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Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Support Michael Sporn's Film about Edgar Allen Poe

Several years ago I spent a delightful evening at New York City's Museum of Modern Art viewing retrospective of Michael Sporn's films. Everyday I check his blog, which is a treasure trove for those interested in animation. Now I'm asking you to support his Kickstarter project, which involves a biography of Edgar Allen Poe that he's been working on for several years.


Here's how Sporn describes the film:
The Animatic, above, is a rough representation of animation in progress. It helps us tell the story. We hope to turn the many segments started into completed animation to be able to thrust the feature film, POE, into complete production. The Kickstarter money will do that for us and help satisfy the needs of the possible distributors and financiers who are already interested.

What’s the story?

Edgar Allan Poe was a brilliant writer who lived a very short and eccentric life. He died at the age of 40 and in that time created literary genres including the detective mystery, the sci fi epic, the horror story, and many of the most beautiful love poems imaginable. Within this life there is a very dynamic story to be told.

The film opens with baby Edgar dragged from theater to theater by his ever-squabbling actor parents. They travel to cities up and down the East Coast performing, as their marriage falls apart. Edgar's father disappears, and his mother dies of consumption. The three year old watches the last theater his mother performs in burn to the ground. He's left an orphan, and the film begins.

Poe's life was destroyed not by drugs or alcohol, as is often stated, but by absolute poverty, and this is the crux of our film. Many of the women in his life died of consumption and illness as he was too poor to be able to care for them properly.He, himself, died in a poorhouse hospital.

Our film will show various biographical key points in his life and will use selections from his great fiction to depict this dramatic story.
The film is now completely scripted and story-boarded and 20 minutes of an animatic have been completed. Four Poe stories will be set in counterpoint to the biography: The Premature Burial, Murder in the Rue Morgue, The Black Cat, and Ms. in a Bottle.

Now's you chance to step into film history by supporting this project.

1 comment:

  1. Bill, many thanks for the extra added plug. It's going to take every notice I can to get the word out there. I think so much about this project that it has to come out now, and I'm hoping Kickstarter will allow me to do that. I appreciate your support.

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