Prayers for Peace

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Prayers for Peace is a narrative stop-motion animation confronting the memory of the artist's younger brother killed in the current conflict in Iraq. Four years have passed since his brother was killed when an IED was detonated beneath his diesel tanker while on a convoy to the active combat area of Fallujah. In this animation the writer/animator stops to think about who his brother was, how he identified him, as well as work through issues of guilt for not thinking about him as often as he feels that maybe he should. The piece reflects back on the days of the funeral and tries to recall what those days were like for him and his family. An introspective journey, through the heart and soul of a difficult experience, the artist's conclusion proves very different from his original hypothesis.

Drawn using pastels on a slate chalkboard, the entire film is shot in two continuous scenes, with the current image drawn directly on top of the previous, leaving the memory of the previous drawings to continue into the present. Much of the footage was borrowed directly from images off of the soldier's laptop that was returned to the family. Also taken off of the laptop was an audio file recorded in the active combat area of Najaf, where the young man expresses his feelings on the experience.

Filmmaker Notes

Dustin Grella created a stop-motion animation by drawing with soft pastels on slate, and recording the image once every sixty-seconds. He used a technique similar to rotoscoping, where each frame was projected onto the slate, drawn on top of, the projection was removed then the image recorded. The final product is a compilation of the hand drawn images. He decided on rotoscoping because he wanted the visual imagery to be easy to digest in order for the storyline to be the primary focus. The narrative stems from a letter the animator wrote on December 7, 2007, as part of an ongoing letter-writing project titled 'notes to self', involving over two thousand letters, written by and mailed to himself. The story is about the artist's younger brother, Devin Grella, who was killed in Iraq on a convoy to deliver a diesel tanker of fuel to the active combat area of Najaf when an improvised explosive device was detonated beneath his tanker and was killed instantly. He chose the materials of the pastels, with its impermanence, drawing and erasing, overdrawing, and final erasure, to represent the temporality of the physical body. The voiceover was the foundation for the project and was originally designed as a stand alone piece. The animator gathered most of the original footage from videos and still images off of the laptop that belonged to Devin. The images are relatively simple so the viewer can focus on the progression of the drawing and follow the narrative, rather than the using the images to tell the story. After the artist was comfortable with the shots and the movement of the piece in video, he took it into the animation studio to start rotoscoping using iStopMotion and a custom camera system that he had designed. The software has the capability to project one frame at a time, giving him the opportunity to sketch over the marks that helped to tell the story.