Lindsey Martin's Pottero - An Inspiring Tale 关于 Monsters, Loss, and Crisis
Lindsey Martin is an assistant professor at newbb电子平台 电影学院 who teaches students about screenwriting, 电影制作, 数字动画, 以及电影评论. While Lindsey is an inspiring teacher to many of her students, she is also an accomplished filmmaker. 她最近完成了她的最新动画电影， Pottero.
Lindsey grew up with a tale about a monster called Pottero. In the beginning Lindsey thought everyone knew what the Pottero was, but shortly after her initial research she came to discover that this monster she feared as a child was specifically her own family’s folktale. 但是, Pottero is about so much more than just a childhood folktale. Suicide rates in rural America have been steadily increasing over the past few years, and a couple years ago Lindsey tragically lost her uncle and godfather, 谁结束了自己的生命. With his loss and her return to the rural region, Lindsey started thinking about the Pottero again. 她失去了叔叔, his struggles and her grief made her think about all the circumstances that led to his choice, 或者这是一种选择. “Monsters are fears and a manifestation of what we cannot explain and the sort of feelings we don’t like,林赛解释道. But giving the monsters a visual representation makes them less scary. The scariest monsters are the ones that we never really see. By creating a physical monster, it becomes something that is in one’s control. This idea also inspired a community-based workshop:
“My hope is this story will inspire others to tell their own monster tales through a series of community animation workshops being developed in partnership with the 俄亥俄谷合作艺术中心. Giving people the tools and agency to tell their own stories is imperative to changing representation of Appalachia and to raise questions about our identities, 与我们来自的地方的关系, 还有那些在那里等着我们的怪物.”
的旅程 Pottero 是一个为期三年的过程. Production was lengthy because Lindsey chose a very ‘archaic’ way of working. Each individual object was hand drawn in ink by illustrator Thomasin Parnes and then digitally be processed in high resolution by Lindsey. 每个场景有200到300层. Lindsey’s choice of a scrolling frame was unconventional and a difficult way of storytelling. But it imitates the idea of how time moves during a journey, how it can feel so slow to us. 有时.
Since the Pottero is a monster, it could take many different shapes. So, animation was the best choice for this film because it can represent those many shapes perfectly within the world of memory, 幻想, 或恐惧. The opening scene of the film, which shows a suicide, is very powerful. 作为一名观众, 这在真人秀中很难表现出来, and then getting through the next ten minutes of the film could prove impossible. Animation builds a barrier that prevents us from experiencing that. 这仍然很困难, 它仍然是实物的一个版本, but the association of cartoons from childhood offers a way to tell this dark tale.
