DROPLETS is the graduating film made by Simon Fiedler, a student of media design at FH Mainz University of Applied Sciences. When Fiedler was trying to develop ideas for his final thesis, he experienced one of most terrible things that can happen to a young artist – a complete artist’s block. Even intensive worrying didn’t help him in his efforts to make the abstract concept of “the idea” visible in a film: “I started to research how ideas function, where they come from and how they feel”, explains Fiedler with respect to his first steps towards understand the difficult topic. And yet, even after many attempts at explaining the concept of “the idea” through stories, it became clear to him that the whole thing was much more complicated than he first expected. “[An idea] is not a clear sequence with a beginning and an end. It’s much more like a complicated mesh consisting of thousands of different factors.”  In other words, it’s incredibly difficult to visualise.

The Idea against the Fear of Failure and a Lack of Ideas

Important tasks such as completing your graduating thesis in the face of a crushing deadline can often lead to a major fear of failure and a complete lack of ideas. Indeed, Fiedler soon found himself terribly stuck. He just couldn’t seem to develop that brilliant idea he needed for his film about ideas. But then, he got his lucky break: “My advisor at the time, Professor Ihmels, recommended that I take a closer look at this state of ‘being stuck’ and ‘not getting anywhere’ and to find images for these feelings”. This advice proved to be quite valuable. “After that, I pretty much gave myself up to fate, so to speak, and began to filter as many images, sketches and notes as I could  out of the soup I was swimming in – a soup made up of the fear of failure, helplessness, panic and creative blockages”. And then, there it was. The brilliant idea.
From all the scribbles and notes he had made, the notion emerged of showing the idea as a fragile thing that can have no existence – something that, however, precisely in its failure can lead to entirely new creative impulses: “Sometimes, all you need to do is change your perspective to recognise that the pile of shards in front of you is exactly what you’ve been looking for the entire time”, notes Fiedler, who chose the nautilus as a visual symbol for this fragile idea. The bizarre looking sea creature with the spiral shell and tentacles – a shape that has prompted marine biologists to call it a “pearl boot” – is a living fossil; it is fragile and vulnerable and is often propelled along merely by the current of the sea. As Fiedler notes, the creature’s shell also contains very special characteristics: “Its form corresponds to the golden spiral you can construct with the Fibonacci sequence and forms a closed construct that is in harmony with itself”. This mixture of perfect mathematical harmony and defenceless fragility makes the nautilus an ideal symbol for the idea in DROPLETS.

Effective Execution of a Difficult Theme

In the course of the film, the fragile protagonist must face a number of challenges, all of which correspond directly to the feelings that Fiedler’s professor suggested he delve into. The idea must face fear, doubt, uncertainty and disorientation. In the process, it suffers severe damages and, finally, is completely destroyed. The only thing that remains is a heap of debris; it is in this debris that the idea one was looking for the whole time can actually be found: “In the last scene, the perspective changes and the viewer recognises that precisely these fragments create that which we were looking for the whole time: the idea”. Another impressive characteristic of DROPLETS is the effectiveness with which Fiedler and his team pursue the theme of the fundamental harmony. Indeed, the golden spiral appears not only in the form of the nautilus, but also in the music. For Fiedler’s film, composer Ben Krahl developed a soundtrack based on the Fibonacci sequence with help from sound designer Daniel Mauthe. Fiedler used mostly Cinema 4D and Adobe After Effects to create his images. The 3D scenes originated in Cinema 4D, and he also used functions such as Thinking Particles, Hair, Mograph, Dynamics, Mocca, Xpresso, C.O.F.F.E.E. and Advanced Renderer. The compositing and 2D effects were created using After Effects. For further digital effects, Fiedler filmed additional elements against a green screen and used them later for his image composition: “This is how I created, for example, the black colour ball. First I poured black colour over a polystyrene ball and then I let this colour run along a wire.”  Using Puppet Tools in After Effects, Fiedler combined these two elements to create the colour ball that he hung in a net of dripping ropes.