Spork Cinema: The Early Years

I am truly off schedule this week, but it is partially intentional. Since last week's entry went up a day late, and since I will not be posting this week while away on vacation, posting this entry later seemed to balance things out a bit.

Part of my problem is that I wanted to make this entry about the building of my new PC, but I need to get some good photos for that to be fully appreciated. Mostly, though, I am really busy and tired, and I'd like to address that for a moment, because it has been weighing on my mind.

I just had a birthday, and normally when that comes around, I like to plan a few well-chosen activities and really celebrate to the hilt. I won't say that I draw it out into a week of festivities, but there should at least be three or four days with things happening. I haven't really had a satisfying birthday since I started my current position, despite wonderful friends and family doing their best.

The first year I started in January, and I was busy interviewing, hiring, training, and doing everything to make sure that we could successfully make our launch date, despite the fact that the office was also moving. Fine, there was no way I was going to have spare time there, or have that time period not be stressful. I can accept that.

The second year, we were completely backordered on some very popular items, their slip in manufacturing schedule having been exacerbated by an earthquake in Taiwan. We got so many phone calls there was no time to answer email. In fact, we did not get email completely caught up until February. Again, that was clearly an anomaly. That was the year that the American Express flyer came advertising travel to Mexico. My exhausted, dispirited self longed for those sunny beaches, a dream I am finally on the verge of realizing.

Anyway, the next three years have all just been really busy, but without any identifiable crisis. Yes, I am going on vacation in two days, and I took some time off last year (without going anywhere), but there is so much work to do before going, and so much potential backlog to be accumulated while gone, that it puts a bit of a damper on the joy. And I can't tell myself that this year is an anomaly anymore; this is just the way January is going to be.

So I'm thinking of moving my birthday. I might go for May 17th. May would be the first month with no sibling birthdays, and I could keep the day the same. I wouldn't do it this year, as I have already celebrated, and this vacation is part of it, but yeah, maybe next year.

Maybe I just need to throw a party again. The last one I threw was the Great Irish Potato Feast, and couples who were together then have broken up, met and married other people, and had children. It's been awhile, is all I'm saying.

Anyway, enough on that. One goal for this blog is to document my movie making aspirations, from now with an incomplete script to finished product, bringing you irregular updates. I thought it could be helpful to have some background before we start.

I doubt many of you know this, but I made two animated shorts in elementary school. No, I wasn't that much of a prodigy, or that ambitious. It was mostly luck.

The first one happened in fourth grade, as a project we did in the Talented and Gifted Program. That was my first year in it, and maybe the first year the district even had such a thing. In fifth and sixth grade they combined several schools and it was much more organized, but the first year they just took a handful of us over to the junior high a few hours a week, and we tried different things.

When starting the film unit we watched some Vinton Studios films, and most of us ended up using clay figures as our subjects. Claymation* is a trademarked term, so that's not what we were doing. I made a little man, some trees, a bear, and a picnic basket. Basically, the bear came, stole the food, killed the man, and squished him up. I had never seen a Mr. Bill segment, but I guess it was something like that. I think Yogi may have been more of an influence, if he was more competent and sadistic.

My friend Jennie was probably the most original in the bunch. She animated a fireworks display, starting with construction paper rockets going up, then marker on transparency film for the fireworks themselves. If I recall, she used a Sousa march for soundtrack that really worked well (I had a hard time finding appropriate music for mine). There was an issue with the pen not showing up well on the dark blue background representing the sky, but it was still pretty innovative, and probably an influence on my second feature.

The second one came because I was in Ms. Steele's class for sixth grade, and that was something she did every year. I was basically solo on "The Picnic", but in this class we worked in groups, so "The Garden Tragedy" was more of a collaborative effort.

I think we had five groups, but I only remember two others. They showed us short films before we started again, including one called "Toolbox Ballet" that had stop-motion animation of tool dancing around. One group did a highly derivative "Schoolbox Ballet".

Another group, whom I suppose you could refer to as the popular girls, had a bunch of Barbie* dolls going to a concert. I seem to recall it as being pretty dumb, but I could be wrong. It was a long time ago.

Our effort was to tell the tale of some hard luck vegetables-- tomatoes, corn, you know the type-- who had to suffer the predations of crows, farm neglect, and finally the construction of a road where the exhaust killed those who were left. We used construction paper figures and sets. The best sequence was probably when the crow swooped in and stole the corn, but the exhaust was pretty well executed. The themes were helplessness against fate, and abandonment by society. I think it was too colorful to be described as Bergmanesque though, and no one played chess.

So, you might be thinking now, based on her oeuvre, this spork is one pretty twisted individual. Well, maybe, but not because of that. The garden issue may have come from the increasing truck traffic past a blueberry field that is close to my heart, but I can't vouch for it.

No, I think somehow the format of short fiction encourages twisted plots. It is more commonly known that my favorite authors are Jane Austen and L.M. Montgomery. Their novels are generally pretty positive, and the main characters end up happily, but they each have a few short stories that would surprise you. Maybe you just don't get as emotionally invested in the short form, so it's okay for bad things to happen.

Anyway, I think there's a limit to how much you can analyze the artist by the art. According to most sources he had a pretty tranquil domestic life, but his books are full of people whose fatal flaws lead them to die miserable and lone, no matter how hard they tried to make things right. The counterarguments to that would be Woody Allen (whose films seem to be very biographical) and Quentin Tarantino (who probably really is a scary freak as opposed to just seeming like one). But the opposites may just go to prove the rule. Therefore, those who know me expect me to be working on a comedy, but the project is actually a downbeat but ultimately life affirming film about vampires.

But there is a funny scene in it!