A Short Film by Kit McDonald
Light Years is a space adventure short film for the explorer in all of us, inspired by a wide range of films that capture the imagination and appeal to the inner child. The film deals with grief, imagination, and wonder.
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Lizzie is growing up during the Space Race and is obsessed with all things outer space. When her family is faced with an unexpected tragedy, she journeys to Mars in a homemade rocket ship to find what she has lost. But it’s not what she expects, and she realizes what she needs to do.
THE PROJECT
Behind Light Years
This personal story will resonate with viewers both because of the emotional content and because of the childlike wonder with which we are approaching the story. Now that the film has been completed, we are submitting this film to festivals and exploring methods of distribution.
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Light Years contains a mix of live action film and animation, using green screen and animation to bring the outer space environments fully and fantastically to life, as seen through the eager eyes of an imaginative child. The set decoration and costuming vividly portray the early 1960s through those same eyes.
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This film is a graduate thesis project, directed by Kit McDonald, for her Masters of Fine Arts program at the Savannah College of Art and Design, and is an intensely collaborative effort across many disciplines. It will be the artistic culmination of her degree. For several of the crew, Kit included, it is the most ambitious project they have undertaken at SCAD so far, and all have approached it with eagerness and sincerity, not to mention considerable experience and skill. Some of the most talented artists across several departments at SCAD offered their talents. Our crew comes from a wide range of majors including: film and television, dramatic writing, production design, graphic design, illustration, animation, VFX, motion media, and sequential arts.
FUNDRAISER
In Fall 2019 we ran a successful campaign on IndieGoGo to raise funds for the film. These donations helped to ensure the project's success. Our budget went towards the logistics of filmmaking, as well as to the production design on screen: accurately portraying 1962 on film in 2019 requires painstaking and deliberate set decoration and costuming.
CAST
Bringing our Characters to Life
LILLIE LANDON
as Lizzie
SAMANTHA CAMPBELL
as Eileen
ANTHONY SCOTT
as Paul
