A Family Portrait: Joseph Pierce

Afamily portrait goes horribly wrong as jealousy and suspicion bubble to the surface under the photographer’s relentless gaze. As the session reaches a disturbing conclusion, it’s clear that this truly will be a day to remember. The story takes place during an awkward family photo session where a wife’s suspicions of her husband’s infidelity slowly builds to intolerable lengths. But as we soon learn, she harbors a secret of her own. A Family Portrait written and directed by Joseph Pierce and has enjoyed a healthy festival run, winning awards at the big animation festivals—the Grand Prize at Stuttgart, Best Debut Film at Hiroshima as well as non-animation festivals, garnering the Prix de la Presse at Clermont-Ferrand. For the animation, Joseph used his own personal rotoscoping technique involving filming live actors, printing out each frame, drawing and coloring every frame, and then scanning and recomposing the sequences digitally. But what’s most interesting is what Joseph does outside the captured image. At key moments he reveals the psychological undertones of the characters through surreal exaggerations. When the wife sniffs the husband for suspicious fragrances, her nostril expands to envelope his entire head. It’s an amazing effect that does well in telling the untold story. We now leave you with some original sketches that were used for the film. For full list of credits please visit: josephpierce.co.uk