There aren’t many words we find more terrifying than “cancer”, and for people whose family or friends have been afflicted with this illness, they can’t hear the word without being reminded of them.
This 35mm short film combines both live action and claymation images. It chronicles a cancer surgery from the perspective of the patient as she imagines the battle taking place within her body between the doctor and the cancerous tumors.
Content
Combining live action and animation is always a challenge, but in this case it worked out very well. The choice to portray the tumors as clay creatures was certainly a unique idea and it did a lot for the concept of the movie. I don’t doubt that an individual dealing with cancer – or any terminal illness for that matter – would find a connection with such a portrayal of their infirmity as rather sinister-looking creatures, even if they were made of clay.
Visual Look
One rarely sees claymation in low-budget movies, since it requires a great deal of time, effort, and energy – not to mention the expense. I certainly do not have the patience that stop-motion animation requires. In addition to the fact that we’ve only received a handful of 35mm film submissions here at Microfilmmaker, “Dirty Girl” certainly stands out as being very unique. In this case, the claymation was great; the creatures were well designed, and the animation was very smooth. Obviously, these filmmakers know what they’re doing when it comes to stop-motion.
The live action visuals were also quite good – the shots were lit against a black background, making them stand out very well, plus the light created some harsh and rather sinister shadows, further helping the mood. There were a couple shots where one of the female patient’s breasts could be seen, but it certainly wasn’t sexual by any stretch of the imagination.
I did notice a couple of issues – twice the movie lingered on one shot for what seemed a bit too long, then seemed to rush through the next few shots rather quickly. I was unsure if this was an editing issue, or just a glitch in burning the DVD. I hope that this was the case, as it did look a little awkward.
In addition, the opening shot of the female patient lying on the gurney is set up to make it look as though she is standing up, as she is frontally facing the camera. The following images of the doctor washing his hands and putting on gloves also sets up a similar “line of action”, so to speak, that is then broken by the next shot in which the female patient is shown lying on her back. While I really liked the full frontal image of the patient, it might be a good idea to include a shot of the gurney tilting back in some way to indicate that she is lying down.
