recently won a craft award for writing by the RTS as well as being the overall winner of the award. We asked how that felt.
“I’m absolutely beaming! And I feel honoured to have been nominated against two fellow UWE graduates. Honestly, it’s still sinking in and people should expect me to casually bring it up in conversation for at least the next two years.”
And lastly, looking back on UWE, we asked if she could go back, what would she do differently
“By the end of second year I was primarily focusing on puppet making and knew stop motion was my medium. If I went back with the knowledge I have now I would have concentrated on stop motion earlier, but ultimately I’m very happy with what I achieved at UWE. I graduated from UWE last year and currently work as a compositor at A Productions, whilst also doing freelance puppet making and working on my own projects. ”
If you like what you see, you can find more of Harriet’s work and behind the scenes images for Love Bugs here on Instagram under @stopmoharriett
