An Unexpected Places Production:

Directed by Rosanna Sloan

Produced by Becky Mills

Production stills taken from the Looking Down on Me film which will soon be available to purchase. All other images were taken by myself.

Annie and Sam were commissioned by the family theatre company Unexpected Places for their film adaptation of the original play Looking Down On Me.

The film teaches children to process grief through the story of siblings Annie and Sam. When Sam dies unexpectedly, Annie must learn to remember him and grow up without him.

Looking Down on me is an original play written and directed by Rosanna Sloan, based on her own experiences of losing her brother when she was young and learning to live with grief. The puppets themselves were modelled on Rosanna and her brother.

The play was made into a film in 2021 with the support of Arts Council England and is being toured to schools across the UK helping to teach primary aged children about the experience of losing a loved one. 

I used reclaimed plasterzote blocks left over from industrial packaging to create the lightweight bodies, plastic pipe and dowel for legs and arms and Warbla sculpted heads for maximum detail and a smooth finish. 

Both puppets have two costumes, one school uniform and one casual outfit. Their skin is stretch jersey and gives them a soft finish for on camera close ups and their hair is mohair wefts.

I originally worked with Unexpected Places in 2018 when the early form of the play was being toured and the puppets were in need of some care before the next tour leg. When Unexpected Places approached me to develop new more complex puppets for their development of the show I jumped at the chance. 

I had been working on a new style of bunraku puppet earlier in the year and it was the perfect opportunity to develop the skeleton form into high quality, completed puppets.