Middle Tennessee State University

Tiny Circus spent the week at Middle Tennessee University, creating an animation with a group of about 15 college students. The group decided to make an animation that doesn’t fit neatly into the History or Trap categories. We centered in on the topic of fear, and the first day we recorded interviews asking people about their childhood and adult fears. After we listened to the hours of raw audio gathered, we discussed what we heard – themes and words that stood out – and created a short audio piece to be our film’s soundtrack, and guide the conversation of our visual story.

Figuring out what visual story to tell alongside the audio piece, and coalescing around the finer points of how each of us imagined it took many hours of discussion and hard collaboration sitting around a table – about 18 hours if you really want to know.

On Day 4, the animating began. Childhood object selection, shadow tracing, then shadow cutting, followed by animating the shadow movement required patience and precision, and at 11 pm when we finished the first half of the film, we decided to remake (i.e. simplify) our ideas for the second part. Throughout the epic day of animation, there was an exciting collective energy. We were working together, making something. 

Day 5 we brought the sound and images together. Editing as a group with the Final Cut file projected on a screen, we talked through various ways of arranging the images and how many moments of looking felt necessary. Sometimes it was hard to find words for why we liked one arrangement more than another, but striving for those words feels like a necessary challenge. 

Fear debuted at the MTSU Student Film Festival. 

[A special thanks to David Kamp, our documentarian for the week, who took many of the photos above. Keep an eye out for a short documentary of our week that David is creating.]

A Sidewalk Show at Artspace in Raleigh, North Carolina

On Friday night, Tiny Circus presented a sidewalk show outside of Artspace, projecting our animations out of the airstream for all walking by to see. It was a lively night in downtown Raleigh, with many people passing by on their way to the First Friday music and art exhibitions at Artspace. We were thrilled to present our two new animations from the local Brentwood Boys and Girls Club. We witnessed some parents having to pry their children away from the sidewalk.  

 

 

We talk a lot about communicating with our audience as we create a film so it's always interesting to watch the people watching the animations for the first time. How are they reacting? Which parts of the film are people responding to in particular? After spending so much time with each story, creating the animation, it's pleasurable and sometimes surprising to watch the films alongside those with fresh eyes.

The Brentwood Boys and Girls Club

Tiny Circus lifted off from New Orleans last week, rolling to Raleigh, North Carolina for a week of animation-making with the Brentwood Boys and Girls Club through Artspace, an art center in Raleigh.

In one week we created two animations. An enthusiastic group of second and third graders in the club decided to tell the story of The History of Vampires. Biting off a topic that has been a dark and thrilling fascination for storytellers for ages, this is not an animation for the faint of heart (or tomatoes).

With the fourth and fifth grade group, an animation about bullying was created that developed out of two days of serious and thoughtful conversations. It was striking to be around a table with fifteen fourth and fifth graders and a handful of adults, with differences of age, race, religion, and a whole lot else – all of us drawing from personal experiences and observations with bullying. We reflected on questions about what bullying is, why a person may bully, and the many ways we all respond to the act. All the while, the conversation was driving towards creating an animation: how do we visualize this? How do we craft this story?

Once we decided to use fruits as our characters, a discussion about how the fruits could reflect certain feelings and actions to our audience became important. And there was even room for laughter with the enticing possibility of eating our animated objects. (Note to animators: complete shooting before eating, or the project may involve extra trips to the grocery store.)

We distilled our story to The History of A Bully and we know it can’t tell a complete story of a complicated behavior and it’s devastating impact. Our small film is what we collaboratively jostled out of a big matter. We hope that the animation that emerged from the conversation in the art room of the Brentwood Boys and Girls Club will resonate with those outside of it, sparking more fruitful conversation and action.

Madison Children's Museum

For two days, Tiny Circus landed in the wonderland of imagination and play known as the Madison's Children Museum. We set up shop in the heart of Possible-opolis, right next to the Hodgepodge Mahal, an indoor jungle gym made from salvaged and repurposed materials. 

 

Entire families were engaged in the animation station whiteboard extravaganza. Participants would grab a marker and draw a tree growing, rain drops dropping, or sometimes wiggly patterns, juggling insects, or an octopus swimming, and then we'd all step back, take the shot, and again, draw or erase a bit more.

 

Perhaps you can tell: it was Halloween. This is the first ever tiny bunny to participate in a Tiny Circus animation. All animals are welcome, of course.

 

We projected the shots onto a small screen, so we could watch the amorphous whiteboard animation as it was being created.

 

That evening we played our animations at the Museum event, Beakers and Broomsticks, for a rotating cast of costumed children and adults. (The History of Ghosts and Ghost Trap were in the line-up that night.) With so much going on in the space (black light painting, dancing, slime making), luckily people were drawn into our room by snacks, and stayed for the animations. Hard to beat popcorn + candy corn + Tiny Circus animations. We also debuted the animations created by the students we worked with at the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

The University of Wisconsin, Madison

When we arrived at Mark Nelson's Interior Design course at the University of Wisconsin Madison, it was a considerable shift from our project with the elementary school in Mount Vernon.

In Madison, Tiny Circus spent time with two classes in the Design Studies department creating animations. After some conversation about Tiny Circus, animation practices, and the storyboard process, the students got straight to work. In Mark’s class, they collaboratively brainstormed, storyboarded, and animated “A Day in the Life of an Interior Design Student.”

 

Jenny Angus’s class created short animations in small groups. The stories ranged from the love story of French bread and cheese to dancing Army men to a crafty spider (why spin a web, when a hammock is more enticing?).

 

 

On the last day of class we watched and discussed the completed animations. In the context of a design class, we discussed the value of listening to the reactions of people who are removed from the making process: do the animations communicate the stories we were aiming to tell?

      

The films premiered as a part of the Madison Children's Museum Halloween celebration. More on that to come.

A Letter to the Editor in Mount Vernon

When Tiny Circus is on tour, it's one workshop after another. At times it feels as if our magic lanterns (Peanut and Silver Pelican, the airstream trailers) pop out a screen, project a show, and roll out. That's why we're grateful for any small window into the community reaction and lingering thoughts after our departure.

Here's a Letter to the Editor of the Mount Vernon Sun; a beautiful community reflection on Tiny Circus that was a treat to read.

'Tiny Circus' is art in the spirit of cooperation

On the evening of Thursday, Oct. 13, I was mesmerized by a free community showing of stop-motion-animation videos created by the students of Washington Elementary in collaboration with the Grinnell-based "Tiny Circus." This free showing took place on the south-side lawn of the elementary school with hundreds of people from the Mount Vernon community in attendance. It was an open air showing under the stars, the audience in lawn chairs, and on blankets; visiting with neighbors, parents, grandparents and anyone lucky enough to know it was happening that evening.

It was a magical event - a genuine collaboration on the part of children, their art and music teachers, Sarah Fitzgerald and Kristi Keast, and a group of traveling animation artists under the leadership of Carlos Ferguson, a gifted artist, communicator and all-around creative organizer.

This was Tiny Circus's second visit to Washington Elementary. The 2010 animation with Mount Vernon students titled "Elephant Trap" can be seen on YouTube. Photo-documentation of this years animation, "Giraffe Trap" can be seen if you go online and google: mustang moon, tiny circus.

Rich with whimsy, student-composed music, drawing, collage, live performance, and great degrees of patient practice on the part of everyone involved, this event points to a need many of us feel in our daily lives for the sort of cooperative engagement that can transform an idea into something actual.

In our current national climate of divisiveness and disrespect, a program that leads by example, teaching that cooperative effort makes us all winners is one that should be encouraged and continued in our school system. I only hope that continued funding for such worthwhile educational programming makes that possible.

Sue Coleman

Mount Vernon

Giraffe. Trapped.

 

They said it couldn’t be done.  They said it was too tall, eats too many leaves, can't be tracked, is perfectly silent. Camouflaged to near invisibility... ferocious to boot.  Many had tried, all had failed.

On October 14, Tiny Circus and 500 elementary school students proved the doubters wrong.

With loads of help from middle school and high school students, teachers, parents - and, of course, the local coffee shop - the giraffe was successfully (and non-violently) trapped!

The premiere of Giraffe Trap on the lawn of Washington Elementary School was a joyful, overflowing community event. Over 600 people - the creators, and their parents and neighbors - took in the 40-minute Tiny Circus show. There were lots of cheers and giggles throughout the night.

We loved working with such a supportive and enthusiastic community. Here are a few of the thank you notes and reflections on the project by the students.

To all this we say: we tingk it was a blast, too. Tank Ewe! We'll be back soon!