I had an amazing weekend in Calgary, where I attended the debut screening of Len & His Spitfire at the Calgary Animated Objects Society (CAOS) Festival of Animated Objects, Animovies Screening. It was well received by the audience, and during the Q&A session following the screening, I was able to explain a bit about the creation process.
When the question of how long the film took to complete came up, my timeline was by far the longest compared to the 3 and 4 months it took the filmmakers sitting beside me. Len & His Spitfire has been an absolute labour of love, which I started back in 2013. It took me a good year to do pre-production, researching the story using Len’s brother’s book, The Flying Duddridge’s of Hanley, writing the script and creating storyboards, digitally creating the puppets in photoshop using Len’s photography, printing, cutting out and assembling the puppets and sets; then production took another year to complete, shooting a couple weekends a month with a small crew of 3 to 4; and then I stepped away from the project for 5 years; picture edit took a year, and the sound edit took a good two years to complete, as I had to create the majority of the sounds myself (ie. when a puppet is walking on screen, the footsteps are actually me walking and holding a mic next to my feet).
So all together, Len & His Spitfire took me ten years to complete. That story got a round of applause from the audience, which was really inspiring. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as supported for creating my art, than in that moment. It was pretty special, and it really made it all worth it. I set out to make a film that my grandpa Len would be proud of, and I think I succeeded.
Noelle Duddridge 