Raja

official trailer: https://vimeo.com/278440268
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/raja.stopmotion/
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/raja.stopmotion/

The short film tells us the story of Raja, a girl filled with inner emptiness and despair. Followed by dark shadows, which take her energy to live on, she arrives at the realm of life and death.
There she learns the significance of life and death.
Confronted by a fateful choice, she sets off to a journey into her own being.

The characters ‘life’ and ‘death’ are portrayed as animal beings.
On the one hand, there is a tortoise who represents hope, peace and harmony. She is Raja´s directory and embodies ‘life’ in the story.
On the other hand there is ‘death’, a hybrid creature of a human and a vulture. He stands for transience, dying and rebirth.
As in nature, life and death are creating an eternal cycle. Therefore the story does not tell a conventional division between good and evil but its unity.
In order to transport this message through set design, the spiritual world of life and death is shown as a giant garden with plenty of individual flowers. Every flower represents one life on earth, created by the tortoise of life and ended by death.

With the aid of metaphorical images and appealing musical background the movie creates a depressive but fantastical mood.
Handcrafted puppets and sets convey a magical atmosphere.

Separating dream from reality lies in the eyes of the viewer.

Our most important goal is the completion of our film.
In addition we want to submit the movie at numerous international film-festivals. In order to reach a larger audience we strive to offer an English dubbed version.

The project is for children as well as adults who are interested in questions about self-love, self-acceptance and problem-coping. Furthermore our film adresses fans of the traditional stop-motion technique.

The project was launched in autumn 2017, the final year of our studies. At the beginning, the project was small, but since then demands have grown a great deal, so the project became bigger and more challenging. Due to the story and the unique film technique we gained lots of supporters who offered their help.

Both of us already have some experience with the medium stop-motion, but never with a project as big as this one.
For young filmmakers it is difficult to collect funding for a film, especially a stop-motion film, therefore the idea of crowdfunding. The campaign´s success and hence the project as a whole would form the basis for future projects which we would love to realise together.
The desired financial support would not only give us the necessary funds to continue but would also give us security and strengh.

The more available resources we have, the higher the quality of the end product will be. Which means through crowdfunding you would have direct influence on this film.
Apart from this, as fans and supporters you would be the first people to see the finished movie. Moreover you would be able to get the film for a reduced price and a few specials on top which are only available via this startnext-campaign.

Stop-motion is a very time-consuming animation technique, so a lot of time and patience is necessary to complete a piece of work.
Together, we can only shoot around 6 seconds a day because we are only two people and have to split up all tasks and working steps. This is why a production period of 9 months is necessary to complete our 10-minute film. Following the shooting-time, the pictures have to be retouched, cut and edited in post-production.

For the entire production we need a sum of 18.000€ in total. 3000€ are covered by the scholarship "Film + Medien Nachwuchsförderung Rheinland-Pfalz." We are also grateful to be supported by sponsors like "Pillefilm".
Currently, all other costs are paid by ourselves privately which is the reason why we need your support.

The majority of the money is used to pay the rent of the animation-studio. Furthermore, the desired sum intends to cover all additional expenses needed to complete the production:

• Lighting equipment, especially for the long shooting-time

• Camera equipment and high-tech quality material, particularly for complicated camera movements specific to stop-motion productions

• Materials used for set and self-made puppets (for example more replacement-faces for our main character)

• Postproduction

If we reach our second funding goal of 7.500€ , we would be able to reimburse some of the expenses paid by team-members and helpers. We could honour their wonderful and time-consuming work with a little financial reward. Particularly with regard to one of our stop-motion animators as well as our composer and sound-designer.

We like to work with low-budget solutions and will use your support faithfully. Nevertheless: The more support we get, the more professional and sophisticated the film will be in the end.
It is you who will enable us to complete this film!