Ruth. Showing at a theatre near you.

Ruth is now complete, and available to view here.

I was a bit apprehensive about publishing this one - it's essentially a monologue, and I worried that it would be too long to hold the audience's interest. However the feedback has been positive, so what do I know?
I really wanted to try a fresh approach with this piece, so as you'll see, it is essentially a stage production in the form of a short movie. The whole thing was something of an experiment, and I wanted to play around with doing different things with the lighting than what I've tried in the past. Moviestorm allows for some really subtle lighting, and in the latest version of the software this gets even better (although I didn't use the new software as it was released during production, and it's best to stick with what you know works until a project is finished). And in Ruth I wanted to continue with the subtle lighting, but also introduce some very obvious spot lighting. There is a "super-trooper" style spot light available in the software which I've seen used to great effect in music videos, and I thought this would be a great platform to see what more could be done with it.
Also, I was pretty pleased with the gas lamp effect. That took quite a lot of tinkering and experimentation, but I think it looks like a fairly believable gas lantern.
The idea for the treatment actually came from another short by Kate Fosk called The Vampyre. In that movie, which is also a monologue, I was struck by the effectiveness of the limited set - and this coupled with the little improv at the end got me thinking about stage productions. I was concerned that there wouldn't be enough visual interest by simply watching the actor pace about the stage, so that was where the idea for the stills came from. In this way, it's a little reminiscent of Jackanory! And of course, the stills allowed me to include elements such as the horse and cart which would have otherwise been impossible to include as I have no way to animate horses. (Strictly speaking, that's not true as I could have used iClone, but I haven't been successful in befriending that piece of software)
So, that is Ruth - hope you enjoy it!