Emily Chapman Laing
A local animation wizz has hit the big screen.
18-year-old Lyndhurst local Jasmine Lane is having her short film ‘I’m a Background Character’ shown in ACMI.
Jasmine says her film is a “parody” of the stereotypical superhero and villain story.
The film centres on a faceless background character and his rise from nothing into the hero arc.
Using the contrast of vibrant colour and detail for the “main characters” and greyscale for the background characters, Jasmine is able to demonstrate the perceived hierarchy of characters in the story form, and to challenge it.
“The twist was that I put the focus on the background character,” she said.
“I had the hero and villain in colour with these flashy designs, and everyone else was greyscale because they’re not meant to have any focus on them, they have no purpose or meaning in the story.
“A random background character with no relevance breaks the story.”
Jasmine graduated VCE in 2022 at Casey Grammar.
The film was created as part of Jasmine’s Year 12 Media Studies class.
As part of the VCE Season of Excellence 2023, Jasmine was urged by one of her teachers to submit her film to ACMI’s Top Screen.
“I wasn’t planning to submit it, but my media teacher told me something like this would make it to the top, so I thought it’s worth a shot,” Jasmine said.
Over 300 films were submitted for the award and Jasmine’s made it to the top 15.
“A while later, they said ‘Congratulations, you made it in, you’ve been selected to be screened at ACMI’ and I’m like, wow, that happened,” Jasmine said.
“It’s a little hard to comprehend, I wasn’t really processing how big that was.
“Then on the actual day, the room is full of people and it’s a really huge screen.”
‘I’m a Background Character’ is being screened at the ACMI Top Screen Gala until 28 April.
Jasmine’s history with this short film spans back to 2018, when she first had the idea and created her first artistic rendering of the featureless-background-character-turned-hero.
The film was created using 2D animation and Jasmine had to draw each and every frame.
“I have to redraw the characters over and over again, then add the colour, add the line art, the effects and all the lighting, so it’s a time consuming process,” Jasmine said.
Jasmine was inspired by the stunning animations in her favourite anime, Mob Psycho 100.
“It has incredibly storytelling and incredible animation,” she said.
“They have these sequences where they use ink on glass and they shift it around to create these ghostly effects.
“I think it’s very cool.”
Jasmine has been “geeking out” over animation for years, when she first picked up the hobby of 2D drawing and animation.
In Year 11, Jasmine made another short film, ‘Focus’, which showed her experience with ADHD.
“That one was a lot less polished,” she said.
“It was all black and white with thick messy line art. I thought it worked well for the theme.”
Jasmine is now completing her undergraduate degree in animation at RMIT.
She says she plans to make it her career.
“It’s really cool to be able to see the characters moving and doing things.
“It never gets old.
“It’s like wow, I did that, they’re alive.”
