Chris Lavis is a Montreal academy award nominated director and animator who closely collaborates with longtime work partner Maciek Szczerbowski. His films are off-putting, unsettling, and eerie. His first film is the one we watched in class…

Madame Tutli-Putli (2007)

Madame Tutli-Putli was made primarily with stop-motion, however, the eyes were motion captured using a video camera, and added to the stop-motion puppet. It follows the story of an anxious woman (Madame Tutli-Putli) Boarding the night train. She takes all her possessions with her, and leaves her past behind. Or rather, it seems, she is running from it. It uses both visible horror elements with disturbing imagery, as well as suspense and building an unsettling feeling in the viewer. The eyes give a very uncanny look to the whole short. Down to the message it conveys, it it littered with symbolisms for death. (The night train, leaving your things behind, being killed, intense fear before euphoric feeling, going into the light, etc.)

Higgelty-Piggelty Pop!

He adapted a story by Maurice Sendak, Higgelty-Piggelty Pop!, about a dog who is searching for more in life. ‘This animated short tackles the subjects of personal space, conflict, and conflict resolution in the workplace. At the office, tempers flare as two coworkers who are sitting dangerously close find themselves bumping elbows and spilling ink. The film demonstrates four common approaches to interpersonal tensions: retreat, aggression, denial and – finally – negotiation.’ – Synopsis provided on YouTube. Much like Madame Tutli-Putli, it combines Stop Motion and live action. It is so smooth, it looks more like puppetry. It reminds me a lot of Fraggle Rock, specifically the segments with the man and his dog, Sprocket. It has a familiar feeling to it’s aesthetics, but it also has elements of horror and mystery- as well as fear and suspense.

HIS/THEIR WORK

Chris Lavis mostly works with a fusion of Stop Motion and Live Action elements. They do not use them separately, but rather in with each other. Stop Motion mingles with Live action, and vice versa. Which reminds me a lot of early animation in movies, like scenes/sequences the original ‘King Kong’ and ‘Godzilla’ movies. Or like ‘The Lost World’, which animated dinosaurs via Stop-Motion animation, still had live action in it! This feels like a hyper-advanced version of it, which can use modern technology and better equipment to pull off the effect better! His lasting impact? That I cannot exactly answer. He seems to be a notable name, and has an impressive record behind him of films and projects. However, I wasn’t able to find much about him specifically. It could be that I wasn’t looking hard enough- however, overall, I do not think that he has a huge ‘This Is A Face of Animation.’ sort of reputation. So for his lasting impact, I have to conclude with; he’s still alive and making things, his lasting impact is yet to be set in stone.

My favorite horror-tinged animated films

I quite like Watership Down, when it comes to just sheer darkness and grit, as well as pure fear and disturbing feeling, Watership Down takes the cake for me. It is brutal- like- horrifyingly brutal. I think part of the reason why I think it’s scary is because it was for kids- but boy howdy. It had scenes likes this.