A Catalog of Anticipations II

Starring: Mary Margaret Lowery and Cammi Heath
Cinematography by: David Lowery
Written and directed by: David Lowery
4 min/Austin, Texas

A story of a little girl (played by Mary Margaret Lowery, narrated by Cammi Heath) who collects interesting things, only to discover a dead fairy in the field behind her house. She finds more and more, eventually theorizing that there must have been some sort of war, and then one day, one of them comes back to life. It sounds pretty out there, but it isn't, mostly because of the way Lowery chooses to tell this story. Eschewing traditional means, the film exists as a series of photographs, advancing one still image at a time, with the fairies realized by stop motion animation (using clay, I assume) that merges flawlessly with the rest of the film. The story is a short one, recounted in the matter-of-fact way that only a child can manage. To her, there doesn't seem to be anything all that remarkable about a fairy war in her yard, and so she tells the story in that manner. But it still contains a dry sadness that's in a lot of ways more poignant than a river of tears.

A Catalog of Anticipations I

Starring: David Lowery
Cinematography by: David Lowery
Written and directed by: David Lowery
4 min/Austin, Texas

Lowery himself stars in A Catalog of Anticipations I, a take on the classic rebirth theme that's so prevalent in cinema. It's nicely done — the shots are well-composed and the editing is crisp — but this isn't something we haven't seen numerous times and it doesn't attempt to put a different twist on it. I don't know that there's much of a reason for this film to exist, other than in a larger work or as something of an exercise. That being said, there aren't many filmmakers who'd be willing to lay in the mud and put dirt in their mouth for a film. Hell, that's why you hire actors, so someone else can lay in the mud while you sit in a chair sipping coffee.

Some Analog Lines

Starring: David Lowery and Benjamin Lowery
Sound design by: Brad Mitchell
Cinematography by: David Lowery
Written and directed by: David Lowery
6 min/Austin, Texas

Disclosure: Some Analog Lines is one of my favorite short films and the main reason I asked David to participate in the Uber-Indie Project.

David Lowery's Some Analog Lines is a thoughtful, nuanced look at the creative process, the nature of art, and the inherent nature of audience perception. Lowery narrates himself, sometimes doubling, tripling his voice into uneven layers, sometimes letting it run solo. He chronicles the genesis of his filmmaking career, starting with a ghost story he made as a child along with his younger brother Benjamin. Cut to today where they're both still making films, only now they're animated, David's a stop-motion animation and Benjamin's CGI. He ponders the differences between the two mediums, how the stop-motion gets more respect from a cineaste, how the CGI doesn't get the credit it deserves, how the fact that we can see the fingerprints in the clay somehow means something to us on a fundamental level, much like the homemade bookshelf or the Super-8 footage of a ghost story or the hand-written message in a book. Because it's easier for an audience to identify with something when we can see the humanity in it. The ability to see those fingerprints is important somehow.