SHORT stories - Pretty, Dead - Jeff Scher

PRETTY, DEAD

I made this film over the past summer. It was commissioned by Showtime for their nifty SHORT stories show. It's a kind of Faux Noir in that it's full of film noir references, but painted with the most un-noir pallet. It's also a kind of Faux feature having been distilled down to the point of abstraction. And it's got one of my favorite Shay Lynch scores.

Paul Simon's "Getting Ready For Christmas Day "

"Getting Ready For Christmas Day", by Paul Simon.
from the Forthcoming Album "So Beautiful Or So What"

Animation/direction; Jeff Scher

Getting Ready Animation

This is an image I took in the middle of animated "Getting Ready For Christmas Day", a video for Paul Simon. It was shot looking straight down on a light box on an animation stand. The camera, a Sony vx2000 let me shoot negative into a Mac Pro running I-stop motion. Pictured here are a few of the many props I borrowed from my boys.

BEST OF TIMES

The future is here, or at least the latest version of it. It's a Vook, a book with video, or in my case fourteen of my Times films and texts as an app for iphone, ipad and itouch. It's like having a pocket full of short films. It's available through the iphone app store.

Happy

Shot this the other day in the Fulton Mall in Brooklyn. It was shot with an iphone using the "toy Camera" app. 

Where There's Smoke

For "Where There's Smoke" I used a clay on glass technique, where the images of fire where "sculpted" into the clay, down to the glass, revealing the light below. I used black modeling clay, which was completely opaque. This was back lit by a photo flood light. There was a sheet of diffusion filter about six inches below the clay on glass layer. It made the light very bright but glowing more than glaring. Then I placed a sheet of glass painted with fire colors over the clay. I used Pebeo Vitrea 160 paint, it's a glossy transparent paint for glass. It's a kind of enamel paint and smells like nail polish, only ten times stronger. I let a heavy coat of red set up a little and then painted into it with a stiff brush. It made flame like striations in the old paint while filling in the lines with yellow and orange. This sheet of glass was positioned in a random way over each sequential frame "drawing". The glass layer was not flush with the clay. As the clay layer was uneven and changed from frame to frame, the flame glass was always a little higher then the clay. This gave the animated flames a lot of extra glow, and because it changed every frame, it also gave it a nice flicker.

These images show the clay on the glass with the back light on. The second image shows the painted glass layer, and the third image shows the combined elements.

It's like drawing with fire.