Monday, September 8, 2014

Stop Motion Art Film Treatment


“Mary, Mary, quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?

With silver bells and cockle-shells,
And pretty maids all in a row.”



Masses of vintage mix and match teacups liter an old floating dock on the Black River. The backdrop consists of swampland made of algae, stumps, wildlife, and trees that seem to grow out of the river. The tea colored water moves slowly between the dock and swamp. The delicate teacups contrast against the darker natural location. They start to move. They spin, slide, and jump to the music. Different colored paint droplets fall rhythmically over the vintage cups enhancing the soundtrack-motivated dance. It is visual poetry.

The poem above is the feeling I want for this piece. It will reflect the tone of the poem as it was used in The Secret Garden, so a short sweet poem but with a darker undertone.

We are going to use stop motion to animate this short, which means a lot of research on our parts. Also, the planning of this will need to be extremely precise. Thankfully Mike (DP) has experience with stop motion.

Location: We are planning to take a weekend and stay up at my family house in Atkinson County to complete the shoot. The house is located on the Black River and has a floating dock that we will utilize.

We will need to start research on stop motion immediately as well as start watching a lot of stop motion animation pieces for inspiration and ideas. I really enjoy Jan Swankmajer’s work so that’s where I intend to find a lot of motivation. I really want this to be visual poetry. To enhance the poetic feel about it, I want to play around with shooting through gauze.  Since it’s a stop motion piece, this would create an always-changing texture while still softening up the picture. 

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