Written By Elizabeth Alexander
Read By Elizabeth Alexander
Direction/Animation Jocie Juritz
Sound/Music Galina Juritz
On Being - Animated Poetry
‘Ars Poetica #100: I Believe’ by Elizabeth Alexander
An animation for On Being as part of their new series sharing poetry with the world. I had the absolute pleasure of working with the poem “Ars Poetica #100: I Believe” by Elizabeth Alexander.
It’s a poem about poetry itself, it’s subtle existence in everyday moments, it’s wonderful mundanity or perhaps it’s inevitability… At least that’s what it’s about for me!
The other, beautiful, films in the series can be watched here.
Process
I was struck by the line “emptying the proverbial pocketbook” which sparked imagery of my own creative process – scribbling into sketchbooks, accumulating paper and mementos. As a sort of homage to the pen and paper (and reference to the ideas making process) I decided to animate the frames of this film directly into the pages of Elizabeth Alexander’s book ‘Crave Radiance’ which contains “I Believe”. Kindly, she gave me the go ahead to do whatever I liked with the book!
I animated each frame in Photoshop first, to make sure I had a perfect reference to trace. Those frames were then printed out. Using a lightbox I hand painted each frame in gouache paint, directly onto the pages of the book. Once they were all coloured I scanned each page, then placed each frame in position in After Effects.
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