Friend In Winter

By Pettrybyos

Murphy's Law

You know, it's so funny how RIDICULOUSLY close in similarity with very different people making art in different parts of the world.  It's even more ridiculous how all of these similarities just spring up while one's completing a long-labored project...

This traditional piece was done my Alector Fencer from Germany.  She actually posted his summer of 2009, which is the summer I transitioned into CalArts.  Her character's name is Lumri, which is my character's name without the 'r.'  Crazy, or what??  I should really just hire people to animate my film for me...

We Are...

Whenever I Close My Eyes

Self Prisoned

Winter Begone

Quietude II

Quietude

Annie Winners and Nominees

Last night, I was able to go to the Annies with a couple of friends from my MFA 3 class at CalArts, and found that a LOT of films are out this year that have a human and a dog character establishing a heart-warming contact with each other...

This film is directed by Minkyu Lee, and apparently consulted with Glen Keane?



This was a nominee that didn't win but was in the same category:  Best Short Subject.  The Girl and the Fox by Base 14.




And after researching on the latter film, I find a really SIMILAR storyline to mine already published and made into a film...  Should I just give up on my thesis now..............?

The Fox and the Child summary:

A young girl of about 10 years lives in a farm house in the Jurassic mountains in eastern France. One day in autumn, when she walks to school through the forest, she observes a hunting fox. Of course, the fox escapes, but the girl yearns to meet the animal again.

She spends most of her free time in the forests trying to find the fox during the following months, but she doesn't meet the fox again until winter comes. During the winter, she follows the fox's tracks far across the fields. Suddenly she compares her hand to the size of the tracks near to those she is following and discovers they are relatively fresh wolf tracks; she is alarmed as a wolf pack begins howling near her. She runs away panicked, falls and hurts her ankle.

The ankle heals very slowly, so that she has to stay at home during the winter reading a book about animals of the forest and foxes.

When spring arrives, the girl is looking for fox holes and waits for a fox. The fox has young babies and moves holes because of her observations; therefore the girl decides to observe the fox from a greater distance.

She finds the fox again and tries to get the animal accustomed to her. She feeds it with meat. Later she can even touch the fox and is led to the new den. Finally, the fox arrives at her house and she lets it inside, wanting to show it her bedroom. But the fox becomes distressed at not being able to find a way out and escapes by jumping through the closed window breaking the glass. The fox is hurt badly, but survives and the girl learns that she cannot keep wild animals as pets at home.

Years later she tells the whole story to her son, as seen at the end of the film.

ACT II: Snow Scene!

Almost forgot about this blog dedicated to what has now taken over my entire LIFE.  Haha, happy 2012~



Entire ACT II outlines over storyboards overlapping to create different looping mini-narratives for MFA 3 Show at CalArts.

:: Nietzsche's Motto ::

Yesterday, I gave my Thesis presentation and the discussion about Edward [Lumi's Father] came into question.  Is he trying to be protective, while being annoyed at the same time?  Yes.  Is he trying to be the "bad cop" to be the "good father?"  Yes.  His methods are rough and unrefined, and this results in a tragic choice of killing off one of the two good characters in the end.  Lumi or the Wolf?

Edward is very in-tune with who he is.  German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche is NOT one of my favorites, but I do read what he has to say, because some of it I agree with.  He believed that people who are willing to stand against the grain follow their "inner law," thus, as Pindar used to say, "Become what you are."

Edward is a father:  He becomes this in a very extreme way; there is no stopping him.  He is also a hunter; his instincts come first, before reason.  I put him in the position of a murderer from the beginning,  but making it subtle, until the very end.  His intention of killing is about survival; he kills to eat, and he kills to not be eaten.  I'm probably putting too much thought into the characters, but hopefully at least some of this complexity comes out in the film.  :]

:: Way Down East ::

A spontaneous divine intervention happened today--the day before my 3rd year Thesis Presentation...  I got editing help!  Thanks to Joanna Leitch, I am one step closer to having a film that makes more sense.  She also gave me the 1920 silent film Way Down East [D.W. Griffith] as reference for the snow scenes in ACT II of my film.

:: L’heure entre chien et loup ::

"The hour between dog and wolf, or the time between dog and wolf. I'm told it's a common expression in French, referring to the hour between the end of the afternoon and the beginning of the evening. More simply, the twilight hour.

The hour when the dog and wolf are indistinguishable. The text implies that symbolically, good and evil (dog and wolf) are lost in the gloom of twilight."

At twilight the world burns red. There, a shadow creeps down the hill. Is it a friendly dog? Or a vicious wolf? This is the hour when I can't tell... L'heure entre chien et loup.

Translation © 2008 D. Bannon.

Jean Genet's Prisoner of Love

"...the expression entre chien et loup [literally, between dog and wolf, that is, dusk, when the two can't be distinguished from each other] suggests a lot of other things besides the time of day. The colour grey, for instance, and the hour when night approaches as inexorably as sleep, whether daily or eternal. The hour when street lamps are lit in the city, and which children try to drag out so that they can go on playing, though their eyes, suddenly active, are closing in spite of themselves. The hour in which - and it's a space rather than a time - every being becomes his own shadow, and thus something other than himself. The hour of metamorphoses, when people half hope, half fear that a dog will become a wolf. The hour that comes down to us from at least as far back as the early Middle Ages, when country people believed that transformation might happen at any moment." (p. 254) Referenced Site