SandCastle

• I really enjoyed this film that we watched today mainly for two reasons. The first being the relation it has to creation that Leeper pointed out. Second, I know how hard stop-motion animation is ( I tried my hand at it a few years back) and this film looked really challenging to make. There were so many amazing effects and I think my favorite one was that one creature that blew air. It made patterns on the ground, and in that split second, I forgot that it was stop motion and believed it was real. They made that effect LOOK SO GOOD, and it blows my mind just thinking of how much effort the artist behind this had put into this. Does this mean that we generally appreciate things that have more effort put into them, or am I just really excited? Probably the latter, because a lot of effort put into something doesn't necessarily mean it is better than something else executed superiorly ( I think that sounds right ). You could argue that the other film we watched about the block children was better, but personally I prefer The Sand Castle. My friend TJ did the math and told me that this film took 19,000 frames to shoot. 19,000!!! The other film about the block children took somewhere around 24,000, but even still I think it was harder to work with Sandcastle...because the only thing in that movie is sand... lots and lots of sand. Besides that point, this film shows the creation story well, but I also think it showed the cycle of seasons even better. I don't remember who said this quote, but I agree with him, he said " Spring was the beginning of new life, followed by summer of hard work, Fall of prosperity and then the Winter of tragedy." Whoever you are mystery person, you literally took the words right out of my mouth, and I think the imagery behind this is pure genius. The idea behind the Creator being God is also something I agree with. The relationship between the pig and the snake character can be related to the general hostility of certain people in the world. The drunk character could just represent pure childish happiness. Overall this film had a lot to show and I absolutely loved the animation style.