A woman is transported to her childhood when she hears the music from a mysterious guitarist on a quiet night. A stop-motion and hand drawn animated film.
I started working on "Marguerite" in 2017. Jamie Caliri reached out to see if I wanted to make a promo for a version of the new Dragonframe software based on a drawing I had done of a 1920's style woman. As we started working on it, it evolved into a new project, and we decided to ditch the idea of it being a promo and have it be a very short film instead. We worked on it, on-and-off for the past few years in between our projects and life events (pandemic, I had a baby).
My inspiration for the film is an amalgamation of many things. My dad passed away in 2014. He was a musician and guitarist and we really bonded over music. I had been wanting to make a short film inspired by him that wasn’t directly a film about him. That same year I went to Paris for a show I was in with other stop motion artists. I fell in love with the feeling of the streets at night and hearing the city sounds. When brainstorming ideas, I was listening to a lot of Django Reinhardt and had been making drawings with references to 1920’s Paris. In my research I was drawn to the photographs of Brassai and his night scenes of solitary figures in shadow. I did a series of drawings inspired by the characters in these scenes. One of them was a large drawing of a woman that I turned into the main character of Marguerite. Stylistically I wanted to explore how I could create a 3D stop motion puppet that looked hand drawn. I created drawn textures for the face, hair and clothes that I then cut out and sculpted for dimension out of paper. I then crafted a story and scene around her inspired by Django style music and references to my childhood.
Credits
Direction: Hayley Morris
Cinematographer: Jamie Caliri
Animation : Anthony Scott
Animation: Hayley Morris
Animation: Til Gold
Sets: Carin Huber
Sets: Alex Juhasz
Sets: Huy Vu
Puppets: Hayley Morris
Music: “Romano Trajo” Performed by Maitland Ward
Copyright - Angelo Debarre/ Jean Cousantiers
Production: Shape & Shadow / Dragonframe