Monday, May 24, 2010

the one hundred blows

How on earth did I make 100 posts on this here blog? That seems impossible given the many crazy, time consuming things we've been doing but the internet doesn't lie (hehe)- 100 it is! I just came across another review of the film on the website Film-Forward, here's an excerpt:

Green employs live actors and an intricately built set, but shoots them frame-by-frame. The result is a stop-motion effect that at once adds a storybook feeling, and when combined with Leonard and Mary’s delicate, reserved relationship, something very tender is created. They scuttle around the space in the syncopated rhythm of animation, and they are able to achieve such beautifully supernatural behaviors like swallowing a whole fish during dinner or pulling tiny guardian angels out of the air. Green never forgets about the beautiful optical qualities of each carefully composed frame. Something about this type of cinematography, though, is inherently creepy.

The stop motion we used the in the film really does have an odd effect. It's so eerie- breaking down actions into fragments...each thing that makes up each action had to be thought about in advance defining the character shot by shot- like a moving phenomenology of sorts! When people say things to me about my acting being good or bad in the film it feels insane- was that acting? Who knows! I do know that I made myself actually cry in two scenes and in another scene I cried tears of clay! Either way if there is ever an Oscar for "Best Female Stop Motion Acting" I think I might be on the shortlist...but I don't think I should be picking out a gown anytime soon!