Made in 2 months on a laptop using repurposed stock animated GIFS, the uniquely designed, compellingly abstract film tells the story of how Paradise Man’s obsession with golf is waylaid when his mother has an accident, causing him to look deeply within himself.
Director Jordan Michael Blake’s animated short film, , presents a rather compelling, abstract figure with no face, Paradise Man, who notes that he’s not exactly sure how he got there.Made on a laptop computer primarily with repurposed Adobe stock animated GIFS from a website that helps companies make fancy PowerPoint presentations, is not like most other films you’ve seen.
Not in the least.Blake, who left the Mormon faith to make films at NYU, describes the film as follows: Here’s a meet the filmmaker: Written, directed, produced and animated by Blake, with James Rodenhouse producing and serving as EP, is a co-production of 7th Floor Films and The American Standard Film Co.The uniquely designed film premiered earlier this year at Sundance.
When asked how he came up with the idea for the film, Blake tells AWN, “I was pretty depressed! You know - lots of deaths, plus some personal and career stuff.There was sexual trauma, as well, and I had a voice in my head telling me I was damaged - that I’d never be myself ever again.Really, I felt like the person I used to be was dying, because that person couldn’t handle all the emotions I was feeling.
Then, in a really low moment, I remembered something my mom used to do.She’d squeeze my hand three times to tell me she loved me.So, I squeezed my own hand three times.
And kind of instantaneously, I realized that arc - an obsession with ‘being something’ versus finding the love you have for yourself - that could lift me out.And the idea had some extra sauce because my mom had put a piece of that love deep inside me, where I couldn’t get rid of it, even if I wanted to.” After rewatching by Oskar Fischinger and thinking, “If he was doing this with paper cut-outs in the 30s, maybe I can do the same thing with stock images now,” Blake took up the challenge, which “became his gas.” “I wanted to see if it would work,” he shares.“Could I make an emotional movie with a character that has no face? I poked at the idea for about a year, then once I figured out the optical illusion of the grain, I got some confidence.
At that point, I asked my producer (James Rodenhouse) for a couple months of rent money (so I didn’t have to take editing work), then wrote/animated the whole movie in two months.I worked through weekends, took one day off in the middle, and got it done.” Blake used a text-to-speech tool on his laptop for the voice over, which allowed him to write the movie as he was animating.“I was inspired by Miyazaki, in that way,” he explains.
“Sometimes the narration would get ahead of the animation; other times the animation would leap forward.But there was never a script - just my notes app and Premiere.So yeah, the movie pretty much flowed out in one go.
And whenever the story took a wrong turn, I’d delete that chunk and course correct.By the time I got to the end, the movie was basically done.” Asked what were the biggest challenges on the film, Blake reveals, “It wasn't easy working (almost) completely alone on this one.And as a result, I accidentally became nocturnal when I made this movie.
The workload was so intense that I’d work later and later each day, until eventually, I was just a nocturnal person.The sun would come up, I'd look at my calendar and think, ‘Finishing the movie in time isn’t totally impossible.Guess I'll keep going tomorrow.’ So yeah, the sheer workload was the ‘hardest part,’ but I love a hard thing when I believe in it.
Give me something hard and I’ll do it.It’s a juice that’s very tasty for me.”
Dan Sarto is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Animation World Network.
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