Logline

Morphs from the daily ephemera of life.

Mini Synopsis

Steven Vander Meer's film is a celebration of the seemingly mundane ephemera of daily life; it explores how images in one's memory run together, blur and reshape. In his film, daily drawings literally morph, transforming from one to the next, and take on new meaning -- creating More From Life.

Short Synopsis

Steven Vander Meer's film is a celebration of the seemingly mundane ephemera of daily life; it explores how images in one's memory run together, blur and reshape. The filmmaker started his project simply by making one 3X5 inch index card drawing from life each day, for one year. The following year he set about the task of animating in-between each drawing, in the daily order in which they were created. The result is a form of "visual music" where his subjects melt, slip, slide, overlap, disintegrate, reintegrate and transmogrify from one drawing to the next, creating More From Life.

Film Facts

• There are 365 drawings from life in the film, plus 12 monthly titles for a total of 377 key drawings.
• In-between each key drawing are 15 "tweens" which connect key to key, in the daily order in which they were drawn.
• The total number of drawings in the film is 6017.
• The film was shot "2 to 1" meaning 2 movie frames for each drawing. You are seeing 12 drawings per second.
• The drawings are all in pencil; some are colored with color pencil, others with markers.
• The "intro" to the film was made of "scratch cards". These are discarded drawings, templates, time & movement charts, etc. The scratch cards came from the production of this and other, older films.
• Image and sound were married using Adobe CS3 software, then transferred to 35mm movie film.

Images

Click on image to view full size, or right-click and "save as"...

30 Second Trailer

A 19mb QuickTime file of the trailer found on YouTube.

More From Life logo

1500 X 1500 pixels, 5 inches at 300 dpi

More From Life logo

750 X 750 pixels, 2.5 inches at 300 dpi

Director's Photo

1500 X 1500 pixels, 5 inches at 300 dpi

Director's Photo

750 X 750 pixels, 2.5 inches at 300 dpi

Movie Stills

All movie stills are 1500 pixels wide by 900 pixels tall, 3X5 inches at 300 dpi.

A typical "tween" will look as much like the drawing it is morphing out of, as the drawing it is morphing into. On screen they are moving with such speed that you cannot focus on them individually.

Many of the "key" drawings, those that I drew one-per-day for a year, are of nudes because I regularly attend life drawing groups.

I use several different techniques to transition the key drawings, often times more than one technique will be in play at the same time. For example, in this "tween" the outline of a bathtub is busy morphing into a bird, while the bather just slips downward and off screen.

The axe in this scene is doing a downward verticle wipe, erasing a self portrait and leaving the title card for October in it's place.

The horizontal and vertical lines that bring the rooster into and out of the movie were inspired by the films of Norman McLaren.

Production Stills

All production stills are large, high quality 300dpi jpg photos.

Perhaps the only photo of me actually working on one of the key drawings in 2007 was shot by Carol while we vacationed in Prague. The drawing is number 4321 on the storyboard.

The drawing kit I carried around everywhere I went in 2007 had 5 different sizes of mechanical pencil, a bunch of color pencils and a supply of index cards, as well as a tiny drawing board, erasers and rubbing tools.

All but a 3X5 inch rectangle of light is masked off on my light table, enableing me to see through several layers of cards.

Thousands of index cards are conveniently stored in an old library card file.

I chose to scan the drawings for this film, rather than photograph them. Because of their small size, I was able to scan up to 200 cards per hour at 360 dpi, and this gave me numerically ordered files high enough in quality to transfer to 35mm movie film.

Press Clips

• Art on Film, by Jennifer Savage, The North Coast Journal