SHELF LIFE
2022
Synopsis: A woman finds a mysterious video discussing the female eating habits of a dystopian society.
Shelf Life is the first stop-motion short film to receive the $5,000 Studio 22 Bindley Grant at Northwestern in May of 2021. This was definitely my most ambitious project, with nine puppets and three sets. I wanted to explore female consumption patterns, and share the unique anecdotes related to eating that occur at each age.
Here's a peek into the process!
STORYBOARDS
designing
Puppet Design: The script's characters are inspired and modeled off of myself, so I wanted to depict myself at every age.
Set Design: Here are two iterations of the set design for the three dining room sets we created (ranging from Fall 2021 --> Winter 2022). The second drafts created a more cohesive color palette, which we ended up going with during build.
ARMATURES/PUPPETS
1. Armature: Built standard wire armatures with hand-sculpted balsa wood heads, chests, and torsos.
2. Skin/Hair: Sculpey faces + expressions, wool hair, and liquid latex color-matched to the Sculpey for arms and legs
3. Costuming: Varying fabrics, design refinement and execution led by Liz Solleder.
GIRLS
WOMEN
HAGS
SET/PROP DESIGN
overview: WE BUILT THREE SETS CORRESPONDING TO THE THREE CATEGORIES OF CHARACTERS (GIRLS, WOMEN, AND HAGS). EACH SET CONSISTED OF ONE MASSIVE DINING ROOM TABLE AND THREE DINING ROOM CHAIRS. MATERIALS RANGED FROM FOAMCORE, BALSA WOOD, AIR-DRY CLAY, PLYWOOD, AND EPOXY RESIN.
**clips are raw footage, before coloring
Girl's Room: I wanted to emphasize the brightness associated with girlhood. Pastel brights and the hand-made quality tied all the pieces together.
Women's Room: As we shift into adulthood, the world becomes a bit more refined, polished. The bright grass green palette transformed into more of a mature forest green, but I still wanted to keep the sort of eclectic, busy feel to the backdrop.
Hag's Room: As the characters age even more extremely (to age 120!), I wanted to capture a sense of sterility while keeping the transition from womanhood to hagdom believable. In the hag's room, we kept the recurring green theme by painting the walls a pale green-gray. I also wanted to add new pops of baby pink to tie in the overall theme of feminity in such a blank, minimalist space.
