Leaping into 2023
2022 was a year of many exciting firsts for ListenMi, and we’re thrilled about what’s in store for 2023. But before we dive into our plans for 2023, we wanted to reflect on one of the highlights of last year (apart from finally leaving lockdown). We had the incredible opportunity of working on a passion project inspired by the Jamaican legend of Lovers Leap, and sharing our 1st trailer for this labour of love. Here’s a bit about its development journey and our plans for the future.
Early development
We grew up hearing about the old legend of Lovers Leap as kids, but never imagined we’d have the opportunity to help bring this passion project to life. The project began when Alrick Brown (Jamaican-born Writer, Director, Producer) heard the myth and was inspired to write a whole 20-minute short film script. We were thrilled to collaborate with Alrick on visualizing the characters, the world, and the entire story through a storyboard and animatic. We partnered in the development process which in total, lasted over a year.
In 2022, with the help of grant funding, we were able to produce our first animated trailer for our own short film! We shared it on Twitter, IG and Youtube to overwhelmingly positive responses. We’ve always believed that with a culture as rich as ours, many of us are hungry for age old stories like these, told in new ways. Your responses helped prove that.
Fundraising and moving forward with production
We’re pretty proud of what we accomplished with the help of USD $10,000 in grant funds, which covered development, preproduction and the trailer. We now have proof that it can be done, but more importantly, proof that people want to see the finished project. However we still need to raise over USD $50,000 to complete the production. Among the possible ways to fill the gap, we’ve heard of a certain new film fund that we hope this project qualifies for, so we’ll be listening out for more on that in 2023.
If you’d also like to support us as we work on this in 2023, you can buy the team a coffee at this link. Your contribution will help get us through the long production hours ahead.
What’s next for Lovers Leap
We’re excited to dive into production and bring this story to life. We plan to share more details about the animation process, the story itself and of course updates on our fundraising campaign in future blog posts.
More excitement in the 2023 pipeline
In addition to the Lovers Leap animation, we have several other projects in the pipeline for 2023; from new animated films to exciting collaborations. We can’t wait to share what’s in store with you. Stay tuned for updates on our blog and social media channels. And if you have any questions or comments about this or other projects that you’d like us to address in future posts, please share them below. We can’t thank you enough for your support.
Project credits
This project was a team effort! Many thanks to:
- Alrick Brown, writer, director
- Jenille Brown, supervisor, character designer and animator
- Kymani Gayle, background designer, concept artist and VFX animator
- Gashwayne Hudson, clean-up artist
- Djet Layne, animator and concept artist,
- Kenia Mattis, producer
- Joelle McFarlane, lead compositor
- Leo Rhule, creative director and graphic designer
- Matthew Wilson, character animator
–End —
This post was contributed by Jadia Lattery and Kenia Mattis.
Jadia is ListenMi’s operations coordinator. When she’s not busy supporting the team on projects, she’s aimlessly scrolling through Tik Tok to see what trend she can jump on next!
Kenia is a co-founder of ListenMi, a storytelling company developing animations to inspire, entertain and bring people closer.
Give this post some👏 👏👏 and keep in touch to see more of the team’s work on Twitter & Instagram.
