A Memory Play

Okay, seriously, STORKS is, literally awesome. And I don't misuse the word "literally" like so many of you kids do nowadays (I misuse it in completely new, creative and inventive ways.) If the random action-climax were handled better, it really stood the chance to be as good/almost as good as Zootopia. Like holy crap. And the animation, just, superb. Like, best-animation-I've-seen-in-my-life superb. Just two films in, and WAG have proven themselves to be one of the finest animation companies producing today. Better than Pixar, even? I think so.

Anyway.

Had my second interview today, gathering authorial intent on the pieces I'm trying my hand at graphic design for for the Outlet publication. The last two interviews are scheduled for tomorrow.

One thing I've noticed through conducting these interviews, which I maybe would have missed had I not contacted the authors and had chats face-to-face, is how both of the pieces so far deal with the concept of memory. Perhaps you'll understand if (when) you actually see the pieces and read them, but for now, man I just love the wolves, they're so great, but dang it just sucks how all of their best moments were completely spoiled by the trailers.

Erm. Sorry, STORKS tangent (and I am abusing that word harder than I abused poor "literally" up there.)

It's a really weird thing, memory, and we don't really think about how weird it is that often. But it's pretty funny. And I'm not sure about how to order my next cluster of thoughts- see, I went to go see the Glass Menagerie this evening... the Glass Menagerie, "a memory play" as Tom Wingfield puts it in his introductory narration.

Zachary Dawdy starred as Tom Wingfield, and I thought he looked familiar- I got a chance to catch him, and sure enough I had seen him before. He was Bill Bailey in Cats (and also doubling for Macavity,) and the Sentry in Antigone, both productions which I've written about and one of which I actually had the pleasure of attending. Really I might've been going to put that "Memory" video up even if he weren't in Cats, I was considering it beforehand, but I heard that he'd been in Cats and was all, yahhhsss...

So what I focused on, anyway, obviously, was how the play, and this production specifically, dealt with and emphasized the theme. The director's metaphor here was the concept of swiss cheese- holes get larger as time goes on, but the cheese itself grows stronger and stronger. Time erases some memories, distorts and strengthens others. That was the production metaphor, a metaphor for the concept but not for anything visual.

The stage itself, rather, the set design in this production, was symbolically distorted: the angles used were occasionally odd and jutting, which not only represented expressionism and how reality is filtered through subjective experience (e.g. those crazy angles from the Cabinet of Dr Caligari,) but also, combined with the scrim material that a lot of the set was constructed out of, suggested glass, particularly of the shattered sort. The set was painted in blues, very dark and neutral: retreating colors, which placed emphasis on the players instead of the stage itself, and also to echo the "blue" themes mentioned by the script: Blue Roses, Blue Mountain. Also, that glass thing mentioned above. 

Everything was symbolic, visually, but you wouldn't have noticed it if it weren't pointed out to you. It's my challenge to create that kind of thing, but for these pieces.

four minutes later EDIT: oh, man, I totally spaced on telling you the best part of STORKS: there is in this movie, no joke, a montage sequence set to Talking Heads' "And She Was." If that's not enough to get you to go see it, nothing is.