The House That Claire Built

When I first started to think about practically animating the story of Claire House Children's Hospice I went off on a little tangent and tried to create a metaphor for the whole concept of the charity. I came up with a nautical one after I interviewed a family who uses the services and they had called it a 'lifeline'.

I think at this point I was looking back at 'Sarah's Story' for the NSPCC and how they had used a simple metaphor of the train journey to accompany the narrative. Herein lies the difference, Moth (the animators) were still using the original voiceover from Sarah and created a visual metaphor because the distressing subject matter could not be displayed literally. I got a bit lost and carried away with the idea of metaphor and created a whole script around the idea of Claire House as a nautical lifeline, but really it didn't need tweaking that much, which is why I eventually went back to the original voices and trimmed 45 minutes of dialogue into a 2 minute 30 second soundbite capturing the essence of the conversation instead. A much more authentic and direct way of telling the CH story.

Before I went back to original idea of using the family's voices though, I managed to get pretty far along with a script, a storyboard and a partly-completed basic animatic (below). Sometimes you need to abandon an idea to make room for the better one though, not matter how invested you might have been. I think part of me was just scared of getting into the real audio without a 'theme' to fall back on.

Brine-soaked cheeks belong at sea,

Not at The House That Claire built

The House that Claire Built is not like other houses…

It is a special house.

A house set away from everyday life,

Full of extraordinary, wonderful people.

It was made out of hope,

 And painted with joy,

And although days here are a changeable as the tides,

The Claire House compass always helps us to find fun.

Here we learn together how to navigate rough waters and high winds,

For we know well, that calm seas never made a strong sailor;

Claire House is our lifeline,

Our steady anchor when The Great Storm Cat comes prowling

And tries to cast us adrift.

When our tiny vessels struggle in the waves,

And it feels like we are all but lost,

It is The House that Claire built

Which lights our way.

Together we play.

We cast our nets,

We take in the view,

And we treasure every joy-soaked moment

 The Claire House Crew provides.

Together we sing.

We marvel at colours

and light,

and sound,

and touch.

For we know the importance of play,

And the joy that such things can bring.

But most importantly,

We know that we are safe here,

Because our harbour is full of friendships.

And in fact,

Together we are a fleet,

a family.

Notes:

·         Ships can have the Claire house logo as their colours/flags.

·         Possibly an actual Claire House ship? Like a floating house in the colours?

·         Claire house crew and lighthouse in candy-striped patterns.

·         Everything in tones of pink and blue, crayon, watercolour/gouache and coloured pencil. Delicate black line work.

·         Moment relating to sensory stimuli, underwater patterns of light through waves, passing fish, sensory movement of seaweed…

·         Moment relating to singing, scene change from crew singing camera sinks down to see family of whales singing to each other.

·         Cast our nets, collect fish with words about Claire house on them.

·         ‘Tiny vessels’ metaphor for children, but have an exaggerated long-shot of a tiny fleet of sailing boats as seen from above.