The ideas behind Die Murmilen

'Die Murmilen' is a stop frame animation in the making. It has many influences, however the initial idea came from the David Attenborough 'Chisselors' episode in which the behavioural traits of marmots is the main point of focus. As the episode proceeds the wicked ways of the marmots unfold. Marmots are loving creatures who form strong pair bonds, mating with the one partner throughout their entire life. A family of marmots consists of the adult pair and some of last years female offspring. The daughters who are allowed to stay with the group are persecuted so severely by the dominant female (Gross mutter to be) that any that have become pregnant instantly abort. The reason for this is that the adults cannot keep more than one litter warm during the hibernation period. A sort of cruel to be kind approach, but rather frightening and tragic for the expecting parents at the same time.

My fascination with the marmots compelled me to write a story portraying their lives, which would work as a basis for an animation. Many of my early memories of TV are of stop frame animations. Each one of the programmes I watched created a self-contained miniature world of unusual haunting beauty. The puppets/models were very appealing yet surreal. They resembled a person or animal with no life of their own, yet when manipulated they conjured up the illusion that they possessed a life and soul. To see these inanimate objects come to life was uncanny and sometimes frightening.

My aim for 'Die Murmilen' is to make it look like a programme that you would watch as a child. The charming little marmots are supposed to look like toys that you would play with and fall in love with. However, the plot is sinister, thought-provoking and tongue-in-cheek. These anthropmorphous puppets possess life! There will be some unseen force lurking behind these marmots. House hold appliances will move by themselves and the rooms will pulsate with movement. I want to create an aesthetic and uncanny experience to overwhelm the audience.

'Aesthetics means not merely the theory of beauty but the theory of
the qualities of feeling.'
Sigmund Freud.

Uncanny experiences occur when repressed complexes that we have as children are revived again. By making this short look
childlike, but possessing an underlying sinisterness I hope to arouse dread and horror amongst the misty-eyed audience, who were half expecting to see something cute and innocent.

In the world of stop motion there is freedom to do anything and not be restrained by the needs of human actors. Impossible and fantastic situations can become reality in a charming and somewhat jerky way. The beauty of european animations and the craftsman ship involved captivates me. Is it because there is a real sense that someone has moulded, sculpted, stitched those characters so lovingly, moved them frame by frame, created atmospheric lighting and achieved all this without the aid of 'trickery?' Or that these films conjure up the nostalgia of childhood, when the imagination could bring things to life?

A large part of enjoying stop frame animation lies in the fact that it asks you to accept it for what it is, to accept its little imperfections, whereas CGI likes to pretend its real when it obviously isn't. It seems like CGI's final goal will be to replicate reality. It has taken the effects in live action films to places that stop motion could never really go in terms of its seamlessness, but as it becomes cheaper and less time consuming than stop motion, will it not become average? 3D CGI may prove to be a threat, but stop frame's presence, texture and tactility will always allow it to maintain its distinctiveness.