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Burrow’s End
A rabbit family at a burrow mouth among great tree roots, looking out over misty country and a winding track.

An animated feature

The film in development

Burrow’s End is also in development as an animated feature film, pitched as a PG family drama of about 110 minutes.

The pitch

The story

When a housing development destroys their warren, a reluctant scout leads the survivors west, across motorways, farmland and predator country, towards the glowing hill of an old bedtime story. Its ruler, a vast and courteous general, has been expecting them.

The film project tells the novel’s story in four acts. Everything on this page comes from its development work: the palettes the film is lit by, its concept art and storyboards, a draft teaser and the idea behind its score.

Pitched as
A PG family drama of about 110 minutes
In development
A feature pitch, a four-act story, twenty characters, twenty-three location paintings, concept art, Act One storyboards and a draft teaser
Attached
Nothing yet: no studio, cast, composer or release date
The art
Development art from the film project

The colour script

Five kinds of light

The film is lit in five registers. Each is a palette, a quality of light and a feeling, and the story moves through them. This website is lit in them too, and on it each one moves its own way.

Wildflower meadow with the old hawthorn and a distant thatched stone cottage at golden hour.

The camera breathes, at grass height

Meadow Gold

Home and safety: a low, warm sun, long shadows, and dust turning in the light that reaches underground.

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Bramble Warren main hall: chalk tunnels with flints, hanging roots and a daylight shaft.
A yearling discovering a dandelion in the evening meadow.
Key colour
Wheat gold
Light
One warm sun, 5,500 to 6,500 K
Focus
Deep: the meadow runs to the horizon

the meadow caught fire ⁠— not with heat but with refracted light

The book, Chapter 1
Uprooted tree on a ploughed field beneath a starry night sky.

The camera travels west, low and exposed

Crossing Grey

Exposure: the meadow’s gold drained to silver-grey under cloud and rain, and the hard edges of tarmac and concrete.

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Flooded river in a wooded gorge with sunbeams and rainbows in the spray.
Sodium-lit suburban housing estate at night with a plastic rabbit ornament in a front garden.
Key colour
Slate
Light
Flat overcast, 7,000 to 8,000 K
Focus
Shallow when danger is near; deep when the rabbits are small in a big land

the dew on the grass had a cold metallic quality that made the meadow look like it was made of steel

The book, Chapter 6
Briar Hill’s great chamber: a symmetrical chalk cathedral lit by glowing moss.

The camera keeps to the centre line

Briar Glow

A paradise too perfect: jade light from the moss, flawless symmetry, no wind and no weather.

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The Briar Hill entrance: a too-perfect chalk tunnel mouth glowing green in a wood.
Briar Hill: a perfect white chalk dome above a green valley.
Key colour
Pale jade
Light
The moss itself, at about 510 nanometres: a green with no natural equivalent
Focus
Shallow, in compositions that are always symmetrical

The hill was honeycombed with tunnels that glowed with their own light ⁠— green and soft, like moonlight trapped in stone

The book, Chapter 4: Thistle’s story
Concrete drainage pipe mouth in a muddy woodland bank in grey pre-dawn fog.

The camera locks off and holds

Predator Black

Mortal danger: crushed blacks and one harsh light, and familiar places turned hostile.

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The motorway from the central reservation: rain, spray, lorries and blinding headlights.
Excavators backlit by construction floodlights in the night meadow.
Key colour
Near-black
Light
A single source, moon or headlight: very cold or very warm, never neutral
Focus
Extremely shallow; silhouettes and blown highlights

The quality of light shifted as if a hand had been laid over the sun

The book, Chapter 3: the kite
Burrow entrance in dewy meadow grass beside a blossoming hawthorn, blue morning sky.

The camera looks up to the open sky

Dawn Open

Honest light: a real dawn, clean air, everything in focus and nothing hidden. It is also the light of this page.

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A bumblebee in dewy meadow grass at sunrise.
Dew evaporating from a blade of meadow grass at sunrise.
Key colour
Warm dawn
Light
The rising sun, 3,000 K warming to 5,500 K
Focus
Infinite: everything near and far

A grey luminescence filtered down from the world above ⁠— not yet dawn, but the promise of it

The book, Chapter 1

From the film project

Development art

Character and prop concepts, the project’s emblem, and frames from the Act One storyboards.

From the Act One storyboards

  1. Underground soil tunnel with roots, chalk grit and an earthworm; golden light breaking in from above.
    In the tunnel: roots, chalk grit and the first light from above
  2. Roots and earth below the hawthorn, rising towards the light at the surface.
    Below the hawthorn, rising to the light
  3. An old fox paw print in dried mud by the hedgerow.
    An old fox print in dried mud by the hedgerow
  4. A surveyor flag spiked beside the Southern Bolt Hole, seen from inside the burrow.
    A survey flag beside the southern bolt hole, seen from inside
  5. Surveyor flags whipping in the night wind before the waiting machines.
    Survey flags in the night wind, before the waiting machines
  6. The Bramble Warren meadow at night: the hawthorn and the waiting machines under the stars.
    The meadow at night: the hawthorn, and the machines under the stars

Development art from the film project.

The draft teaser

The teaser board

The film’s draft teaser runs to twenty-three shots, about a minute and a half. Here is a selection of its frames, in the teaser’s order, with its narration set as captions. Play it as a short animatic, or read it frame by frame below.

  1. The meadow at golden hour: a sentinel rabbit, the old hawthorn and a thatched stone cottage.

    Shot 1 0:00

    The World That Was

    Every child learns that rabbits are soft. That they are gentle. That they are prey.

  2. A bulldozer blade bearing down on a burrow entrance, a rabbit cowering inside, buttercups and flying soil.

    Shot 3 0:08

    The End of the Burrow

    What no one teaches you…

  3. Rabbits running across a ploughed field at night past a fallen oak.

    Shot 4 0:12

    The Crossing Begins

    …is what it costs to live every single day knowing the world is trying to eat you.

  4. The fox waiting at the drainage pipe’s mouth, seen from inside.

    Shot 6 0:20

    The Waiting Jaws

    And that the only thing between your family and annihilation… is to never, ever stop paying attention.

  5. Shot 8 0:27

    The Roaring River of Tarmac

    No narration. Lorries roar past in the rain, and rabbits press flat on the central reservation.

  6. A great white chalk dome, tufted with green, rising above green valleys in soft sunrise light.

    Shot 9 0:32

    The Promise of Paradise

    We thought we found paradise.

  7. Briar Hill’s main chamber as a jade-lit chalk cathedral full of rabbits in rows.

    Shot 10 0:38

    The Jade Cathedral

    But paradise is built on a promise. And promises require obedience. Safety is not freedom.

  8. Fern’s face in close-up in the golden meadow grass.

    Shot 23 1:22

    Title Card

    No narration. Then the title.

The frames are development art from the film project, and the narration is its draft copy, not a line from the novel. Lines spoken over frames not shown here are set under the frame before them.

Burrow’s End A novel by Elsa Bergström In development as an animated feature Every morning, someone has to go first. Read Part One free The book

The score’s idea

Hear the themes

The score’s idea is one scale for the whole story: the seven white notes of C major. Each theme calls a different note home, so every character sings in its own mode of the meadow’s scale. Each card draws its theme’s shape in chalk.

Switch Sound on at the top of the page to hear each theme as a short sketch, made in your browser. They illustrate the idea; they are not the film’s score.

  1. The Light

    C Ionian, tin whistle

    Four bars of plain major melody with nothing beneath it: the meadow’s own song, and the first music the audience hears.

  2. Fern The Scout

    D Dorian, solo flute

    Three notes rising, a pause, then three more. It is left unfinished on purpose.

  3. West

    E Phrygian, fiddle over harp

    A travelling melody for the road, gathering instruments as the journey goes on.

  4. Home

    F Lydian, solo cello

    A warm, falling melody: the shape of going underground.

  5. Bracken The Bold One

    G Mixolydian, fiddle

    Energetic, rising and syncopated, a tune that can’t keep still.

  6. Thistle The Song

    A Aeolian, oboe over bodhrán

    Something ancient, at a walking pace, with the frame drum as the heartbeat of the telling.

  7. Thorn The General

    B Locrian, low brass over strings

    Four notes, each lower than the last, like a door closing. It never comes to rest.

With JavaScript on, each theme can be played as a short sketch made in your browser, its chalk line drawn again as it plays.

Every morning, someone has to go first.