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Est. Reading Time: 2 Minutes

On Colour Design

MARK (M) I thought it was interesting to see lots of greens and pinks on screen as these colours symbolise nature, femininity and romance. I would love to know more about your approach to colour - how much time do you spend experimenting with different shades and tones?

DOMINICA (D) I generally spend quite a long time figuring out the colour schemes for my projects! In Chado the approach was quite unusual as the colours were directly influenced by the choice of riso-inks I had at my disposal when printing the dream scenes. I had a rough idea about using the pink and green as the main colour themes for the film but the exact tones were determined by the mixing of ready-made inks as well as the tone of the paper I chose and used.

I originally began experimenting with riso techniques at the publishing house ‘Club Del Prado’ in Buenos Aires, which had the exact shade of pink and aqua inks that I wanted in this film. Later on, when I was doing the main bulk of riso printing in the United Kingdom, I had to overlay two different colours (blue and green) to recapture and achieve a similar colour to the original aqua that I liked. The rest of the colour palette throughout the film was taken directly from the scans of the prints.

On Process & Discovery

M In making and finishing the film, what did you discover and learn that you might adopt or further explore in future projects?

D Exploring and figuring out the riso-animation technique is definitely something that I will revisit in my future projects. Chado was also my first time as a lead so it was wonderful to collaborate and work with a small team of dedicated artists. And one requirement of BFI Network’s funding program was to write my own script which was challenging because I had never written any of my previous films.

M So how did the requirement to write your own script affect your creative process?

D I am a visual thinker so I usually start with storyboards rather than scripts when working on a new project. Other than Chado, the only film that had some kind of a script was Illusions. The story for Illusions is an adaptation so the screenwriting process was very different and unrelated to Chado.

Because I was required to write the story in words before fully visualizing it on paper, I think I ended up creating a particular kind of narrative. I think if I drew the film before writing the script, the story would be less linear and maybe more abstract. It was an interesting exercise to understand how I process ideas when they are filtered through different mediums.

The founder of Hommage, Mark Shaba published this interview on 23.12.2021. Mark is a filmmaker from Victoria, Australia. He respectfully acknowledges the past and present traditional owners of the land on which he creates, promotes and screens art, the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation who are the custodians.