Making new friends can be hard. Much harder if you’re trapped in a surreal world made of felt, or the imagination of Prince Edward Island filmmaker Laura Stewart. Stewart’s short film quickly and delightfully explores the realm of interpersonal relations and bottomless ovens. Also, there are cookies.
“It’s mostly about making new friends, which is hard and weird,” explains Stewart. “So the cloud world in the oven is sort of about the guy working up his courage to meet his new neighbour.”
“The whole thing was actually inspired by a picture I found online of a girl looking into an oven. I thought, ‘Oh, that’s a nice image, I wonder what’s on the other side of the oven!” I found out later that that picture was an artist’s representation of Sylvia Plath, presumably about to kill herself.”
The photo that inspired the short originally appeared in a VICE fashion spread that featured photographs of famous female authors committing suicide that has since been removed. Thankfully, Stewart took the story to a place that was more like a happier, fluffier version of Stranger Things.
Stewart regularly works as a freelance stop motion animator in Montreal. Which mostly means working on other people’s projects to pay the bills. “Welcome” is her solo debut in the world of stop motion.
“After a few years of working on other people’s things I decided to take a little break and make my own short. I got a small grant from Rooftop Films, a festival in NY, and some help with post-production from the National Film Board,” says Stewart.
Working on her own project meant that Stewart got to make all the important decisions about which direction the production was going to take. First and foremost for the stop motion animator was choosing which material to work with.
“Well, working as a freelance stop motion animator I get to try all different kinds of puppets and objects. I’ve worked with clay a lot, toys, food. I’ve even been the hands in a pixelation… I wanted to make everything soft and fluffy because I was just finishing up a series of contracts for Mega Bloks, so I was sick of the shiny plastic look.”
So, for that surreal sense of Stewart’s world, even the parts the don’t involve travelling through interdimensional ovens, she scavenged her materials from an orthodox source.
“Everything is made of felt. I know a guy who makes big mascot heads and stuff out of felt so I stopped by his studio one day and raided his scrap bucket for most of my supplies.”
The short film was completed six months ago and has been touring film ever since, with it given a digital release publicly just this week.
Stewart is already working on another stop animation short with another animator. While Stewart hasn’t given out details of the new project, she does say it’s about catcalling.