We are proud to announce that Liberty and Justice will be in the 27th Woods Hole Film Festival! The festival takes place July 28 – Aug. 4, 2018 in various venues in the village and surrounding area.

Our film will be shown in Shorts: Break Away on Monday, July 30th at 5:30 pm in the Old Fire House. The program includes a selection of 8 short films having to do with the pursuit of freedom. To see the program and purchase tickets in advance, please go here. If you are planning to attend any of the festival events, I recommend getting tickets ahead of time, as they routinely sell out. Rob and I will be at our screening on July 30th, as well as Matthias Bossi from Stellwagen Symphonette, who produced the movie sound track. We hope to see some of you locals there in support of our home grown effort. There will be an opportunity to vote for Audience Awards, too!

Of course, most of you who follow this blog live far, far away and won’t be able to see the film on the big screen. The next best thing is to view it on your computer or home screen from this page. I know that a lot of you have already watched the movie and shared it with your family and friends. Thank you for helping to spread it around!  After the summer film festival season, I will put Liberty and Justice on YouTube and Vimeo, so it can be more readily shared around the world.

I’ve entered the film in a number of festivals and am waiting for the results. The process is kind of overwhelming because I have no idea which festivals are worth taking a chance with. There are the obvious ones that focus on animation and most festivals have an animation category. But, the competition is fierce! There are websites that make it easy to submit your movie to hundreds of festivals around the world. So easy that it’s as tempting as online betting. With a simple click, you can easily spend a fortune in entry fees, with a slim chance of being accepted. So, I’m trying to be very selective about which festivals to try.

During the year-long filming process, I took a whole bunch of photos of the sets and characters, both on and off stage. Here are most of the cast, waiting backstage.

This shows the wire rig we used to make the Twitter bird fly. While animating, I referred to the monitor in the background for guidance. Rob drew a notched line on the computer to indicate the bird’s flight pattern and speed.

For the candy-land scene filmed from above, we screwed the camera to an extension arm that was attached to the elevated slider.

Rob checked the focus on the monitor constantly by zooming in on the faces. That’s wax paper taped to the wooden stand, which we used to soften the light.

For the last part of the movie we needed a rotating set, so Rob and I devised a system that could move incrementally. I arranged the scenery on a wooden platform, which was placed on top of a lazy susan. Then, we could revolve the whole set, filming one frame at a time, using a marked wire for reference.

Each phase of the project, from story boarding, to making and animating the characters and props, to the final editing was a true adventure!

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

• 

Other posts about the Liberty and Justice animation project include “Liberty and Justice” in process, All that Glitters, America First Lady, stop-motion in action, Animated Film Logo. and Liberty and Justice – the movie! In this interview, I reflect on my foray into political satire and describe how speaking out through art has affected my work and life.

To keep up with new posts, please subscribe to this blog (top right column on the home page). Your contact info will not be shared. If you’d like to see more frequent photos tracking the projects in my studio, please follow me on Facebook and/or Instagram.