The Misogyny Speech

I have submitted a scene from Howards Gone: an animated short film about the revolving door of Australian Prime Ministers in the post-John Howard era as an example of some of my work. I have decided to exhibit the Misogynist Speech scene, which entails Julia Gillard’s famous 2012 parliamentary response to Opposition leader Tony Abbott.

It was also my artistic intent to make Julia the hero of the scene. As well as standing out because of color she is deliberately shown as larger than her counterpart Abbot. And I have her centrally located in the frame Kubrickian style so that she owns this space. Whereas Abbott is at the bottom of the screen barely distinguishable from his fellow parliamentarians. His successors are literally on either side of him. His importance is further undermined by the disrespect of his own backbenchers, who talk amongst themselves largely ignoring what he is saying. By putting him in this lineup of Prime Minister wannabes I was making a visual statement about replacement and replicability in politics.

The composition was also largely inspired by Andy Warhol’s Marylin Monroe diptychs, an iconic piece of feminist iconography itself. And this informed the boxed compositional layout of the parliamentary scenes. The politicians are contained within their individual chamber seats. The traditional type of politician is shown as sad grey-toned in juxtaposition to the happy colorful diversity of politicians. Gillard proudly wears feminist pink and as her speech progresses, her words cause a ripple effect of diversity that replaces all the old grey traditional politicians with a new breed of diverse politicians that better reflects the makeup of Contemporary Australia.

The audio was edited together on Adobe Audition.

Creating the characters: Using air-drying clay over an internal wire & plastic frame, I modeled the faces. The inherent nature of the medium allowed me to create craggy, wrinkled aged skin textures and it was a lot of fun adding the exaggerated features. Real doll eyes, wigs, and glasses were used for a more authentic look, the latter to get that exact broken line reflective distortion across the faces that actual glasses give. The bodies are made from commercial doll bodies with customized clothing. The figures don’t have any mouths because these are digitally added later on Adobe Animate to make them speak.

The scene was composed digitally in Adobe Photoshop.

The progression of a shot from Adobe Photoshop, to Adobe Animate.

Behind-the-scenes photos of the puppets.