Behind the Scenes - Edison: Adventures in Power

Up that steep staircase and through the open door is the home of Davison Bros. Productions, creators of stop-animated short films such as Tropfest Finalist "Medusa" and "Cedric and Hope" currently in festivals worldwide.

Today they opened their doors - well, door - to let select contributors to the successful Pozible campaign for their latest project, "Edison: Adventures in Power", see how the sausage is made. In this case there really is sawdust in the sausage... and plasticine and all manner of things to make these stop animated characters come to life.

Producer Jacob Ford and Writer-Director Pierce Davison kindly spent an hour of their time showing me the sets and characters; how they were made; shared real-life tales of Edison; the creative process in developing the webisode; and revealed a little of the footage already shot.



Edison (centre) and his armless assistant (left) "on set".

It was a fascinating look at all the elements that need to come together to pull off something as ambitious as a stop animated webisode even with ScreenWest tipping in $3 for every $1 they raised in the campaign.

It is a very spacious home full of sets and props from previous projects, both theirs and other local filmmakers. Characters get recycled so you may see some familiar faces in Edison if you watch closely. Storytelling can also be dictated by the sets that have already been made. Alas, we might never see the epic fight scene atop a ferris wheel that was mentioned; but there certainly are a lot of castles in the Davison Bros. world!

A customer built fan for the short film, you guessed it, The Fan.

A most enjoyable hour so thank you for the invite. I look forward to seeing the completed webisode!