The Oval Portrait – Production Notebook

My last post was about an animated attempt at The Oval Portrait that can’t really be considered a threatening precedent because of its rudimentary nature.  What I mean by “threatening precedent” is something that has been completed before your production that covers the same subject matter and is competent enough in story-telling execution and production value to be counted as a definitive and sufficient adaptation of that material.  In other words, to those who have seen it, it is “the” visual (or specifically in this case – animated) adaptation of that literary work.  It would make someone say something like, “I love that story, have you seen the cartoon version?”  As far as the Lego version goes, no one would really consider that the definitive animated adaptation of the story, even if only for the reason that it was not a serious attempt at film-making.

 So where I’m going with this is… I finally found an authentic, animated adaptation of The Oval Portrait that was completed in 2004 and has already been in at least one film festival.  Read the rest of this entry »

Browsing around YouTube, I found that a high school student made a stop-motion Lego version of The Oval Portrait for his English class.  Of the five and a half minutes, I think about 60 seconds actually have to do with the story, but I enjoyed it.  It’s interesting to see someone else’s vision of the story.  I laughed when I noticed the disolve shot from the painting to the live girl; exactly like the first shot in my short.  I guess it’s a pretty obvious way to go, so I shouldn’t be surprised. 

 Lego… why didn’t I think of that?