After an 8 hour flight home from the UK last night, I had big plans for sleeping. But then my friend James had an extra ticket for The Tallest Man on Earth at Webster Hall. Oh, the sacrifice.
The Tallest Man on Earth, Webster Hall - Sept. 27 2010
It was a great show and by our second shot of Jameson, he played “The Gardener.” This is always the highlight for me, the tippy top favorite of my many favorite songs of his.
I made the trip across the big blue ocean for the 2010 Woodstock Film Festival. Joy, James and I worked on a music video, Golem, for The Maladies and it’s screening in the Animation Program this weekend.
We were also asked to make the Festival Signal Film again. Keep reading to find out how we made it:
There were two rules to making the film.
One – it had to be based on the 2010 poster by Portia Munson, which was created using flowers from Munson’s Catskill garden.
2010 Woodstock Film Festival Poster by Portia Munson
Second rule – the film had to be done using pixilation.
I was still in England so Joy and James called me on video chat to discuss. As James explained their concept, I could see Joy in the background, putting on too much makeup and wearing a funny costume. They said they would handle the live action while I animated the flowers which I’d send to them to put to music.
We got started. Joy and James dressed up as mime gardeners, a fairy and a rooster and took about 2,000 pictures of each other in their backyard. I watched classic Sesame Street stop motion for inspiration and spent hours digitally cutting out 105 flowers and 1 insect from the poster. I think I counted about 340 flowers in total but I could be wrong because I got dizzy.
You can imagine my excitement when they sent me a link to the finished movie. Their part was so fun and well done for two animators who work almost exclusively in hand drawn and computer animation. The live action seamlessly melts into my dancing flowers to The Tallest Man on Earth’s “The Gardener.”
We’ve been making the Woodstock Signal Films for three years now – here’s 2008 which Joy and I did together and here’s 2009, which we made with James and Arthur Metcalf.
There are going to be a few signal films in the festival this year for variety, two others were created by Aaron Hughes and Ivan Joy. I can’t wait to see what they came up with!
You know when you go to the movies and you can’t miss the coming attractions because sometimes they are better than the movie you paid to see? In my humble opinion, these signal films must accomplish just that – or at least get you pumped for some great films. Joy and I create Signal Films for some of our favorite festivals, and with two of them coming up this fall – here are some fantastic signal films I’ve been watching for inspiration.
Noey and I have been so busy recently and it’s been fantastic! Here’s a list of some of the more “interesting” things we’ve been up to:
1. After we was robbed, we moved out and it was insanely depressing. I won’t get into it, because really, it’s not very interesting. I mean I wish I took my depression and used it for good, like putting all my sad efforts into writing a song (but that would be a terrible song since i’m not a musician) or painting or doing something more creative and therapeutic than drinking away the sorrow and walking around under a dark little cloud. But here’s what’s interesting… there actually was an upside to moving out from our wonderful little nook in NYC and back to our hometown – I happened to stumble upon old illustration work and drawings I had done back in college. I was looking back at my past in this treasure trove of really awful work, although it was mixed with some pieces that definitely showed promise. Now I have to ask myself, what to keep and what to throw away? Can I throw it away? Is it just crap or will it mean something to me one day? Maybe right now I think it’s rubbish but who knows, in the future it might show me more about myself and how I’ve developed as an artist through my career. Right now it really pisses me off looking at it. But then again, it does, make me feel a lot better about where I’m at today. Which brings me to…
2. The new short film we just finished for the Martha’s Vineyard International Film Festival! Noey and I created the Signal Film for the Animation Program and it was a really cool gig. We owe the opportunity to Pat Smith and Bill Plympton. They suggested we work on the Signal Film for this fest as well as the one for the Woodstock Film Festival. It was really fun to collaborate on something that we didn’t have to really spend too much time on. We finished a short film in two weeks and it was so satisfying. Like all filmmakers, Noey has an old, dusty library of unused ideas in her head and when we were brainstorming for one, it seemed like the perfect time to break this one out. We both knew it had the potential to be great, and in the end we are so psyched with how it turned out. Check it out here:
3. Right now we are currently finishing up the Signal Film for Woodstock. This idea is from a film which we had started a few years ago, back in college. It never became anything and wandered from dorm room to apartment, from apartment to home-sweet-home, for 4 years, and we didn’t think much of it. But one day, in August, when Bill and Pat asked us to create this short, we remembered this animation and dug it up from it’s resting place on our old computers, to see if there was anything about it we could rescue. Here are a couple of stills from the film:
When we started watching it, we saw how beautiful it really was. Hand drawn cut-outs, painted in watercolor and brought to life by the technique of replacement animation, we decided the story was actually funny. The little mistakes about it seemed fixable. We are re-recording the audio now and with a little help from the wonderful world of After Effects and it will be ready by the end of the week. So exciting!!
4. The Scritch-Scratch of Busy Little Hands has been accepted to the Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival as well as the Starz Denver Film Festival! Unfortunately, we won’t be able to attend Sidewalk… whack… but going to try to make it to Denver, for sure.
