Blue Zoo's Multi-Award Winning Experimental Short 'Mamoon' Premieres Online

Mamoon is the brainchild of Blue Zoo’s animation director, Ben Steer, whose response to the company’s shorts programme won the heart of Blue Zooers who voted his idea into production. The brief was to tell an emotional, human story, whilst experimenting with light and projections.

Mamoon (an Arabic name meaning ‘without fear’) follows the story of a mother and her child whose lives descend into darkness when the moon mysteriously loses its light. As their own light begins to fade, the mother must work out how to save her child using a mysterious red glow.

Ben took a truly unique approach to produce the film, projecting animated characters onto 3D sets crafted from polystyrene blocks. Normal post-production has been completely bypassed; there’s no rendering, no CG precision, and imperfections with the lighting give the characters a ghostly quality, reminiscent of shadow puppets. Production has been influenced by theatre, allowing audiences to push their imagination with a limited view-point and abstract set.

Now in its 7th year, the Blue Zoo shorts programme is an excellent opportunity for experimentation and creative diversity, without the usual commercial expectations of a live project. Since its inception, Mamoon has gone on to receive multiple awards and was nominated for the 2018 BAFTA for Best Short Animation.

Ben Steer, Director said:

“I found the brief really intriguing and felt strongly that light should represent life, just as lack of light should represent death. If a character is dependent on the light then shadows, objects and glass could hinder and distort them. Projectors also only project from one angle, what if multiple projectors were used for multiple characters? This presented a fascinating if challenging set of parameters in which to devise a story.’’

Tom Box, Co-Producer comments:

“The idea behind this was to benefit from the beautiful optical properties created in the process, elements we usually spend a lot of time and money trying to recreate - refractions, reflections, light bounce and depth of field. The only thing that would be done in post-production would be grading, everything else would be captured in camera.”