Rocks in My Pockets - Signe Baumane
“Rocks in my
pockets” is an animated project by Signe Baumane, it looks to be something
different. A funny film involving the serious subject of depression, I can see
no other way to explain the story than the synopsis from the official website.
Synopsis
Signe
lives in 2010, in New York. She observes her mind always turning to self-hating
thoughts that inevitably end in the desire to kill herself.
Where
those thoughts come from? We are told that genes predetermine many of our
diseases, likeskin cancer, uterus cancer and others. Is a
mental illness genetically predetermined, too?
Signe
investigates her closest relatives, starting with her grandmother Anna.
Anna was
a brilliant student, intelligent and pretty. But she came out of age in a
conservative country in the times when women were not expected to have careers.
She married an adventurous man who insisted in procreation. They produced 8
children and Anna had to take care of her large family.
Anna was
found trying to drown herself in a shallow river near her house.
She
eventually died at age 50. Her children, who were very attuned to protecting
the fragile reputation of their family, carefully covered up the causes of her
death.
The time
passes. Anna’s children have their own children. One of Anna’s granddaughters
Miranda tries to kill herself after childbirth. She is locked in a mental
hospital where she finally succeeds to jump from a roof to her death.
Another
granddaughter, Linda, succumbs to mental breakdown, caused by love troubles and
over studying. She runs under a train. Granddaughter Madara obeying the orders
of mysterious voices hangs herself.
Signe
after giving birth to her son, starts having suicidal thoughts, so she goes to
a psychiatrist. Signe is given a handful of pills and locked into a mental
hospital. It seems, Signe will never free herself from the clutches of mental
illness. But, miraculously, Signe escapes the fate of the others by divorce and by becoming a woman she once
dreamed to be – an artist.
Vision:
As the
story is driven by passionate voiceover, which gives the film a definite
structure, the images don’t have to necessarily illustrate what is being told
by the voiceover. The images may stray into the realm of visual allegory, of
poetic interpretations of the things being told. Thus, images serve as a double
narrative, with an experimental approach to visual storytelling.
In June
2010 Signe started working on paper mache backgrounds. The idea is to create 3
dimensional paper mache rooms, forests, houses, then take pictures of them with
a digital photo camera, and use these pictures to draw 2 dimensional characters
and 2D animated action on top. In this sense the film is experimental, as it
combines two different animation techniques and skills – stop motion and drawn
animation.
I have also included some screen shots from
the animation ( situated below)
is a 5-part animated series purportedly created by 9-year old Randy Peters
Their fear
soon turned into divine intervention due to the World Wide Web. It is this
attitude of earth shattering new norms that makes Tokyoplastic a visual force
to be reckoned with. 
Small beginnings soon led to much bigger
things. Tokyoplastic began as a 15 second clay-mation nano-series, but it
wasn’t long before the world soon realised that a mere 15 seconds wasn’t long
enough to harness the genius that is Tokyoplastic.
Having
worked on multimillion-dollar international advertising campaigns for such big
name companies as Toyota, Sci Fi, MTS, Nokia, Nike and MTV, world domination is
all in a days work for Tokyoplastic.
Design
awards are too numerous to list, with a taste of their success revealed in such
achievements as the Audience Award (Sundance Online Film Festival), and the
Flash Forward 3D Category for three consecutive years.
tickets