Meet the Maker | Sadie & Joe Williams
Brother-sister duo Sadie+Joe have been creating together since childhood. The pair of London natives are also creatives in their own individual right; Sadie is well respected fashion and textile designer and Joe is a filmmaker. Together they use their creative languages to meld different worlds into the animations they make, just like the one they made for us.
What is the vision behind Sadie + Joe?
We both are very visual and creative people, but at the same time we have very different skill sets. Sadie's background in craft, fashion and textiles lends itself to creating sets, props, patterns etc in the design side of things. Joe's is a film director and his expertise in lighting, cinematography and editing brings our projects to life.
Creating stop-from animations is the perfect way for us to combine our strengths and have fun in the (very laborious!) process. Our vision has always been to communicate playfully, and we do this with an imaginative, resourceful, hand-crafted and colourful approach.
What does your creative practice look like? How do you manage the time, and creative breadth of individually having your own practice but also working together?
We always find time to get together when a project excites us., We'll immediately brainstorm concepts, share our initial ideas and visual references, from there we will naturally bounce off each other and come up with a plan of attack. We'll make mood-boards or storyboards that we will continue to develop as the project continues.
Sadie's studio is full of all sorts of materials and tools we use to create props and backdrops. So we get seriously crafty!
we'll hunker down for shooting the animation. Generally Sadie will charge up assembling sets whilst Joe heads up the lighting and cameras. It can be very intricate, painstaking and slow process, depending on the shot.
Post shoot we reconvene in Joe's studio, which is more like an editing suite, where we stitch together our footage, sync music and turn the thousands of images into our short films.
Why is London a great place to be as a creative person?
We are both Londoners born and bred, it's shaped who we are both as people and as creatives. It's always been the home to our supportive network of peers and collaborators.
What is your working dynamic like?
We think we've answered this above. But we are siblings and we haven't killed each other yet so whatever dynamic we do have must work to some degree!
What was the creative process, from idea to final frame like, for this film? Where did you start and how did you finish?
Our direction was guided by the products we were given to worth with. Our aim was to align our practice with the world of J&M Davidson and create something beautiful, feminine, adventurous and charming. We started with a plethora of imagery and references, then moved into design and fabricating (using paints, dried flowers, paper, card, lace, wood etc.). Finally we composed a series of x 3 sets which riffed on the English roots of the brand by playing on 'fields of green' and English gardens.