Ghost’s Stories

When I initially set out to do this project my idea was to create a movie using paper. I thought I would have to invent some method of doing this. But one day on a Facetime call with my parents my mom said, “What if you build a crankie?”. I had no idea what she was talking about, but with a quick google search I came to find out that I was very much not the first person to try to put a movie on paper. In fact, as the first films began to develop and circulate so did crankies. They became popular in the 19th century and people would travel around with crankies to tell people stories. There were crankies you could fit in your pocket and crankies that filled entire rooms. In embarking on this project, I had no idea that I would be tapping in to such a rich history and tradition of storytelling. The website “http://www.thecrankiefactory.com/” was a huge resource for me in drawing inspiration from other crankies to build my own. I ended up drawing inspiration 2010 internet short called Marcel the Shell with Shoes on by Dean Fleischer-Camp and Jenny Slate. The structure of the film is a mock-umentary about a shell with shoes named Marcel. What I loved about it was this idea of interviewing an absurd character in the documentary style. I immediately knew what character I would want to interview. There was this simple ghost that I had been drawing over and over and embroidering on stuff throughout the semester. So I decided that ghost would be the subject of my mock-umentary style crankies. I hope you find as much joy and absurdity in getting to know my ghost as I have in creating this story.