Ep.61: Jessica Laurent on finding yourself as an artist

Jessica Laurent is a film director and Story/Visual artist from France. Fascinated by rhythm, she wants to literally immerge her audience into her creations. While every part of her filmmaking is planned, and scrupulously structured, Jessica thrives to bring hope and tenderness to her audience.

She graduated from The Animation Workshop “Character Animation” Bachelor in Denmark after studying filmmaking in France. Jessica directed several short films and commercials and in her last school year, she worked on the music video “Stellar” for the Danish band “Kenton Slash Demon”.

Through one of her last internships, Jessica worked in Cartoon Saloon (Ireland) as Shadow Director, Story and Concept artist as well as Assistant Animator on the features films “WolfWalkers”, “Breadwinner”, the short film “Late Afternoon” and other secret projects. The same year she also interned Filmes Da Praça (Portugal) as Character Designer on the feature film “Nayola”

As the Water is one of the essential components to her work, Jessica is currently working on her next short movie “SIBLINGS” where she develops another relationship toward this element.

Art Side of Life Newsletter

Get in touch with Jessica

• Portfolio: http://jessicalaurent.strikingly.com/
• Blog: http://jessicalaurent.blogspot.fr/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jessicalaurentart/

Key Takeaways

“For the world to recover its greatness you have to look at it with the eyes of a child”

• Jessica finds inspiration in Movies in terms of composition, screenshots, pieces of dialog. She loves movies that make her reflect, that make her ask “What happened?” Such movies make you think about the perspective of life from different angles
• When comparing France to Denmark, Jessica says that in France, you have to be the best and you always work in that goal and almost everyone around you is working in this individual goal. In Denmark, you are ashamed of bragging, they want to be an equal society with more time for family and less burnout
• Before starting, Jessica wishes she knew to get to know herself. It’s easy to jump into a box, but asking who you are moves you forward. We are all afraid to fail, but we don’t know anybody who went from 0 to success in a straight line.
• As a director/writer, Jessica’s vision is that at the end of her creations, the audience embraces each other. It’s easy to be misunderstood in this world and she wants people to open more to each other.
• Happiness is not something that happens to you, it’s something you ask yourself, what makes you happy so you can be also happy in the present!

Resources mentioned

Note: some of the resources below may be affiliate links, meaning I get paid a commission (at no extra cost to you) if you use that link to make a purchase.

• Project Jessica is working on at the moment
  • ASF – Animation without Borders – spanning four different animation schools in Europe – Ludwigsburg, Germany; Paris, France; Viborg, Denmark, and Hungary
  • Short movie – Siblings 2D movie
• Movies
  • Mistress America and Frances Ha by Noah Baumbach – romanticized NYC, very nice story and composition and actress
  • Mullholand Dr. – makes you think what just happened
• Books
  • Sir J.M. Barrie: Real story behind Peter Pan – psychoanalysis of children’s soul
  • Forces by Henri Matisse – dynamic drawing
  • Bruce Block: The Visual Story – technical book about story, scripts and film making
  • Linda Seger: Making a good script better
• Festivals
  • Annecy Festival in Annecy France
  • Captain Fantastic – open air movies festival in Barcelona
  • VAF Animation Festival in Viborg
  • Festival national du film d’animation– a little French festival located in Brittany

Thanks for Watching and Listening!

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Special thanks to Jessica for joining me today. See you next time!

Art Side of Life Newsletter

All artworks by Jessica Laurent, used with permission