Fammie the Vaudevillian Bug

On March of 2020, Fammie the Vaudevillian Bug's basic concept was officially born where it was nothing but this anthropomorphic pacifist bug who wanted to unite the people with his love of swing in the midst of WWII. Which I knew was perfect from the very start because the themes represent how each and every insect colonization from different nations utilizes fascism, imperialism, and Propaganda to bestow the common good for all even though it's dictatorship in their own eyes. It's a anti-war film per se. But the only thing was that the story idea and title were completely different. Originally titled Fantasmo the Dancing Insect, it was about this aspiring ballet dancer who performs a epic cathartic piece which culminates to his death from a heart attack. It was inspired by my favorite film: The Red Shoes. Before changing it to a Hollywood-style musical in the vein of Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly due to my knowledge on the subject & formal experience as a high school Broadway singer and dancer. Also reformed his name from Fantasmo the Dancing Insect to Fammie the Vaudevillian Bug. Or Francis Fray, that's his real name in the short. On a fun note the actual name of the Gothall Empire Announcer is Mister Oskar Mott of Gothall. Huge fan of the Golden Ages of Hollywood particularly musicals because of 1) their extravagant, larger-than-life Busby Berkeley-style musical numbers and 2) their timeless quality that's precedent to today's times. A love letter to that bygone era. They're very impassioned; they're very ingenius. With the exception that the Fammie character doesn't break out into the song only the dancing though. So the only things that remained were the 40s setting and a humanistic world of anthropomorphic bugs. Two biggest inspirations for this film were "Top Hat" and "Hoppity Goes to Town." A crucial part for Fammie was making it into a stop-motion short because of my admiration for Art Clokey, Willis H. O'Brien, Ray Harryhausen, Rankin & Bass, Lotte Reiniger, and George Pal of Puppetoons even though this would be really tedium to do since I've made a lot of unmade stop-motion movies in the past. They were keen to me throughout my childhood days. Another influence would be the Chuck Jones cartoons particularly One Froggy Evening because of his sense of comic timing etc. The theme for Fammie the Vaudevillian Bug is fascism. Before commencing the filming process in June, Fammie's original character design was to make him lofty and lanky, but because of how pragmatic it would be, that I thought it would fit best to being more corpulent representing how audacious, lively, and cordially he is. It took a day to finish since I really didn't have all the stop-motion assets to make it more grandiose in scale albeit putting enough hard work and effort on the animation etc. For example, the armatures & camera rigs especially motion control. Used my old reusable Lakeshore plasticine clay to build Fammie's character model and the Gothall Empire including thin black sheets of paper as the main set piece components to encompass everything. Shot this in my room on my old crumbling brown desk. And it was so tedium to import all the photos from my Android to email so I can open 'em each onto Adobe After Effects. To give it that Technicolor look, I watched a lot of 40s films and studied the gist of the three-strip Technicolor process to incorporate its cinematography making sure it felt timeless & picturesque. Protruding on Joey Pecoraro's Jazz Mango at YouTube Audio Library was the kind-of musical piece that I've chosen real carefully from the other jazz pieces to signify the glamorous, cheery stimulus of them musicals. Another thing that would correlate with everything was the one and only 21:9 aspect ratio which would bring out the cinematic touch besides the storytelling and visuals. It was released on July 1st, 2020. Now with the advent of 2022, hopefully everyone including you film festivals out there will be enamored with Fammie as much as I loved creating it.