Adventures On The Green Screen

my first live action/animation venture LETTER TO LIZA has two screenings in the Nov 9-18 RENDEZVOUS with MADNESS FILM FESTIVAL:

Tuesday Nov 14 at 1:30
Friday Nov 17 at 1

Letter to Liza was nominated as best experimental short in this Summer's (06) Female Eye Film Festival.

Lori Axler is a homeless girl waking up under a bridge and wandering through Jason J Brown's 3 D Downtown Toronto Animation until she is driven to drastic measures involving a digital bridge and digital train..the impact is POWERFUL!

it has been fascinating to see th actor's performance on th bare green screen set(any handled props are real) transformed by Jason's imaginative animated environments/sets

(if you're counting pixels, this is no Disney extravaganza, but it is imagination unlimited and solid movie-making, and a great experimental ground for actors)

i have always disliked cartoon people, an early aversion to being regarded as a cartoon, fragmented by another's inability to see all of me, now i like to think i'm all of me, whether you can see me or not

i loved comic books as a child, but I loved most the ones in which the cartoon people seemed most like real people (Ray Forrest Tv show?)

i began to realize that i can't really relate to animated people, i don't wish to invest any feeling in them, because of course people cause th most empathy in me, and it is that quality that i attempt to develop in myself, so i became interested in live action animation with real people, as opposed to animated people in real settings

i saw how the process worked for th actor and also what doesn't work:

a perfectly acceptable performance, where the actor is truthful and solid turned the whole thing into animation including th actor..the missing ingredient is th actor's emoting (energy/vibration) and 'action'

what Jason and I discovered was that th actor must be 'full' and doing something at all times with interesting and idiosyncratic choices driven by a strong sense of truth and a willingness to 'play' and make discoveries as an actor

from an experimental point of view, acting in this venue is a sort of cross between Stage and the old Silent Movie Acting and if a great place for an actor to begin working is PLACE, then this work has th actor create the PLACE and react to it dynamically in the moment

Since Jason can now paste video into the animations we are experimenting with movement and perspectives: a ship at sea and an island on a collision course across time and space and

The Place is:

www.jasonjbrown.com

where you can see THE LIGHTHOUSE KEEPER'S WIFE trailer

a subsequent experiment with various actors