Marisa Martin, the young principal of EoR Media, Canberra, has recently gained a lot of attention for her stop animation short film, ‘Tegan, the Vegan’. Frank McLeod heard her speak recently at an interclub meeting and thinks more people should know about her.

Marisa Martin says she has ‘always been interested in films’ from her childhood. Describing her mother as a ‘cinephile’ she recalls being enthralled by Hitchcock’s ‘Rebecca’ when she first saw it years ago. She chose her secondary school as it had some courses relating to media and went on from there to university to obtain a degree in media. On graduating, she started her own production company, EoR (‘Enemies of Reality’) Media in 2003 and has been self-employed ever since. Until she embarked on ‘Tegan the Vegan’ Marisa’s work has been largely in music and corporate videos as well as short films, all being ‘live action’ involving ‘real’ people.

The ‘Tegan’ project was born out of a desire to make an accessible film that highlighted the difficulties that can confront an adolescent who chooses to be different. Marisa specifically wanted the audience to warm to Tegan and felt that this would be more likely if she was animated and decided that clay would be the ideal medium to use. Given that ‘Wallace and Grommet’ are made of clay (I think it is fair to say she is a fan) and according to Marisa, handmade puppets have a ‘real warm charm’ where the viewer can ‘see the love that has gone into every stop motion productions’ the choice for her was not difficult. Handmade puppets just ‘reek of effort’.

While she did consider cartoon-type animation, she felt, at that time at least, that she had limited drawing skills but knew that she could ‘build things’ having always been ‘crafty – but in a good way’.

Conversation with Marisa Martin is frequently punctuated by a bubbling laugh which often accompanies a self-deprecating remark. Full of self-importance – she ain’t! 

Computer animation was never a strong contender as the idea of sitting at a computer all day did not attract her. Marisa likes the ‘real’ aspect of stop motion where the set, lights and camera are tangible whereas in computer animation everything, including the lighting and camera movements, has to ‘added in’ to achieve the desired shot. 

One other aspect of stop motion that attracted Marisa was that she could ‘translate the skills’ she had already developed – directing the action, working with actors, lighting the set – directly into a stop motion project. She described the process as similar to directing a live action production, but ‘just a lot slower’. Of course, she had additional skills to learn and in particular the art of set and clay puppet making.

To do this, Marisa consulted numerous sources, reading many books and spending a lot of time online. She trawled through the writings of many in the ‘online stop motion community’ whom she describes as ‘particularly generous’ with their knowledge to those wishing to join. By trial and error of a number of techniques, she finally came up with a structural design and ‘modus operandi’ that suited her.

Words like ‘entertaining, enthusiastic, excited and exciting’ go partway to describe Marisa Martin when she is speaking of her work.

After some consideration, and acknowledging that it would create its own problems, Marisa elected to make her puppets 1/5^th life size. This provided a practical size for puppet manipulation but it meant that all the props and accessories would have to be specifically made as virtually nothing is made in that scale. Dolls house furniture, as an example is 1/12^th scale and so totally unsuitable. However since her architect father had a ‘saw and bench thing’ which did the heavier work and her brother assisted in building the furniture, this was not an in surmountable problem. There ‘was much MDF and balsa wood’ used in constructing the set with some of the smaller props being made from the plumber’s putty. The construction phase was possibly one of the most enjoyable for Marisa.

The puppet’s skeleton was based on a twisted aluminium wire frame. Scrunched up aluminium foil was used to bulk out areas that needed size but not weight, such as the head. Polymer clay was then applied to the areas that were to stay hard, including the head, hands and forearms, and smoothed out, a task which ‘took hours’. The puppet was then ‘cooked’ to complete the hardening process. Plumber’s putty, an epoxy compound, was used to strengthen certain regions, such as the thigh, as it hardened quickly and could be shaped by filing as necessary. Areas of the skeleton around the limb joints were left bare to enable realistic limb positioning and movement. (Marisa has since decided that for future clay animations she would use ball and socket joints as the aluminium joints became fragile with repeated movement, presumably due to work hardening.) The torso was comprised of foam cut to shape and wrapped around the skeleton.

Not all areas requiring clay were allowed to harden as Tegan’s neck, as an example, had to be sufficiently flexible to allow movement of the head. However as polymer clay is not designed to be used in the flexible state, after a time this did harden, dry and crack and had to be replaced. Marisa early learnt that it was wise to make far more than the bare minimum of coloured clay to allow for running repairs and replacements.

Those parts of the puppet that were used to show the facial expressions were made separately to the main head and kept soft for ease of use. The position of the eyebrows for example, could therefore be adjusted to indicate questioning or concern. A collection of mouth shapes was made, using a reference text on the subject, so that a gamut of emotions could be displayed without too much trouble.

The purpose built elevated set stand was of a height that allowed Marisa to manipulate the puppets without bending. The downside of this was that she was standing all day but ‘comfy shoes’ made this tolerable. While the set stand legs were a constant, the set floors were varied depending on the set being used and all the walls were easily removable to allow different camera angles. By the use of dowels and angle clamps the whole structure was held rigid yet easily changeable from set to set.

6mm MDF was used for all panels in the set. This rather thin sheet was necessary especially for the floor, to allow magnets in the feet to be used to hold the puppets upright and unsupported during wide shots showing the puppets full length. (For closer shots, from the waist up, the puppets were supported by stands.) As a result the floor needed central support to stop it sagging and here a twist lock extendable pole was pressed into service.

Marisa readily acknowledges in the credits the assistance of a number of people in the production of ‘Tegan the Vegan’ and her family is well represented here. As for casting suitable people for the various voices, a grant from the ACT Government allowed Marisa to employ well known Australian actors to perform the roles. Charli Delaney, Noni Hazlehurst, Paul McDermott, Pippa Black and Belinda Barancewicz all respectively lent their voices to Tegan and her friends.

Because of the assistance of the stop motion community online, Marisa says that she felt she should ‘put something back’ and so has been meticulous in documenting her journey with the production of ‘Tegan the Vegan’. Much of this is to be seen on her website, www.eormedia.com.au where there are many still photographs of the puppets, sets, cast and crew as well as the trailer for ‘Tegan the Vegan’.

Remember this name – Marisa Martin. You will surely hear it again in the future.

By Frank McLeod

Dr Frank McLeod is a specialist physician who in his ‘day job' works in the area of Addiction Medicine. Frank reckons he ‘dribbled' into video as a way to get information across to his patients and their families in an accessible way that avoided information overload. From there, the monster just grew. With a long-time interest in things technical and gadgetry of all kinds, he had been writing tech review-type-articles on a casual basis for a medical publication for some time, when an introduction to David Hague led to his continuing this level of activity in the field of video.

Frank says that one of the parts he likes best about his involvement with Australasian Camcorder is the opportunity to play with other people's toys. The downside, he says, is having to give them back at the end of ‘playtime' that precedes publication of the resulting review.

"I suppose I want to present information from the non-professional point of view, which is not difficult, given that I am the only amateur punter in the camp," he says. With a strong commitment to the amateur video club movement, he is the Secretary of his local video club. In part because of this, and with a long time history as an avid DIY-er behind him, Frank has an interest in the do-it-yourself construction of devices for the amateur videographer and strongly wishes to continue this type of contribution as part of his future involvement with auscam