American Cinematographer - January 2008 - (Page 10) Short Takes An Animated Odyssey by Iain Stasukevich The titular character in Madame TutliPutli, a short film directed, shot and animated by Maciek Szczerbowski and Chris Lavis, takes a train trip alone and becomes increasingly anxious as time passes. n a scene in the stop-motion-animated short film Madame Tutli-Putli, the eponymous character finds herself trapped on a locomotive that has inexplicably stopped in the dead of night, deep within a forest. An eerie quiet hangs over the sleeping passengers while Tutli-Putli tries without success to write a letter. Then, as though beckoned, she opens the window of her train car and stares out into the darkness. It’s a moment that reflects the experiences of co-directors/co-cinematographers Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, who once spent two weeks traveling by train between Toronto and Vancouver. Setting their story entirely on what they call “the night train,” the filmmakers wanted to “get down to the real anxiety a lone trav- I eler can feel,” explains Szczerbowski. Lavis adds, “We realized one of the scariest things about being on a train in the middle of nowhere is when it stops for no reason and stays stopped for a long time.” During one such delay, Lavis and Szczerbowski contemplated disembarking and walking out into the forest. As they discuss the arduous process of bringing Madame Tutli-Putli to the screen, they give the listener the impression that’s exactly what they did. Having worked as comic-book artists and set designers for live theater, Lavis and Szczerbowski opened Clyde Henry Productions in the mid-1990s and soon attracted notice for their animated commercials and video projects. Neither filmmaker has any formal training in photography; much of what they know comes from advice given and experience gained over years of experimentation. “To paraphrase what Gregg Toland [ASC] told Orson Welles about cinematography: we’ve always believed you can learn the basics for anything in one weekend,” says Lavis. Prior to Madame Tutli-Putli, the duo shot animation using a Canon GL-1 as a body and lens, importing the frames directly onto a DPS Reality video card and using Animate as an assist. “That gave us both a live view and the ability to toggle through or play previous frames,” says Lavis. “I believe Animate was originally developed for Aardman Animations, and in our view, it’s still the best animation-assist out there.” When it came time to shoot 10 January 2008 Photos courtesy of Clyde Henry Productions and the National Film Board of Canada.
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