The Lost Mariner

The Lost Mariner is an animated interpretation of Dr. Oliver Sacks’ case study found in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. It uses photographs to visualize the rare memory condition of patient Jimmie G.

Director Tess Martin describes the process of making the film below…

The Lost Mariner is an animated short film inspired by a chapter from the book of medical case studies The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, by Dr. Oliver Sacks. The patient described suffered from a severe memory condition, and when I read it I immediately started thinking about how one would animate it. I decided to use the theme of photographs to tell the story, as photographs are usually our most direct link with our past. This is taken to the extreme, so that in fact everything in the film is a photograph

First I filmed actors in a white room, and then converted their footage into image sequences. I printed these images out small, and cut out all the actors. In this way I would have a stack of paper cut outs for one actor’s scene. I then created the environment of the scene also out of paper cut outs – the wallpaper, the bed, the table, the props, etc. These were all set up on what’s called a multi-plane animation stand, which is a structure with glass layers with the camera pointing down. I then animated all the cut-outs, including the cut-outs of the actors, on the multi-plane stand. I also shot a few scenes using stacks of replaceable photos in real environments, like the bathroom sink and hallway.

The film is 5min and 45 seconds, and the cut-outs were animated at either 6 or 12 frames per second. Normally I work at 12 frames per second, but because of all the cutting involved in this film I halved the frame rate of many scenes so I my hand wouldn’t fall off. I would say the final film is made up of roughly 3,000 still images.

Credits

Director: Tess Martin
Supervising Producers: Brad Hutchinson & Warren Etheredge
Young Jimmie: Ruud Aarden
Old Jimmie: Hank Botwinik
Doctor: Kieran Dolan
Ray: Tjeerd Knoop
Voice of Ray: Jeff Hoyt
Film Shoot Camera: Thijs van Gasteren
Sound Design: Production House Media
Music: Jason Staczek