Stop Motion
Written by Mike Sullivan | Posted by: Anonymous
Two phrases lingered with me after my meeting with Lowell
filmmaker James Higgins. The first was “you have to have an obsession with
images” and the second was “it’s tricky to shoot a film with a still camera.”
Indeed, the former and the latter collide in four short films that Higgins has
produced since 2006. In a distinctive technique Higgins calls “stop motion,”
these shorts combine ethereal movement, light, and sound, with themes and stories
about gangs, abuse, addiction and alienation.
A still photographer by trade and training, Higgins has
nurtured a love of film and filmmaking all his life. Higgins was one of the few
remaining people still using Super-8 stock for his shorts until he saw the work
being produced by Canadian photographer Mark Hemmings in late 2005. Hemmings
was experimenting with using a digital SLR still camera to record moving imagery
at extremely slow frame rates. Liking the look, Higgins decided to try his hand
at the technique. Through much experimentation, trial and error, he developed
his own personal style for his films.
Higgins shoots with a motor-driven Canon D-40 camera at
seven frames-per-second (fps). He then converts the stills to a QuickTime
movie, generally running at 15 fps. Besides the singular look he gets by
shooting films this way, Higgins has other reasons to use the technique. He can
keep his budgets small (in the $5,000 – $6,000 range for a six- to seven-minute
short) and thus has full creative control of the product. Also, since the raw
footage exists as digital stills, Higgins can create Photoshop Actions to
enhance the images and create different lighting and special effects that he
cannot do on set. However, by shooting at such a slow frame rate, Higgins needs
his actors to move in extremely slow motion to achieve the look he desires. It
is an unusual skill to do well, but Higgins has access to performers who are
trained to move their bodies in specific ways – such as the Angkor Dance
Troupe.
Kali, a character in Ephemera.
[Click to enlarge]
Also based in Lowell, the Angkor Dance Troupe is a talented
group of young people, all first generation Cambodian Americans, who have
performed for audiences all over the country. The troupe was created as a
way to keep kids off the street as well as instruct them in their cultural
heritage. "They all speak Khmer along with English and know the horrors of
the Khmer Rouge genocide as it has been passed on to them from their parents,"
says Higgins.
Trained to
tell traditional Cambodian tales through dance, these skilled artists can do all
the different types of movements that Higgins requires for his films. Due to
the slow frame rates, Higgins doesn’t shoot any sync-sound, but by using the
performers from Angkor he has actors who can convey emotion and story to the
audience without speaking a word.
Higgins is very active in his community, and it is from his
community work that he gets his story ideas. The subject matter of his films is
somewhat heavy (addiction and abuse, for example), but he chooses to address
such serious themes from an artistic perspective. “We try to do things in an
abstract manner,” Higgins says. “We’re not about doing documentaries.” It is
important to him that kids see that “there are art forms and other expressions
you can use to get your feelings out there [other than violence].”
Once he has his story ideas, Higgins breaks them down into
visual motifs, imagery and characters that symbolize those ideas. He has used
the same core group of actors and crew for all his films thus far. He gives
them each a binder with his storyboards, a story outline and his ideas for the
film and they rehearse for a few weeks before he starts shooting. Each of his
shorts was shot at the same abandoned church in Lowell,
overnight, about two or three nights a
week, over the course of several months.
Higgins produces his films under the banner Flying Orb
Productions. In 2006 his first short, Ephemera, took the top prize at the
Very Short Film Festival in Hollywood. He added two additional shorts,
The Soul Collector and The Other Lover to make the trilogy Shadow
Worlds, which has been accepted to many film festivals across the country
including last month’s Boston International Film Festival. Shadow
Worlds can be seen
August 3rd as part of the Roxbury Film Festival.
Though not originally conceived as a trilogy, Higgins
explains, "We found that the three films had similar styles and worked well as
three chapters to a dark cautionary tale."
There were valuable lessons learned on each project. Joan
Ross, Higgins’ partner in life as well as business, calls the previous shorts
“sketches” which led up to their latest project — Nether World: A Modern
Fairy Tale.
Shooting Nether World at night.
[Click to enlarge]
There are other filmmakers out there using this technique
to make films, but most of them are shorter — about five minutes in length.
While Higgins’ previous work was also in the five- to seven-minute range,
Nether World will be an ‘epic.’ At 30 minutes long, it will quite possibly be
the longest film ever shot with a still camera. Higgins shot more than 230,000
still frames to tell this story.
Nether World is about a young girl who flees an
abusive household and finds herself in a strange world of dreams and magic where
the people she meets are not who they appear to be. [Writer’s aside: I was
able to view a rough cut of Nether World and I thought it was very
intriguing. The composition, the lighting, and the unique style of
movement were visually captivating. The way the characters move in their
world and the way the world exists around them gives the entire piece a
stop-motion animation look that
I have never really seen before. But, what impressed me more than the style in
and of itself was the fact that the style is another component of the story. It
is not there simply because Higgins is able to do it, the style belongs.
The style reinforces the idea that we are in a dream-like realm and the things
we are seeing may or may not be real.]
I had a good time hanging out with Jim Higgins and Joan
Ross, talking about movies and filmmaking and art. It is always refreshing to
see an artist with talent who uses that talent to create a different way of
storytelling, but still does it in an entertaining and engaging way. It may be
tricky to shoot a film with a still camera, but I’m glad someone is doing it.
For a complete schedule of the Roxbury Film Festival, visit
www.roxburyfilmfestival.org/. To keep an eye out for Nether
World, check out
www.flyingorb.com.
