New Year, New News

Hello, everyone!

The above is one of my favorite Rilke quotes, and has actually inspired more than a couple poems. Welcoming a long year, untouched and "full of things that have never been." Things waiting to be imagined, to be made real. (I recommend reading it in full context, in Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet).

So! Here we are in the New Year, and after a nice long holiday break, we are back up and running here at Tell Your Children, and ready to keep making wonderful new things. And while I'm sure you'd all be riveted to hear about adventures in tax preparation for a non-profit production, I'd rather share 2 cool things going on: Our new website, and initial progress on our 4th animated film.

NEW WEBSITE! We have a new home online: www.poetryshorts.org/tellyourchildren

I hope you'll bookmark it, check back in every now and again, and share it out with your friends and anyone who might be interested in poetry, film, and a magical intersection of the two. We'll be double posting these kickstarter updates on the blog there, but we also plan on more original content, behind the scenes photos, and of course, it's where the finished films will live online when we're all done!

You'll see the website also has a PayPal link to donate. That's because we're still raising funds for post-production (editing, sound, coloring) and for the production of our 4th animated film, and for things like festival submissions, publicity, and event costs for the screening. And yes, THE FILM WILL STILL HAPPEN, no matter what. And yes, you can tell your friends that all donations are tax-deductible, as Tell Your Children is a production of The Northwest Renaissance, a 501c3 non-profit organization.

AND you'll finally see a smattering of our fabulous behind the scenes photos!

ANIMATION PROCESS BEGINS! January begins our "concept drawing phase" for our animator, Chris M Roberson. That's where we talk through the poem together, I tell him the images/themes/ideas I really want to highlight, he maps out his ideas for a story (Oh, did I tell you all he's not just drawing, but essentially writing the plot to a story that reflects the imagery in a lyric, non-linear-narrative poem?), and then he takes it and runs with it, making sketches and submitting them for approval and adjustments.

But... Before he could get going on all that... Chris had to very patiently wait for me to finish fiddling with the poem. This one was a bit of a bear and required a lot of rewriting and work-shopping, and peer review before I was satisfied. I knew it needed some work, but once we got into the production process, I had a terrible time working on it. I felt beholden to the entire project, rather than just a poet working to complete a strong poem. I needed it to stand on it's own before I could even think about the finished animation, and that turned out to be really difficult for me. Head met wall many many times. But I set aside the time, I stayed up way too late a few nights, I called in the cavalry, I swapped ideas, and I tweaked and tweaked and tweaked and handed it off the very minute I knew it was ready. (And you know. You get that pinch in the arm that says, "Stop there. That's good. That's it.")

Now that it's done (hooray! ...for now!), we've had some excellent and very methodical, inspired brainstorming sessions.

And now it's in good hands, and I can't wait to see the beginning sketches.

So there we are. Thank you all again for your support in making something brand new, something that has never been.

Cheers! Emilie