Everything Else

Here's everything else that's going on....I'm currently in the final stretch for my book, and I see many long nights & days ahead. Through it all I've been connecting with lots of big stop-motion people granting permission to use images. I got an email from Will Vinton, who I'm still awaiting more contact with, which is really neat. Also got a personal letter from Ray Harryhausen, and am currently negotiating rights for images with Ladislas Starewitch's granddaughter. I've been toying with the idea of an entire book of interviews with stop-motion animators as a follow up to this one, so we'll see what happens there.

I had a tape sent to me from home with all of my raw Snot Living footage on it. It's been fun looking through it all and remembering what a challenge making that film was, and how much fun. I miss working with film; it has such a better look than video. Too bad it's so expensive and impractical compared to today's digital tools. Perhaps one day I'll get the opportunity again to shoot something that way.

I went to Alberta for a few days for more info sessions and got to see Mike Trudy and the boys; they're so cute.

Yesterday I had an amazing experience doing a stop-motion workshop at a small private school in Victoria. There were three kids, grades 6 to 8, who want to start a stop-motion club and make films. It was truly inspirational to see the potential audience for my book, so passionate about what they were doing, and very talented. One of the kids in particular, this 6th grader named Julian, was going on about and reacting to comments about Svankmeyer, Metropolis, Clockwork Orange, Eraserhead and all of these other films which I'm sure nobody else his age knows about. I told him 'you probably shouldn't be watching all of those films, but I'm glad you are!' I was absolutely delighted...gave me a glimpse of what our kids will probably be like, unless they get too much art & film from us and want to be stockbrokers instead. I would love to be able to help kids make films as a career someday; perhaps down the road I'll have the opportunity.

Today I saw the most brilliant short film I've ever seen, right here:

Steve did some animation on it and told me to check it out. The film made me laugh and cry; such a fantastic piece of work, and gave me a burst of inspiration to get my film done sometime soon and get it out there. Gonna see if Steve and his partner can help me get it colored in.

Better get back to the book, and will try to blog more amongst all of everything.