Making films is fun for all the family - just ask the Perry and Hockey family. Multi-generations of the female kin got together to devise, write, film and provide the score to an animation they wanted to produce as a family project and for their love of film.

The newly titled Perkey Productions - an amalgamation of the family surnames - is made up of Lianne, her daughter Abby, Lianne’s mother Joanne and two cousins (sisters Sarah and Charlotte) - with ages ranging from single figures up to the 50s.

Lianne said: “We all live in Exeter and three of us went to a fabric animation workshop during the Animated Exeter Festival last year. We were hooked.

“We decided immediately to apply for funding through the festival to create our own short film. We weren’t successful, but Liz Harkman from Exeter City Council decided to help us with funding applications from other sources.

“Unfortunately, we weren’t successful with anyone - mainly because the dynamics of our group didn’t fit in with the criteria of the funding. We are a family group! 

“If my mum and I had decided to back out of the project, the girls probably would have received funding because they were kids. We discussed the problem as a group, but in the end decided that the family dynamic is what made our project unique and we were in it together,” she said.

The group sourced all the material for an animation from the Exeter Scrap Store and support from the Exeter Phoenix media centre and forged ahead with the project.

“We’ve all discovered just how much work goes into a project like this, but we’ve already started working on the scope of some new projects including some short films.

“We believe our biggest strengths are our enthusiasm and the fact that we are just a normal family who enjoy spending time together and feel that no project is too big,” said Lianne.

The completed film is called The Everlasting Rose. It is about a sweet old gardener who puts a new rose in his garden and discovers that it continues to live and thrive through all seasons. 

People become interested in the longevity of the rose, things get a little bit out of hand and the gardener must make a difficult decision. At what cost does he want to know the secret of the rose’s life? 

It’s about five minutes long and is set to an original score. Stay tuned to D+CFilm for more news from Perkey Productions.

Posted by Cptn

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 21st, 2007 at 10:15 am and is filed under Local, News . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.