While many Senior Thesis films resemble either documentary or fiction, senior Dillon Tanner seeks to make his short film a blend of both fiction and experimental filmmaking.
Ryan Platte, Tanner’s advisor, commented on the unique construction of the film. “Rather than conventional character and plot development, [Dillon] uses experimental visual strategies in order to create a surreal landscape that depicts the main character’s mental state and emotions,” said Platte. Tanner blends three different media in the film: hand-drawn animation, stop-motion camerawork, and computer animation.
“It’s about a college kid with first world problems—like existential despair, insecurity, you know, self-doubt, that kind of stuff,” Tanner explains.
He uses hand-drawn illustrations to portray the main character’s obsessive drawing, bringing his memories to life. The stop-motion “shows a sense of ease, like things operating without you having to do anything,” and computer animation allows Tanner to give life to things that otherwise couldn’t move, such as a Doritos bag.
Tanner draws on many influences for this film, including American auteur David Lynch (“Eraserhead”) and the Czech animator Jan Svankmeyer (“Alice”).
“I like David Lynch because… he’s less about clear narrative and [more about] connecting directly to your unconscious,” Tanner said.
Svankmeyer’s “Alice,” a rendition of the popular story “Alice in Wonderland,” utilizes stop-motion to animate Alice as a doll while in Wonderland, yet sees her as a human girl in reality. “[Svankmeyer is] always using dead stuff, or inanimate objects, and bringing them to life,” Tanner explains. “It creates this bizarre feeling for people, and that’s what I like most about his movies.”
Tanner discovered his passion for the uncanniness of stop-motion in high school, drawn to the fact that it’s “based on something that’s real, but [has] the appearance of animation.” Tanner’s love of cartoons also influences his love of the absurd in filmmaking. Cartoons like “Adventuretime,” “Gravity Falls,” and “Rick and Morty” “seem designed for kids but are touching on deeper stuff,” he explains. “[It’s] completely engaging for me and other nerds my age.”
The film’s protagonist, played by sophomore Luke Walden, resembles a cartoon- like caricature. Deciding to cast Luke Walden, Tanner remembers, “I just kind of liked the way he looked…[he] has a cartoon character appearance.”
Despite the time intensity of animation, Tanner particularly enjoys the uncertainty of stop-motion.
“Today I got really giddy because I animated a walking Doritos bag,” said Tanner. “I was just on break at work, animating it, and scrolled through it and it made me laugh. You finally, painstakingly, put it all together and it looks great or it looks funny or whatever it looks like; it’s just like magic, and it’s really fun.”
Tanner also draws his own sketches for the character, with the help of his girlfriend. “I may not be able to do it that well, but at least I have some sort of say in it if I’m collaborating with somebody else in the future. That’s what I want to continue doing for the time being, just learning.”
Tanner hopes that his film can be “absurd but relatable” for the audience. “What we consider absurd or what we consider as a normal way to communicate things just seems very limited,” he explains. “One of the ways around that is film and animation… maybe you haven’t seen exactly those images before, but it might connect with something that’s not on the top of your head at all times.”
Make sure to see Tanner’s film, and the rest of the senior film theses, at the Film and New Media Thesis film screening at the end of Block 8 this spring.