The Making of Ward 13

	Peter in the Trephine Productions Studio with components of the hospital exterior set

Animation by Peter Cornwell;
Production design and lighting by Glenn Watson;
Editing by Adrian Barac

PETER CORNWELL answers some common questions about the production of WARD 13.

What inspired you to make WARD 13?

I wanted to tell the story of this poor guy who wakes up in this very scary hospital. My mother was a doctor, so when I was younger I spent a fair bit of time in hospitals. I wanted to tap into the real fear that people have of hospitals. Just about everyone will end up in hospital one day. And when you do, you are completely at the mercy of the doctors. How safe are you really?

How difficult was the scripting process?

The basic story structure never changed, but I went through many different drafts. Even though the film has lots of action sequences, I really wanted to draw the audience in through this guy's journey as he discovers the mysteries and weirdness of this hospital.

I got really stuck on the script at one stage, and I was lucky enough to meet two brilliant writers, Sam Young and Mark Bradridge. They came in and really helped bring the script to another level.

Graphic: Sam Young

What is stop-motion animation?

Stop-motion is a style of animation in which puppets or objects are given the illusion of life by breaking up their motion into increments and shooting one frame of film per increment. When the sequences are played back at normal film speed, the puppet appears to move by itself.

Did you storyboard the whole film first?

Yes. I did all the storyboarding myself. There are 780 camera angles in the film. Because there is so much movement within the frame I would often do more than one storyboard panel per shot. So I ended up doing about 1,000 story board panels. All the choreography was worked out in the storyboards, with the camera planned right into the action, choreographed like another character. I edited the film at 25 frames per second so all up I clicked off about twenty thousand, two hundred and fifty frames of animation.

Why did you choose to do it in stop-motion?

I wanted to make a really imaginative film with high production values on a really low budget. I was initially able to set up the animation table in the corner of my bedroom, and it looked like I had a much more sophisticated set up.

I've never seen a stop-motion film like this and I felt I could make something really original, and not quite like anything anyone has ever seen before.

Did you have a bad experience in hospital?

No. But I do often get asked this question.

	Ben escapes on a motorised wheelchair

How did you make the characters?

The characters in WARD 13 were built around some fairly crude metal armatures that I made myself, with a combination of clay, silicone and polyurethane.

How did you make the sets?

They were designed by Glenn Watson, mostly in wood. There were actually only three corridor sections, each two feet long, with the lights built into their ceilings. When the camera was speeding down the corridors to follow the action, it was actually not moving at all. Instead, the set modules were slid along a large track. I'd move them by hand during the exposures to get some motion blur.

What did you shoot it on?

The film was shot on a Bolex H16 clockwork wind-up 16mm camera. Instead of buying an expensive motor, Neil Watson came up with a solenoid device on the side of the camera that held the shutter open for a one-second exposure. This allowed us to stop down the lens to about f/11, giving great depth of field without having to melt everything under very strong lights!

How did you light the film?

The atmospheric lighting in the WARD 13 corridors was achieved by building the lighting into the modular units of the set themselves. 75W incandescent photo globes were mounted just above a circular hole in the plywood ceiling to form pools of light on the walls, floor and especially the characters as they moved in the space. Small reflectors were used to lighten shadow detail where necessary, particularly for close-ups.

A stairwell unit and various wall flats were also purpose-built for various sequences in the film.