Test footage from Christmas at Wapos Bay
SD Video, 2 minutes , colour, 2012
"Wapos Bay" is a puppet animated television series created by Dennis Jackson. It began as a rough but heartfelt short animation he created as a student about a hypothetical hunting trip of his grandfather whom he never met. While I didn't teach him that course, I was teaching part time when he was a student and I he was in the first class I ever taught (Directing in 1997). We talked a lot about other projects such as animation so when he got funding together to make a pilot for a new animated series based on the exploits of characters in a fictitious northern First Nations community, he brought me on board. We shot a number of tests in early 2001 on 16mm to see how the new bodies, clothing, sets, and backgrounds would look. Six months later I was the director of photography on the pilot program, "Christmas At Wapos Bay" which uses similar puppets but different heads and hands. Dennis followed up with a series which ran three seasons called "Wapos Bay", changing (improving) both the shooting style (from 16mm to digital) and the puppets (replaceable faces rather than digital and wired/articulatable hands).
The film features my commentary voice track in which I talked about my personal love of the project as well as my personal trials, going through surgery and awaiting William's birth that same year. VIDEO