A new, short film has been making the rounds on YouTube and Vimeo lately, called ?Veggie Propaganda.?
Filmmaker/animator Kristen Palana,?35 year-old mother of two and an Associate Professor of Digital Media at The American University of Rome in Rome, Italy, crafted the four-years-in-the-making piece specifically for a web audience, in hopes that the piece, which combines sing-song animation with a serious message, will inspire people to think more about both animals and the food choices they make.
First, check out the film and then settle in for the Q&A with Kristen that follows.
GoodVeg:?What inspired you to make this piece? Are you vegetarian or vegan?
Filmmaker Kristen Palana and her two children.
KP: Am I vegetarian or vegan? Neither. Wait? Come back! I can explain.
I?ve been an on-and-off vegetarian since the age of twelve. (I?m now a 35 year-old mother of two and an Associate Professor of Digital Media at The American University of Rome in Rome, Italy.)
I?m currently a ?flexitarian? (someone who eats a mostly vegetarian diet) who aspires to be a vegetarian again who aspires to be a vegan. My last good vegetarian streak was from 2003-2009. Along the way the person I thought least likely in the world to ever become a vegetarian, my German husband, joined me for three glorious years. In 2008 I began to write and rewrite what was then called ?Vegetarian Propaganda.? A year later I was pregnant with our first son and we had every intention of becoming a vegetarian family (much to the dismay of our American and German relatives I might add.)
Enter a very old-fashioned doctor and complications in the later part of my pregnancy. To make a long story short, because I was retaining too much fluid, she felt that only protein ?would soak it up.? Apparently the vegetarian sources of protein I ate every day were not good enough for her. She told me that if I did not eat meat literally three times a day my ?unborn baby could DIE.? I thought she was wrong and certainly if we lived in the U.S. I could have gotten another doctor. However in Italy, doctors who speak English are harder to come by so I stuck with her. I begrudgingly started eating meat again and in the process my husband fell off the wagon. By the way, her diet did not even end up working.
We did go back to eating mostly meatless meals, but we?ve found that with two babies under the age of three, it?s harder to make easy meatless meals when so many of the ingredients and products we enjoyed back home in the U.S. are harder to come by here in Italy. That said, we are slowly getting back on track and I fully expect to be a vegetarian again within the next year. I?m currently restricted from eating wheat and dairy products at the moment because my 6 month-old son is nursing and has a sensitivity to them.
I was inspired to make ?Veggie Propaganda? because people have always asked me about my food choices and I wanted to give them a peek inside my mind and try to explain my views in a fun, entertaining, and non-judgmental way.
GV:?How did you connect with the band that performed the music?
KP:?Steve Rittler is the leader of The Penultimate and was a graduate student studying Computer Graphics and Interactive Media at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NY. with me back in 1998. We became good friends and then colleagues together in the Art Department at William Paterson University of New Jersey.
I got to see him and his partner Camille Cauti during a visit in 2009 and they played me some of their band?s music. Right then and there I knew it was the sound I wanted for ?Veggie Propaganda!? I recorded a horribly embarrassing first draft of the ?Veggie Song? for them and they made it a thousand times better. They also added two minutes to the film but after hearing their take on the song, I was so in love with it, I altered my visuals to accommodate their audio.
?Veggie Propaganda? fun fact: The Penultimate band members are all omnivores, though report eating less meat and more veggies after collaborating on this project.
GV:?Why did you choose animation to relate this message?
KP:?Animation is one of those mediums that everyone can relate to. It also allows you to create things that do not exist in reality like a pig jumping sausage rope in a bacon rainstorm. When you personify a distraught-looking lobster about to go in a pot of boiling water, the audience can identify with him more as opposed to a video of a live lobster about to go in a pot. I also love animation because I used to study painting back in the day at The Massachusetts College of Art and Design in Boston and the medium allows my love for still imagery, narrative painting, and color psychology to come through.
I think my animated movements and skills could still be better though and so sometimes I have to rely on rotoscoping (animating over video) so that the characters? movements are correct and therefore not distracting from the overall message of the film.
GV:?How long did it take to put this together??
KP:?I started writing it in 2008 and I really wanted to strike just the right tone. Basically my main target audience was average everyday meat-eaters and I didn?t want the film to be too heavy-handed or militant. Some meat-eaters complain that they feel judged in the presence of vegetarians and vegans and can get highly defensive and try to block ?propaganda? messages out. I then rewrote the film no less than three times trying to get the tone right and I?m still not sure if I succeeded, though I?ve gotten positive feedback so far from meat-eaters and vegans. For me that is a win.
Finally in 2010 the song was ready and I began the actual animating. It didn?t all come together until about September of 2011. It seems like a long time, but I normally have several projects going on at once and so if I am having trouble with one, I just work on another and let the others simmer on the back-burner until I?m ready to take them on again.
GV:?Why did you decide to call it ?Veggie Propaganda??
KP:?It was originally called ?Vegetarian Propaganda?, but after having to eat meat again I didn?t feel like I could call it that anymore. Considering that the message of the film was always about the benefits of eating less meat, ?Veggie Propaganda? seemed to be better anyway. I used the term ?Propaganda? because it?s a word that meat-eaters use a lot to describe any messages that seek to ?convert? them. I wanted to have fun with the concept of ?propaganda? so I incorporated hypnotic carrots, tomato pendulums, and marching celery. It?s essentially a propaganda message with a sense of humor and doesn?t take itself too seriously.
GV:?What to you hope people will do after viewing the film?
KP:?I hope they will see animals in a different light and realize how much power individuals have through simple food choices to make things better for animals, their own health, their finances, and the planet. I also hope that they will share the film so that it can find its true audience. It has screened at festivals in North America, Asia, and Europe and won several awards, but I created the film with a web audience in mind.
GV:?Do you plan on making more films like this? What will the subject matter be?
KP:?Yes. Animation is like meditation to me. I just love the process of chipping away at a big project each week. I?m currently doing pre-production for a short animation called ?This Too Shall Pass? (working title.) It?s about this strange present reality I find myself in where my small children think I am the greatest person in the world and need so much from me. This is a wonderful and yet exhausting time in my life which also comes with frustrations. I?m trying to capture the positives and negatives of this moment in my life and also the transient and fleeting nature of it. It actually has a lot of similar themes as a film I made in 2008 called ?Larry and Roz? about my grandparents? first meeting and their six-decade relationship.
Feel free to check out my current and past projects at my website,?http://kpalana.com/?and thanks for this opportunity to share and talk about ?Veggie Propaganda.?
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