{"id":35849,"date":"2020-12-04T03:41:48","date_gmt":"2020-12-04T11:41:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=35849"},"modified":"2020-12-02T17:50:46","modified_gmt":"2020-12-03T01:50:46","slug":"making-sense-of-chaos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2020\/12\/04\/making-sense-of-chaos\/","title":{"rendered":"Making sense of chaos?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Earlier this fall, the National Film Board of Canada released the short Come to your senses<\/em>, co-created Alicia Eisen and Sophie Jarvis. It is part of NFB\u2019s The Curve<\/em>, an online series \u201cfeaturing the talents of 40 creators and filmmakers, giving a voice to millions whose lives have been touched by COVID-19.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eisen, a member of the Jewish community, is an animation filmmaker and visual artist, while Jarvis is a writer and director. Both women are based in Vancouver and have worked together before.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe met in 2015, when Alicia was in pre-production on her first short film, Old Man<\/em>,\u201d they co-wrote in an email interview with the Independent<\/em>. \u201cA mutual friend introduced us, as he knew that Sophie was interested in learning more about stop-motion. It turned out that we live across the street from each other, and a wonderful friendship was formed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe first worked together on a short film for kids that blended live action (Sophie\u2019s arena) with stop-motion (Alicia\u2019s arena) and was basically a vessel for us to learn more about each other\u2019s practice and to test the waters of a working relationship. It was an intense experience that threw every obstacle at us, and we came out stronger and ready for more. Which leads us to the stop-motion short film we are currently working on with the National Film Board, Zeb\u2019s Spider<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

When their work was interrupted by the pandemic back in March, they said, \u201cIt was very disorienting to have that full-time routine stopped cold, so, when the NFB offered us the opportunity to contribute to their pandemic series, The Curve<\/em>, it was a blessing to focus our creative energy into something new, and completely different from anything we have ever created before.\u201d<\/p>\n

Using the format of a group Zoom, Come to your senses<\/em> explores the question, \u201cIs the human need to make sense of chaos an inherently chaotic pursuit?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThe five senses can be a somewhat intangible subject to explore, especially through film (which is an audiovisual medium). We aimed to evoke the other three senses with these limitations, which meant that we had to get a little weird with imagery and sound,\u201d said Eisen and Jarvis. \u201cA large part of our process was to let our intuition guide us; instead of planning what footage we needed to collect to complete the film, we issued open guidelines to ourselves and our artistic collaborators and worked with what we received\u2026. It was exciting to see the patterns and instincts that were shared amongst the group (who were all working remotely from each other), and these similarities helped guide our process into the next phase: the edit.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur editor, Kane Stewart, was integral to helping organize this experimental film and to creating what you see in the final cut. We gave him direction on the tone and the arc, and detailed notes on the material that we wanted to include, but ultimately let him organize the material with fresh eyes. Our sound designer, Eva Madden, took the core intention of the project and brought her own spin to the film, which was exciting. The score really sets a tone, and we were thrilled to work with Yu Su, whose personal work we admire.\u201d<\/p>\n

The film is voiced by an AI voice-generator, said Eisen and Jarvis. \u201cThis way, we could manipulate the speed of the voice and revel in the tech restrictions that come with that choice (which are mirrored in the group video call). We landed on a voice named Tessa, who struck the right tone \u2013 gentle but commanding, like a self-help audiobook.\u201d<\/p>\n

The artists collaborating on the film were people with whom Eisen and Jarvis had worked over the years: Mona Fani, Suzanne Friesen, Meredith Hama-Brown, Charlie Hannah, Kara Hornland, Arggy Jenati and Janessa St. Pierre.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe gave everybody a list of creative prompts designed to be completed within two days \u2026 things like \u2018choose a spherical item from your home and interact with it using each of your five senses.\u2019 We asked each person to approach each prompt with a design sensibility informed by our mood board, but to ultimately bring their own flair and artistry to it, so what we received from each person was unique, yet fit into the collage that ultimately makes the film.\u201d<\/p>\n

To watch the short, visit nfb.ca\/film\/come-to-your-senses<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Earlier this fall, the National Film Board of Canada released the short Come to your senses, co-created Alicia Eisen and Sophie Jarvis. It is part of NFB\u2019s The Curve, an online series \u201cfeaturing the talents of 40 creators and filmmakers, giving a voice to millions whose lives have been touched by COVID-19.\u201d Eisen, a member […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":35854,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[787],"tags":[9094,20059,9717,9784,6968,5933,20060],"class_list":["post-35849","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-tv-film","tag-ai","tag-alicia-eisen","tag-coronavirus","tag-covid-19","tag-national-film-board","tag-nfb","tag-sophie-jarvis"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35849","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35849"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35849\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35854"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35849"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35849"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35849"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}