Director Jonny Kofoed at Assembly in Aukland, teams with veteran agency creative Nick Worthington to craft an artful and very personal mixed media short film based on Worthington’s struggle to recover from brain trauma.

Jonny Kofoed: “In 2019, Nick was in a motorcycle crash that caused a brain bleed. He documented his accident and detailed the lingering symptoms of his concussion. He shared the writing with me and wondered if it would make a good animated piece.

“Nick and I have collaborated a lot over the years (in a commercial capacity) and we share a common interest in art, photography and design. We wondered if a mixed media style approach that leaned heavily into visual effects and animation would work to bring it to life.

“The visual approach was primarily centered around symbols, semiotics, and objects – I avoided the temptation of going into traditional character animation as this is a well-trodden path in the documentary space. I wondered if we could tell the story through a restrained design lens.”
 

“The visual approach was primarily centered around symbols, semiotics, and objects… I wondered if we could tell the story through a restrained design lens.”

 
Nick Worthington: “The words needed a visual language that captured a world inside your head, not a view of the world. Creating a scrapbook of drawn, found, imagined, atmospheric and symbolic images and then auditioning them against the words was at the heart of the process.

“The circle – which doesn’t quite close – is a great example of how an image can amplify the message and meaning and become a motif. Jonny and I have collaborated frequently, but this is one of the first times there was no client, it was just down to us. There is a lot of trust.

“I have spent most of my life making advertising, and when you win an award in advertising, nice though it is, it is always at the end of the life of the work. With film, winning an award is the beginning. The beginning of the process of reaching an audience.”
 
 

 
Production: Assembly
Director: Jonny Kofoed
Writer: Nick Worthington (The Tuesday Club)
EP: Jane Oak, Matt von Trott, Nik Beachman
Animator: Gary Sullivan, Matthew Wilson, Elliot Stronge, Frankie Principe, Josh Fourt-Wells, William Bardebes, Jonny kofoed
Miniatures: Woody Clayton

Music: Lachlan Anderson
Sound design: James Hayday, Jonny Kofoed
Dialogue Editor: Zoltán Kadnár
Mix: James Hayday

Toolkit: Houdini, Maya, miniatures, filmed footage, hand-drawn animation, archival elements