Introduction:
"The Last Stationmaster" is a stop motion short that came along as a result of my set and prop designer graduation paper “The Possibilities of a Round Puppet Made Out of Natural Materials in Stop Motion Films” at Viljandi Culture Academy.

The choice of the subject of my thesis resulted from the idea of setting base to my set/prop/puppet building work on the environmentally and creator friendly principles and aspects which have not been a very common practice on this field during that time period. My goal was to find out if it is possible to make stop motion puppets out of natural materials that are as durable and movable as the ones made out of artificial materials.

I ended up creating two different but identical animatable round puppets made out of different materials. For one of the puppets I used natural materials and for the other artificial materials. The first part of this thesis was to describe the work process from start to finish and gave the insight how the animatable round puppets are technically made. The second part was to research how different kind of materials will affect the animating process of the puppets. What kind of limits different materials set? In according to dig deeper to the topic I made a stop motion film and compared both of the material qualities according to the experience.

About the film:
The story of a ventriloquist puppet of a last stationmaster got inspired in the Old Lihula Railway station in Western Estonia. The station was closed during Soviet times in 1968 and now the station is in private use of citizens.

The plot takes place originally in the station rooms. For the film locations I used the interior as well exterior of the house. Shooting period was relatively short, only a week, but enough to give matter to my research.

Synopsis:
The soul of a last Lihula´s stationmaster becomes animated in his puppet, who is waiting for the train to arrive from Rapla.

Crew:
Sound - Dmitry Demchenko
Light Designer - Karolin Tamm