In Conversation: ‘BAGGAGE’ Director, Writer, and Artist Lucy Davidson

by Varsha Murali Kaushik

BAGGAGE (2025) is an ode to the grief each one of us carries, to the friendships that understand and hold us up, and to the silly moments in life that make it a little easier to get through the difficult times. The five-minute-long stop-motion animation film is set at an airport and follows three girlfriends through the process of their check-ins, a trip on the conveyor belt, and a stressful security check of everything that they hold inside them. We spoke to director, writer, and stop-motion artist Lucy Davidson about her experiences watching her film come to fruition, the value of comedy in emotional storytelling, and the influence of personal preferences on creating and developing artistic styles. 

This interview has been edited for clarity. 

First off, congratulations on the win for ‘Best Animated Short’ at the Peninsula Film Festival! BAGGAGE is so nuanced in its portrayal of both the comic and the emotionally driven instances that I couldn’t help but smile throughout. Tell me about how the idea for the film came about.

So, I knew I wanted to tell a story about female friendship. I think that was the core of it. I wanted it to be a female-centered, driven story. So, I decided I want to tell a story about my friends. I thought, “What could I do?” and I thought about all the times I’ve gone on these trips, girls' holidays together and all those journeys were really special to me, so I knew it was going to be a road trip film. And then, I just started drawing characters as bags and naturally was like, OK, let's set this at the airport. It was also a few things from the previous year, with my friends having gone through really hard times and me wanting to be there for them and not feeling like I was able to be there for them. So, yeah, I think this film was very cathartic for me while making it. Ultimately, the idea was about female friendships and that baggage that we hold for each other. 

I watched the music video you directed and created for Pink Floyd’s Speak to Me, which is unique, memorable, and speaks volumes in its 60 seconds of runtime. What was it like to transition between creating these two very different pieces of art, one being a full-colour music video made in the pixelation style, while the other is an almost gray-scale animated stop-motion film? 

Yeah, they couldn't be any more different. So, doing the Pink Floyd music video was a chance for me to just go crazy. I wanted it to be like a surreal nightmare landscape while listening to that track, which is actually the opening track to the album, and it's kind of setting the stage for those other songs. So, really, it uses more Foley and audio clips. It's incredibly experimental for the time, so I wanted to take that same experimental approach when doing the animation, so I had just come up with a basic concept about this owl, who's a night owl. He's a late-night radio DJ, and he's just kind of slowly losing his mind. And from there, once I literally pretty much built the puppet head, I got some friends to help me out, we shot it, and then I did day shooting in the studio and picked up the rest of the shots—all the close-ups are shot at home. And it was just such a fun, wild chance to do something crazy. It was for a competition, so I was just taking a bit of a gamble. I had no idea if people would see my work, or like it, but I somehow won! So, that was really exciting. 

And then to go from that to do BAGGAGE . . . I think, for me, I always love to do silly, funny stuff, but I think a big goal for me on this project was, like, can I be emotional? Can I go deeper? Can I bring those two worlds together? So, that was kind of my goal on this one.

I love the theme of supportive and empathetic friendship, knowing that having friends with me at the airport would make travel (and all the security checks) less daunting. We see three girlfriends, one who is excited and a travel-lover, another who is relatively calmer or the ‘cool one’, and finally the third friend who is anxious and carrying the heaviest baggage, literally. Could you tell me about how you ideated and decided on what kind of characters these three girlfriends would be, and how they were made distinct from each other?

Yeah. So, out of all my friends, I started to combine my friends into these different characters. I had friends who I felt were, like, the cool ones who were very stylish and I made their suitcases trying to fit that personality. The cool one’s got, like, the designer suitcase, hers is on wheels and she rollerskates like, easy-breezy. So, I was kind of using my friends as character references. I have other friends who are loving people, but sometimes they might hold back certain things that they're not feeling comfortable to share. The central character, she's probably the dorkiest-looking one, but I think that's also kind of what makes her really lovable. So yeah, they're all drawn from my friends. 

And the look of the character, all the characters, was really heavily inspired by the sculptor Marisol Escobar. In the research phase, I had done my drawings of the characters and I was like, “How are we going to get them into a 3D form?” Escobar’s sculptures are these really blocky shapes, and there was this one image in particular of these three female characters, and I was like, that's it! That's the girls. I think it captured the silliness but was also quite distinct. I wanted each character's shape, even if you saw them from a distance and it didn't quite make sense, you knew that shape was this particular character. Having those distinctions was really important to me. 

The music, though subtle, goes along perfectly with the moods of the scenes, which accentuates them to a new extent. Tell me about the music selection and editing process. 

The music was one of the hardest things to do. I was really lucky early on to work with composer Sam Harding. He did it all—he did my start and end, all that kind of funky jazz, something a bit quirky. I made a storyboard animatic of the film, so I had to play with temporary music, and I knew wherever the film went, I wanted an upbeat ending after all the sadness. What lifts me up is funk and disco, so I wanted that, and as I finished the project, I felt like I needed something at the start to tie that up. I guess the main music is for the emotional scene. Initially, the music I had there was quite foley-based, but I knew that the music was really key in feeling the emotions, the sadness. And that was Alex Olijynk, she came in quite late and I gave her some guides, but I knew I was looking for some sad synths, kind of like an ‘80s retro vibe. She did a beautiful job and I love her mix. 

I didn't really have to edit much. I gave them their bits to the scene, I said I'd like some music from here to here. And I gave them the story beats of where I want different musical beats to hit emotions. Oh! Actually, the opening music when the titles come up was actually very inspired by Fleabag (2016). I love the Fleabag opening music. It's kind of, like, ‘Hazard! Disaster! Oh no!’ That was the kind of vision that I wanted to set it to be, like, ‘Oh no, she's in trouble.’

I really like the fact that music was used for the emotional bits, since there was no dialogue right from the beginning, but instead, it was all these little noises that the characters made; just, like, soft hums that the girlfriends make during that scene of them understanding and empathising with each other. That made me pause for a second and really soak it in before I continued watching. 

Yeah, my voice actors did a fantastic job. I guided them to do those performances. Initially, in the very first pass, I did them and they were shocking, so bad. So, you know, get real actors! And I had such a beautiful response to the film, especially from female audience members like, that's definitely my target audience. So, I'm also always amazed when I get responses from men. I'm like, that's great, I love that. But this is definitely for the women.

This is a common feature I noticed between BAGGAGE and your previous work with eyes on the Speak To Me music video, as well as the animation on the eyes of characters in Memoir of a Snail (2024), where you were a key member of the art department. These are white orbs that stay stationary, and all movement and emoting happens through the presence of the little black dots (or ‘pupils’) which dart around according to how characters feel. Is that an element that is natural to stop-motion as a genre, or is it more of a personal stylistic choice? 

Oh, my God. I'm impressed by your research. It is definitely something I picked up on Memoir of a Snail. My stop-motion before this—I don’t think it was really as consistent, but working on that film I learned lots of tips and tricks, and the eyes in particular [were] probably the biggest takeaway. And learning from the animation supervisor, if you can get the performance of the eyes right, that's where all the emotion is. It doesn't matter if you get the body wrong, but if you get the eyes wrong, people aren't going to get the message. So, that's your biggest communicator. And yeah, the way I move the eyes, yeah, is a direct rip-off, but I could also say that's [where] I learned it. You know, that was my training ground, essentially. And . . . in animation, lots of people use clay and I felt clay is just so messy. Whereas those eyes, they're all magnetic and you could just move them around easily, and it’s really fun. I definitely got to give credit to Adam [Elliot] and Memoir of a Snail for it, since I don't know how to do it any other way now. From an animation perspective, it's just so fun and easy to animate that way.

You are both the director and the writer for BAGGAGE, and I want to talk to you on how your writing process was for the film. You have a short run time, and you need to make sure the elements of comedy are retained, while also ensuring that the message gets through to the audience. How did you decide on the storyline and were there other alternative plots you planned?

Yeah, there were many alternative plots because in the beginning I actually didn't know who the main character was. I had the three girls, I had their personalities ready, and for the longest time, it was actually going to be the girl with all the patches on her suitcase. She has this patch on her suitcase that says “I love Nan”. So, I guess I was always going for this kind of, like, internal grief thing. I think it was going to be about missing her grandma, which is  kind of my trauma. But then, through developing the story, I actually focused on the experience that my friend had, I suppose. And that's when it became that “I miss my mum” trauma. So, it took a long time to get there. Gosh, story writing, for me, is not easy. It’s really hard, like an uphill battle. I think I've learned a little bit about myself, like how to do it, and that I have to be very physical with lots of Post-it notes, where I'm scribbling notes on the wall. 

I love the collaboration. I had mentors come in to write the story. I think my opening idea was in the opening scene, I want you to know that she's a mess. She's an overweight person, you know, like, she’s carrying too much, and I can't even remember, honestly. So, I really started from the center of the story and built it out to the end, and then to the start. I knew that she had to get on the conveyor belt, go through security, and something's going to get her in trouble, but I don't know what. So, I was animating and creating the story at the same time, so it was completely chaotic. I would not recommend this method to people! But it somehow worked out. I like puns and jokes, that's really important to me. You might have seen different jokes throughout the film. So . . . the bottle—the bottled-up emotion was what was going to get [one of the girls] in trouble. And actually, when I was overseas, I did my own fun research. I was taking little international trips, where on purpose, I put bottles in my bag to have the experience of being pulled out by security, and being like, “Oh, no. What's in my bag?” It took a long time to decide on that. I felt like, OK, she's bottling up emotions, but what's behind the emotions? 

It was good to have the gags, but a part of the story was, you know, we all have grief. We've all lost someone. And this was something that had happened really personally to me and my friends. At the time I was really upset with my friend that she was having a hard time and she hadn't told me, and I guess by making this film, I just wanted her to know that, “I want to be there for you. Let me have the privilege of holding your baggage because I love you. I care about you.” And I think she got the message! 

I had other ideas, but it was all about time constraints, I was running out of time. I shot the entire opening sequence in one week—that was the final week. Even on the last day, when we had to leave the studio, I was doing my last shot on the last day.

So, how long did the film take to make, from the ideating to the very last edit, and polishing it up? And what was it like working at the Aardman Studios?

So, the whole project probably took just a little bit over a year. I probably spent six months in the idea production-animation phase, like world-building, and then I spent my last six months all in post-production because I came back from overseas to Australia. It's like I had a cake, but I didn't have any of the icing on it. I had no voices, no music, no sound. Those last six months, I was like, “What have I done?” I couldn't look at my film for like two months. I had to show my friends, asking if I could save it . . . I don't know. I just lost all confidence. But I think once I got the voices and the music in there, it felt like something was happening, and I felt very relieved on finishing the film. But there was also the fact that I had to then let go of it once it was done, and that's also really hard because you can keep adjusting and fine-tuning, but at the end of the day, it's like, will the audience get it? You have to let that be enough. It's enough, you're enough, the film's enough.

Working at Aardman was like a dream, like living in your stop-motion world every day. It just felt like such a privilege to be there every day. It was the first time in years that I didn't have a full-time job. I wasn't working and the only thing I was doing was this film, just dedicating myself to this project. Having the time to fail is really important, too, because there were lots of weeks where I felt like I didn’t make any progress. Also, being surrounded by other creative people is really important to me. None of this happened on its own, I had an amazing team, all my friends, family—so many people behind this project that made it happen. 

I want to briefly touch upon the ideas behind creating the other characters, aside from the three girls, who are unique in their own way. At the very beginning at the check-in counter, we had a man at one counter, and a lady checking in the baggage who seemed mean. And on the conveyor belt, there was a pushy but nice security guy, and finally a mean and invasive security guard. 

I had specific visions in the opening scene. I just wanted the lady to be really annoyed and just doing her job, kind of completely frustrated. That first security guy, I just wanted to have a goofy character. It was almost like it's his first day on the job, where he doesn't really know what he’s doing and that was probably a bit more silly.

At that stage, I wanted to have opportunities to tell the audience what was coming up. So like bringing up the thing to throw out bottles was to get that into the audience’s mind. Like, you might still not recognise it at that point, but it's trying to drop hints. But, definitely, the guard at the end who's rummaging through her? That was definitely my strongest vision. I was like, this guy has to be the absolute worst. Like he's just a real sadistic person. He's having fun rummaging and he loves messing with her. He's even, like, sniffing the underwear because it's disgusting. 

It’s a contrast between the friends and the other people. I guess it was the idea that other people in the world who don't know you, who don't care about you, are going to judge your baggage and think you're overweight, or think of it as trash, these people who are giving out that negative energy. But when the friends see the baggage, they care. So yeah, having that contrast.

I know you are heading to SXSW. Congratulations on that as well! What does the future look like for you now going forward? Are there any new projects you are working on? 

Thank you, I’m so very excited! . . . To be honest at the moment the future is unknown, but I think that's the kind of reality for stop-motion animation. I'm pretty focused on just remaining in stop motion. I don't have an interest in doing other forms, like this is the format for me. So, by doing that I'm limiting my opportunities for work. At the moment I'm trying to generate some future opportunities. I love collaboration, I think I would definitely like to work on another person's project. I like going back and forth between doing someone else's work then doing a bit of my own work. I'm really looking forward to Texas because who knows, I might meet someone who wants to work with me.

Finally, why did you choose stop motion in specific? What drew you to it, or was it something you always knew growing up that you wanted to work with?

I did not think of stop motion as a kid. Never considered it. Now, as an adult, I can reflect and go, “Oh, yeah, I think I always liked it.” I might have seen Postman Pat (1981) or Pingu (1986). In Australia, we have Soup Opéra (1991). But, I never went “Oh, I've got to do that.” Whatever I create artistically, it's always quite funny, because for me that's what the world needs. I think life is hard. And if you can make someone laugh, isn't that amazing?

When I left art school, I felt like I wasn't a real artist because everything I made wasn't intellectual enough, or not conceptual enough. I mean, my graduating piece was a giant horse piñata. So, I took a gap year and just watched a lot of animations. I got really into Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975), my initial Terry Gilliam . . . And then I got obsessed with the Czech stop motion animator Jan Švankmajer’s works, and realised that artistically, I was always into surreal things and loved things that were weird and about the mind. I’ve always been a maker, I love making things with my hand, and I love watching movies, so stop motion was a way to make something and bring it to life.