Laura N Tamara
Laura N Tamara blends digital animation and painted textures seamlessly to create images and films. Modern renditions of folktales are a big source of inspiration to her.
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Past collaborations include Channel 4 Random Acts for the films 'Two Minutes' (with writer Yero Timi-Biu and artist Adebanji Alade) and 'It starts With', the latter being nominated for the Lefj Marcussen award at Void Animation Festival.
Her graduation short film from the Royal College of Art 'The Witch’s Mask' (2017) was screened internationally and supported by Elf Factory studios, her most recent film 'True Sound Façade' (2020), a mixed media live action dance/animation film, won Best Art/Experimental at San Francisco Dance Film Festival and the Edit Award at Homescreen Movement Festival.
She also works freelance in commercial animation as an Animator, Clean-up Lead and BG painter.
Why I applied
I started off as an indie animation Director, but a few years ago I veered a little more into commercial work, trying to split my time between the two. While I learnt a lot working as part of a team on bigger projects, I still wanted to keep making my own films as my artistic practice. I had been stuck on a particularly challenging new short, which was both personal and my most ambitious to date. While my films usually have little dialogue and tend to be more experimental, I felt this story really needed strong scriptwriting and dialogue to work. The mentorship offered me a place to grow and experiment in that precise area with my mentor’s guidance. The structure it offered also created accountability and consistency, which meant I could work on it between freelance jobs and still feel like I was making steady progress.
Project Outline
I applied to the mentorship with a short illustrated folktale that I wanted to adapt into a film. I pitched 'The Fool’s Quest' as “A painterly folktale 2D animation short set in contemporary East London with monsters, dance and many surprises.” It had many elements that are recurring themes in my work: modern renditions of folktales, magic in the every day, and dance. It was about a daredevil dancer who challenged some monsters in Victoria Park to a dance battle, only to be tricked. Through the mentorship, it went through many iterations, re-writes and storyboard tests etc.
There was a point about halfway where I finally had to be extremely honest to my mentor about the emotional core of this film, what it really was about and what it meant to me, as I had subconsciously held off from explaining it. In 2016 I suddenly lost a close friend. She was a great dancer and we spent many nights dancing together. When she passed, I couldn’t dance anymore. I knew I was making a film about grief but despite the years, it felt too raw, and maybe too personal and unrelated, to say it.
But because Maryam and I were able to build a relationship of trust throughout the mentorship, I was finally able to tell her, and from then on the story flourished to a whole new level. The themes became clearer and the story building much more solid. Once I felt sure of the structure and events it felt a lot easier to go into the nitty-gritty of expressing who my characters were and what they wanted through dialogue and gestures.
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What came before this breakthrough moment didn’t feel like time lost though, as I had also been exploring my story in other ways, focusing on areas that were more comfortable to me: environment studies, staging, and characters.
"I’ve had a wonderful time working with Maryam Mohajer, and felt I was exceptionally well-paired with her. She was very knowledgeable in all the areas where I lacked confidence, and always offered actionable suggestions and insight on how I could go forward in my work. This came through giving feedback, exercises, and recommending observing certain films, people, places, or digging from certain parts of my own experience for the sake of story. Beyond the scriptwriting itself, she really encouraged me in exploring my opportunities as a Director. The mentorship felt like I was free to explore my ideas outside the constraints of a production pipeline, but also that there was enough structure to keep me focused on the development of one project.
It felt like a luxury to be able to bounce ideas and receive feedback from another creative for these 6 months, the mentorship pushed my writing like never before and I am amazed at how much I have learnt in this time."
Laura N Tamara 2024 Mentoring Programme
Contact
If you like Laura's work and are interested in hearing more about her project please don't hesitate to reach out