Featuring Ilan Bachrach, Gabel Eiben, Julie LaMendola, and Kristin Worrall. Filmed in a hotel room in Zurich by Pavol Liska. Edited by Kelly Copper in New York. Music by Chopin: Etude Op. 10, No. 12 as played by Franco-Swiss pianist Alfred Cortot (1933)
This video is part of a series of stop motion animations that were made in 2011 and 2012 by Nature Theater of Oklahoma as a preparation and exploration for a projected animated film that would eventually become Life and Times - Episode 4.5. The films were composed from individual still photographs shot with a Cannon Mark ii camera in various locations while the company was on tour with Life and Times - Episodes 1 and 2. No one in the company had ever done animated film before, and we were learning as we experimented. Breaking down time into individual still moments was a challenge both for the directors and the actors involved. The individual photographs -- done often over the course of an entire day -- were later assembled in Final Cut at a rate of 10 frames per second to create the motion.
This animation was the first of a series of animations we made in the style of silent film using text from Life and Times - Episode 7. However, inter-titles proved a very slow way of working with such an exhausting amount of text. We knew that if we would make a full length movie in this same way, it would be twice as long as any of the episodes we had made previously, so this idea was eventually abandoned.
To see other animations in the series, go to: vimeopro.com/oktheater/silent-movie-screen-tests