Squirrels and Hens

I was looking at Norman McLaren's splendid Hen Hop on the NFB website. There's a paragraph about it by the extraordinary Don McWilliams in which he describes the moment that he found out that Norman McLaren was a hen, he says in response "your'e right Evelyn, I'm a squirrel", which is maybe obvious when you know that he makes documentaries, I hope he's a red squirrel, I bet he is.
Anyway I'm studying the McLaren Cameraless Animation diagrams and wondering how to make a special desk:
The photograph is by Sophie Quevillon. This desk might be somewhere in the NFB, look at the lovely ink spot.

Imperial Provisor Frombald

I've got three very small ideas for new films, I don't know why I've chosen this one first but maybe I had vampires on my mind.
Imperial Provisor Frombald was an Austrian official who, in 1725 in Serbia, had to oversee the exhumation of villager Peter Plogojowitch who was suspected of being a vampire. I'm making rubber stamps which I'll either stamp on 35mm or a surface I can wipe. It would be obvious to use paper, but I really hate the idea of having so many pages left behind at the end.

Autumn animation stuff

There are a lot of great animation things going on at the moment, it's very sadly the last Aurora in Norwich (really hoping it's not the end though) and Flip in Wolverhampton where tomorrow, there's a talk by Sarah Cox of the fantastic Arthur Cox. If I had a helicopter, a helipad and a nanny I'd get to them both but in the meantime there's alot of leaves to shuffle around the park with my small companions before those leaf blowers get them.

1927

We went to a Jaques Brel evening. The hightlight was 1927, a great mixture of animation and live theatre, very simple and funny but thoughtful too. We were also treated to Brel's 1973 film Le Far West, which should have been a ten minute film, because indeed the first ten minutes were very funny, the following 78 minutes were spent admiring the beautiful interior of Wilton's Music Hall and wondering when the hell it was going to finish.

A second visit to London Bridge

We went back to Shunt Lounge last night to video the installation. There were a lot of dainty pole dancers. It's on until Saturday if you need to see what you look like dancing to Soft Cell with a ginger moustache.
If you don't get along there, I'll get the video of the installation onto my website soon.

The sound of a butterfly

I've finished filming the butterfly film and at the risk of confusing myself and others I'm calling it Little Skipper, the same name as the 2006 version but the it describes so well what happens in the film that I couldn't get used to another one. Now I'm experimenting with some sound by recording the page sounds and making little loops and repeating sequences to play with. It's not right yet but I think it does work with sound.

Come along!

Emily and I had a busy day installing the animation for Shunt. It opens tomorrow and you can come if you like. We were so busy moving little people around the lightbox that I forgot to tell anyone except Shelly. You just go to London Bridge and through the door in the first photo, anytime after 6pm, it looks as if there is a moustache workshop too. Wow, Hazel's going to go crazy for that.