“The ErlKing” was created using the rather unusual technique of
sand-on-glass animation. In this process, a camera (a Bolex 16mm in this case)
is suspended overhead, pointing at a lightbox on the work table. On the box’s
glass top, fine sand is spread out and manipulated into pictures. Each picture
is photographed twice, so that at normal projection speed, every image created
in the sandbox will be seen for 1/12 of a second. The artist manipulates the
thickness of the sand, which varies the amount of light that reaches the eye/film.
White is achieved with no sand at all, black with a layer sufficient to block
out all light. Carefully varying the textures and thickness of the sand allows
for a full range of tonalities. The
resulting film is a dynamic and haunting tableau that captures both the nightmarish
quality of Goethe’s poem and the drama of Schubert’s music. “The
ErlKing” was completed as a thesis film at the California Institute of
the Arts under the guidance of such renowned artists as Raimund Krumme and Jules
Engel.
I find that no matter how many times I try to describe the process, people ask
the same questions. So here is an attempt to address them. Feel free to email
me to ask me any other questions.
Q: What tools did you use to manipulate the sand?
A: Mostly I used my fingers. An Exacto knife was used for fine white lines (like
the father’s beard). Occasionally, I would use brushes, and at one point,
I used the thin edge of a damp kitchen sponge for a specific texture (care to
guess where?).
Q: Did you draw or test the animation first?
A: For some of the sections, I drew rough thumbnail sketches to establish where
various elements would go, the basic movements within the frame, etc. but the
animation was not created on paper first. Every frame was created only once,
directly under the camera. This way of working does not allow the artist to
go back and correct mistakes, so accidents become an essential part of the final
product.
Q: How did you time the image to the music?
A: I decided right off the bat that I did not want lip synch, which made my
life a little easier. I had chosen a recording I wanted to use for the soundtrack,
and using the counter on a CD player, I figured out what syllable the singer
was sounding at each second of the song. I noted the information on an exposure
sheet, a chart that breaks each second down into 24 frames. In the end, though,
I did not use this recording. When I spoke to Paul Berkolds and Peter Miyamoto
about the possibility of them performing on the film’s soundtrack, naturally
I was concerned about matching the timing to the footage already shot (about
80% of the film at that point). We discussed the original recording and figured
out what sections of the music should be faster or slower to match the film.
In one afternoon, we recorded 5 takes, of which the fourth was gold.
Q: What kind of sand did you use?
A: Regular beach sand, from a beach in Oregon. It was extremely fine, which
allowed for great detail in the film.
Q: How did you create the colors at the film’s climax?
A: Colored sand bought from a craft store.
Q: How long did the film take you to make?
A: Production began in my apartment in Portland, OR in September 1999. I completed
the film in May, 2002 at CalArts. During those 2 1/2 years, though, I was working
intensely on another film (a stop motion film still in production). I also had
some major setbacks on “The ErlKing”. The first came when a certain
film lab (which shall remain nameless here) ruined 3 1/2 months of
film. (Yes, I should have sent off film more frequently than that, but the shooting
process was so slow, I thought it made sense to wait. I had shot test footage,
so I knew that the camera and other equipment worked). The second major setback
was a year later, when after a month of shooting at CalArts, I opened the camera
to discover that the film had not taken up on the second reel, but had instead
accordioned out into the camera body, rendering it worthless. In hindsight,
both these accidents were for the best. The footage I had to reshoot makes up
the opening of the film (the horse coming over the hill through the child’s
first vision of the ErlKing) and the climax, both of which were vastly improved
in the second versions.
Individual frames, depending on the complexity of the image and the movement,
took anywhere from 10 minutes to 1 1/2 hours to create.
Q: Did you invent this technique?
A: Nope.
Q: Did you ever sneeze on the sand?
A: This is probably the most frequently asked
question. I always managed
to turn away for a sneeze, but I foolishly
started to whistle once while
working...
Q: Are you crazy?
A: Probably.
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