An Elephant Sitting Still
Title Sequence, Styleframe | 2024
Collaborator: Daisy Wen
The movie An Elephant Sitting Still explores the bleak reality of life in a poverty-stricken industrial town in northern China, where characters grapple with personal struggles and societal decay. The looping stairs are a metaphor for the characters’ entrapment and internal conflicts, highlighting the cyclical nature of their suffering and their perceived optimism in seeking light in their struggles.
Clip Studio Paint, Photography, Photoshop, Lightroom
Process
To create a contrast between illustrative human shadows and realistic staircases, we shot pictures of actual stairs and drew illustrations over them. We kept the figures as silhouettes to emphasize their generality and anonymity, and we filled their silhouette with a fluid, grainy texture to express instability and vulnerability. After we chose the yellow/purple color palette, we spent time perfecting the tones, adjusting the percentage of purple and yellow each frame gets.
Initial Storyboard
Type Treatment
Reference Board
