Live Event Installations & Projections
TALES IN LIGHT
Monkeystack
Monkeystack partnered with the Adelaide Film Festival to produce and present ‘Tales in Light’, turning Adelaide’s physical space into a canvas for immersive visual storytelling.
We brought a diverse range of creatives and project partners together to develop this exciting South Australian project from an open call for story submissions, workshop sessions, creative production to physical install and launch.
The chosen story for Tales in Light was ‘NUN HIT WONDER’, the story of Adelaide’s very own Sister Janet Mead’s extraordinary rise from a Mercy Sister to Grammy nominee. The entire project was developed and approved in consultation with those who held the rights to the Mead Estate.
‘Nun Hit Wonder’ was presented with a rich and vibrant mixed-media/collage aesthetic; harking back to the alluring and much-loved tones of the 1970s. Photographic backgrounds were used throughout, with Sister Janet Mead personified as an animated avatar, interacting with highly stylised caricatures of figures throughout her story from her family and teachers to paparazzi and pop-star contemporaries. The whirlwind landscape of this story and Sister Janet’s humble nature
was presented in contrast: Sister Janet’s animation being continually grounded while everything and
everyone around her growing weirder and wilder as the story progressed.
Terry Gilliam’s animations for Monty Python was the touchstone for ‘Nun Hit Wonder’. Somewhat of a lost art of their time, we used visually stunning mixed-media collages to capture a distinctive 70’s feel, with both ‘puppeted’ photographic and illustrated elements against a vibrant colour palette. An immersive viewing experience was designed through careful manipulation of perspective/interplay with the architecture of our projection surface, the emphasis on bold, high-contrast compositions to maximising the impact of our projections.
The goal was to attract and maintain the attention of an audience with bold imagery and the story of an Adelaide hero. The reaction from opening night alone secured our feeling of success.
The project was formatted as a large-scale projection piece, using an enclosure of three adjoining walls outside of Adelaide’s Palace Nova Eastend Cinema, taking up approximately XXm of wall space. This seamless 180-degree canvas was produced utilising 6 projectors, 2 pa speakers and a subwoofer supplied by Epson and AJ Sound.
CREW
Director, Writer and Lead Animator: Jasper St Aubyn West
Director, Writer & Sound Design: Anthony Frith
Producer: Justin Wight Line Producer: Lisa Iona
Animation & Illustration: Christopher Green, Chad Molyneux & Anna Bailes Music
Composition: Christopher Larkin
Sound Design Consultant: Carlos Manrique Clavijo
Studio Executive: Rhys Sandery
Marketing Executive: Fi Kievenaar
Developer: Benjamin Crawford
Narration: Melanie Munt