Stage 18
Now that all of the lighting and colours were fixed, I was able to put everything together as a single film. I used the sound from the playblast versions and adjusted it to better fit the full version. I also decided to use several of the statistics from the earlier blog post about my research for the end of the film. I settled upon these as the most important:
- 900 out of 102,349 badgers killed between 2013–2019 were tested for bovine TB during post-mortem
- Of this number, less than 5% were found to have bovine TB to a degree where they posed a risk of infecting cattle
- The current cull has been ongoing since 2013 and will have reduced the UK badger population by ~72% by 2025
- There has been no reduction in bTB in England during this cull.
I also decided to add a close-up shot of the badger before the trigger scene, I did this in a more painterly style of 2D animation, a nod to a scene in Watership Down (1978), which was one of the inspirations from the beginning of this project (even featuring in my mood-board).
I added the nightvision colour grading to my close-up so that it would seem to be seen through the scope again.
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And with this added, I decided that the film was complete. I finished it with the title “Buried Truths” and left the ending in silence so that the audience may reflect upon the statistics and information.
