Details:
English, 2007, 1 m 52 s, DVD NTSC 4:3

Summary:
Fatally young, asleep at the wheel, and heading over a cliff to the sea, a boy and girl share a near-life experience as they turn into birds. An animated short illustrating the curious, dreamlike bossa nova of its namesake.

Scenario:
"Clumsy Girl and I" are fast asleep and dreaming as their car plummets over a cliff to the sea. Airborne, they sprout wings, encounter a flickering red cameo leopard, and are tossed over the waves by their dissipating "Other Voices" (anxieties). Beyond long tunnels and bright white lights, where does consciousness go?

The Inspiration for the Film:
In late 2006, my friends Bill Reichelt and Jamie Glowacki (Cheer Up Poems) gave me a copy of their album Here, Not Up There. I quickly latched onto the final track, Birds At Night (Might Fall), a hypnotic little bossa nova that lit up colors and imagery in my mind. I wrote to Bill explaining that an animated film was forming in my head in response to it, and he wrote back saying, "go ahead and make one, that'd be great" to which my response was, "I don't know how, but I'll see what I can do."

Shortly after that, I was invited to participate in a first-time animators exhibition, Moving Through Medium, at St. Mary's College in Notre Dame, Indiana. I could only afford two weeks at the animation residency hosted in Chicago (July 2002) by the curator of the show, Annie Heckman, so my learning curve felt vertiginous in the extreme. On average, I slept about two hours per day during the making of this film.

Here's the original storyboard for the film.

The Soundtrack and Composer:
The soundtrack of the film, Birds At Night (Might Fall), was composed and performed by Bill Reichelt and Cheer Up Poems. Featuring the dulcet voice of Jamie Glowacki, this song appears on their album Here, Not Up There released in 2006 on their Wire Heart Recordings label. Reichelt is a composer, musician, and founding member of Dog Pookah and Cheer Up Poems (bands based in Duluth, Minnesota USA). His discography spans several genres, and has been aired on college radio around the country. Reichelt is a member of the American Composers Forum, and his piece Standard Bedside Lamp or Imitation was premiered by Zeitgeist Ensemble in 2007. Listen and learn more at: http://www.myspace.com/cheeruppoems