Louisville animator tackles early stop-motion techniques in film project
Roy Taylor
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Submitted
Animator Roy Taylor depicts a tale of loss and mystery in “Crow Maiden,” his first feature-length film.
For Louisville animator Roy Taylor, scraps of paper can tell a story.
He spends weeks diligently snipping colored paper in his home office. To Taylor, it’s a detailed dance of multi-planed art and animation.
Taylor is developing his first cut-out animation feature film “Crow Maiden.” It follows 13-year-old Anna in a 1970s gothic South. After her mother dies, a lonely crow serves as her guide as she tries to make sense of what really happened to her. Taylor said he hopes to collaborate with other Louisville creatives to finish his first major project.
“This will definitely require bringing in more artists and animators, even just that I can direct but still get the process done faster,” Taylor said. “I’m intrigued to work with more animators to mesh different styles within what I do.”
Cut-out animation is one of the earliest animation techniques. The first feature-length film in this style was created in 1926 by German director Lotte Reiniger.
It’s a different creative process than 3D claymation, which is widely known as being used in films including “Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer,” “Coraline,” and “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
As Taylor explains, cut-out animation starts with a flat plane.
“So you’ve got layers of glass, and what’s called a multi-plane camera,” Taylor said. “The camera points down, and each layer of glass is closer or farther from the camera. So that gives you depth. But the pieces of paper are flat for the most part, and you can layer them and create different effects with color and stuff by lighting them in.”
Roy Taylor
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Submitted
An ‘accidental’ animator
Under his company Paperwork Films, Taylor has created five short films by hand in his home studio in the Portland neighborhood.
Taylor said he stumbled into the world of paper-cutting animation “by accident.”
For 40 years, Taylor has worked as a sound engineer, and in 2013, he was on the road with singer-songwriter Patty Griffin.
“Patty and I were talking about making a music video when she was in between record labels and didn’t really have any money to invest, and she had a song,” Taylor said. “And I said, ‘Well, why don’t we try a video for that?’”
The song was “Ohio,” a folksy ballad from her album “American Kid.”
Taylor pulled together a music video from a project he never completed. He created paper cuttings of trees, crows, tall grass and a river, and it became the backdrop for Griffin’s song. And his work was recognized in Rolling Stone when the album was released.
Crows reappeared in Taylor’s first short film, “A Tale of Crows” and now in “Crow Maiden,” which Taylor said he developed from his first short film.
“I wanted to sort of make a bigger version of that and incorporate the people that live in the world underneath their realm in the trees,” he said. “And gradually, I became more and more interested in the people. So I figured out a way to kind of mesh the two worlds together, and that became the story.”
Roy Taylor
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Submitted
Getting it made
Taylor enlisted Broadway actor and Louisville resident Julia Estrada to produce the film.
Estrada and Taylor — who worked together on other Paperwork Films’ projects — recently hosted a free staged reading of “Crow Maiden” at local creative arts venue Portal.
Staged readings are popular in the theater industry when the creative team wants feedback from an audience, Estrada said.
“I have access to a great community of actors,” Estrada said ahead of the event. “Let’s get actors together and put us all on stage and see what comes from it.”
During the event, actors read the script, and Taylor’s rough storyboard sketches were projected on a screen behind them.
“We really want people to hear the story and fall in love with it in the same way that we’ve been lucky enough to get some feedback from industry professionals,” Estrada said.
The biggest challenge for the film will be production, Taylor said. Until this point, he’s been the sole animator on all his work. He said he hopes to include more local artists and animators during production.
For Estrada, local filmmakers have the support to create their work, but she said animation is not always considered part of the film community.
“Even, for example, some benefits are given to films that can film over four to five months or within a year, whereas animation just takes time,” Estrada said.
Screening the independent film may also be a challenge. Kentucky’s indie cinemas have dwindled over the years, and most recently, Louisville’s Baxter Avenue Theatres shut its doors after nearly 30 years.
But Estrada said the indie film scene in Louisville isn’t going anywhere.
“The film and TV industry, artists in general, have always been really scrappy, and so we’re gonna figure it out,” she said. “Louisville as a whole has done a really good job of supporting the artists that live here. And I’m excited and also hopeful that they’ll sort of wrap their arms around this project as well.”
Taylor said “Crow Maiden” could take up to three years to produce.
