What is the film about?

A group of factory workers become obsessed with a hill. They let loose on the marshy earth, succumbing to their strange desires.

What influenced it?

The factory workers were inspired by Howard Finster’s artwork (he did the cover for the Talking Heads album, ‘Little Creatures’). I was drawn towards these figures in his paintings who seem to wear colourful jump-suits.

A little background information...

The film was originally based on a real hill in Dartmoor National Park, which I obsessively walked up during a strange summer. By night I packed boxes in a cheesecake factory, and climbed onto the moors during the day. In the film, I wanted the hill to be a welcoming presence, encouraging the factory workers to roll around in mud and go wild. When the big tour-bus shows up, I wanted them to also be welcomed.

How was the film made?

I made all the puppets out of paper, scanned them, and digitally composited. Originally, I wanted to only shoot in-camera, and was quite snooty about using computers. I eventually found out that compositing gives you a lot more control over the shot, moving things around, scaling them up etc. The sacrifice was the smoothness of the animation, as I was using replacements instead of a jointed puppet. I ended up liking the choppiness of it though.