IDEATION 

sM | What was your journey towards the telling of this story, and what larger motivations propelled the realisation of this project?

AF&WT ── A number of years ago we visited the Maritime Museum in Halifax and discovered the section dedicated to the Halifax Explosion. Oddly, we can’t remember if we already knew about that catastrophic event or not. Few Canadians are familiar with it─and that was particularly true before the famous Heritage Minute was made. Among the displays was a short blurb about a British sailor who was blown skyward from the pier and flew two kilometres before landing uphill, naked and unharmed. We were intrigued! What did he see? What did he hear? What was he thinking? The story brimmed with animation potential. Inspired by accounts of near-death experiences, our idea was to expand those few chaotic seconds into as many minutes, and imagine the story of the sailor’s flight as a subjective, visceral, slow-motion ballet. Our aim was to show that our lives are at once fleeting, precarious, profound … and, in the grand scheme of things, utterly insignificant.