Christine Badger

The lights are dim in studio 105; Aretha Franklin plays on the stereo. Amid cluttered tables, set equipment and an old couch, two cameras: one film and one digital. In front of the cameras, two foot-high clay figures take the spotlight. The animators adjust, reshape and adjust again. "Five more till butt contact," student director, Ryan Murdock, tells the small crew. The figures are getting ready to do a bumping dance.

A senior at Northwestern, Ryan arranged for an accredited seminar on stop-motion and clay animation, a class rarely taught in film schools because of its slow process and rather esoteric niche in the American film community. Ryan and his crew's ten-minute claymation piece, "Power Surge," features four characters emerging out of various electrical objects. It is "a surreal comedy exploring the nature of technology" and, as Ryan puts it, is somewhere between Jan Svankmajer and "Chicken Run."

The crew has been filming for weeks, pulling intense weekend marathons. Shooting will be done the end of this month when Ryan will apply for a finishing grant from Studio 22. Meanwhile, a white towel hangs from a metal pole. Written on it in bold black letters: "No Sleep `Til Claymation."

(2003-03-19)

Also by Christine Badger

Wood is no good
"You guys have to get comfortable being naked." Standing in the aisle of the New Lakeshore Theater, six men strip down to their socks.
(2003-03-12)

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