Shaping their future Old Town teens raising eyebrows with stop-action clay animation film

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Whaaa Jawl Son” screams a clay figure of an American Indian man as the birch bark canoe he is portaging catches the wind and lifts him skyward.

The camera catches a view of him through a hole in a bark teepee where his grandmother is sitting as he flies past the opening and upward.

According to Penobscot legend, Wijalson is the windbird that sits atop a mountain and makes the breezes that travel the earth. And the whole tale about how Wijalson is subdued into less forceful wind-making is brought to life in an 18-minute film created under the direction of Old Town students Tiana Vermette, Peter McDermott and Shane Smith.

The trio is entering college this fall with dreams of pursuing animated filmmaking or scriptwriting careers. Based on the amount of work put into films such as “The Windbird,” and the national acclaim their work has garnered, they might have a bright future. The filmmakers’ work has drawn attention in USA Today and YM Magazine. An earlier film by Vermette, “How the Raven Stole the Sun,” which tells another Penobscot tale through paper cutouts, is set to run on HBO this fall and is for sale at the Abbe Museum, which specializes in American Indian history and artifacts, in Bar Harbor.

“I like to do movies on my culture because you can’t tell stories to kids here nowadays – they won’t sit down and listen to a story that’s 20 minutes long,” said Vermette, whose mother is a Penobscot Indian, during an interview at Indian Island School where the films were made.

Vermette wrote “The Windbird” screenplay to be a bit more humorous than the script she wrote for the “Raven” film. Scenes such as the man being borne away by the wind under his canoe like a person under a parachute bring chuckles to those who watch. In another scene, a frog is disturbed by a man walking toward the windbird’s mountain. The frog jumps into a stream creating a splash complete with a major water drop moving up into the air.

“It’s very advanced art-making,” said Michael Vermette, a teacher at Indian Island who’s obviously proud of the work done to create the movie. “It’s a Penobscot story and a lot of people are taking that in Maine history.”

“How the Raven Stole the Sun” is on sale at the Abbe Museum. Its scenes were included in earlier exhibits and fit with the museum’s mission, said Betts Swanton, Abbe’s exhibit developer and designer. The scenes for that movie were featured in an exhibit in 1992.

Swanton said “The Windbird” is very funny and sets from the film will be on display beginning in February.

Using clay to make figures got a boost in the 1980s when the dancing “California Raisins” advertisement hit television screens across the country. The ad’s creator is credited with coining the term “claymation.” Still, clay has been largely replaced by latex among active animators, according to Michael Vermette.

Making a movie filmed of sets and characters created entirely from clay is a time-consuming process. Various color clays are used over structures called armatures to create figures. Those used in “The Windbird” are called “ball and socket” figures, because the arms and legs move.

“It’s just an amazing commitment of time and energy,” Swanton said. “A lot of people don’t understand how long that takes.”

For changes in hand or mouth positions, many hands and mouths are created and are put on the armature for each shot. Every time a substitution is made, clay must be spread carefully over the joint to hide the seam.

In a utility building just down the road from the Indian Island School, the sets were stored recently before some of them travel to the Abbe Museum. The building is stuffed with clay sets.

The number of parts needed to film an 18-minute movie is stunning.

A three-foot high mountain made entirely of various colors of clay is positioned in the back of the room. There are trays of various body parts made for each of the characters along with canoes, birch bark teepees and other props.

The room also has a pasta-cutter used to prepare clay, molds to create hands or mouths, molds to create canoes and other parts.

Once the sets had been created, the students set them in front of the camera to film. With six to eight moves required for each second of film, the mere manipulation of sets and filming was a huge undertaking.

Throughout the movie are interesting special effects. In one case, a wind swirls around the set pulling the cap off a character. This was achieved by painting dust onto Plexiglas panels that were placed in front of the set. To create depth, the wind starts as a small line near a mountain then gradually gets larger as it comes to the foreground.

The three students, and the many more who helped with various portions of the films, learned as they went. But they also got professional instruction through a 14-week course at the Maine College of Art in Portland.

The Indian Island filmmakers owe much to Huey Coleman, a well-known teacher known simply as “Huey,” who travels the state and has introduced hundreds of kids to filmmaking. Some of Huey’s students who are now adults are also gaining notoriety for their work, according to Greg Gadberry at the Maine Film Bureau.

The trio also were influenced by their participation in the Taos Teen Festival in Taos, N.M. In addition to having their film shown, they participated in a panel discussion on how media images are manipulated to control teens’ behavior and buying habits.

Michael Vermette hauls out a scrapbook with information he and the students collected about clay animation. They all talk in great depth about types of clays, armatures and techniques they considered before putting together the final product.

The three say they are most proud of the special effects in the movie and the fact that it is a comedy.

“We had never made a comedy,” Tiana Vermette said. “It’s hard to do a comedy.”

The challenge, Shane Smith said, is getting the timing right for the humor to work. “When the frog jumps in the water and it comes up [in a splash] that works,” he said.

To create the sound for the film, the students turned to a variety of people. Grandmothers, uncles and fellow students loaned their voices. The narrators actually acted out the script on stage in order to lend realism to it.

The students ultimately used a digital microphone connected to a computer to tape the dialogue and sound effects.

Using digital sound was a great help when it came time to get the images and soundtrack in sync, the filmmakers said.

Although “The Windbird” has yet to be seen widely, it is the culmination of work for the group of students at Indian Island.

For Betts Swanton, the film is well-done. She said it’s great Indian Island students have persevered in their filmmaking begun nearly a decade ago.

“I was very impressed that this is still going on,” she said. “I get very enthusiastic about any student art.”