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Title: HOW THE SEA WAS SALT

Reference number: 7507

Date: 2000

Director: d. Campbell McAllister

Sponsor: [ Scottish Screen]

Sound: sound

Original format: 35mm

Colour: col

Fiction: fiction

Running time: 5.03 mins

Description: A short folk tale about Greed, Envy and a Talking Tree! Based on a story my father used to tell me at bedtime, it’s about a lonely old beachcomber who is given a magic mill by a strange tree, only to have it stolen by a passing hunter. It is a fairy tale about how the sea became salty.
[Synopsis taken from the Scottish Screen Short Film Catalogue 2003]

Winner, Bafta New Talent Award 2000 for best animation. Director Campbell McAllister is a graduate of the Digital Design Studio at Glasgow School of Art in 2000. (Master of Philosophy in Advanced 2D/3D Motion Graphics and Virtual Prototyping for Design). He is a member of the Scottish Animation Group.

Director Campbell McAllister uses a series of increasingly creepy and crepuscular CGI tableaux to create his mythic tale of an old man who wins a magic salt mill which dispenses cornucopia or catastrophe according to the motives of the user. Charming, yet alarming, in equal measures. [from Guardian website, last accessed 15/7/2008]

Credits: w. Campbell McAllister

Thanks to Bert Ross, Wullie Summers, John Cobban, Dave Archibald, Dave Clark, The Edit Suite