The Sight of Stars
The Sight of Stars by Devon Manney, University of Southern California
Who?
The Sight of Stars was created over the course of a year and a half, conceptualized during my last semester as a high school senior, and animated during my first year of animation studies at USC. The film’s score was created by Saad Haddad, a brilliantly talented composer who is currently studying at The Juilliard School in New York.
What?
Based on the latter end of Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh’s tragic life, The Sight of Stars seeks to understand into how artists like Van Gogh can create such incredible and beautiful works in the face of overwhelming sadness. The film uses elements, colors and styles similar to those found in Van Gogh’s paintings in order to better capture the connection between his tortured mind, and the magnificent images he covered canvases with from 1880-1890.
How?
Most of the film’s animation was done in Adobe Flash, and then batch-exported to Photoshop where I tweaked the film frame-by-frame to give it a distinctive oil-paint look.
Following this, I edited the film over June and July in Adobe Premiere.
Next Project?
I’m currently tossing around several ideas for a project to tackle in the upcoming semester, as well as continuing to write a longer form film that I hope to create as my thesis film.
Which Film do you wish you could have made?
I would have to declare a draw between Don Hertzfeldt’s “it’s such a beautiful day” and Jiri Trnka’s “The Hand”. They are masterpieces of the highest order and they fill me with artistic inspiration time and time again.
