Zero to Thirty Two Hundred with Phoebe Parsons
An interview with an Animator on Analogue process, time & perception
Phoebe. photo by Alannah @annual_general_meeting
Daniel Williams @danielthomaswilliams
Look, I don’t know how to dress this up. I’ve known Phoebe Parsons since we were children. She’s always been cool. She’s always going to be cool. Anyone who disagrees with me is a total lunatic. That being said, let’s bring out the details. Phoebe is an animator / filmmaker and also grew up in Crescent Beach.
These days, her film Terror Fervor is a hot commodity in the online film festival world and for good reason. It’s an intoxicating trip into the world of Saturday morning cartoons viewed through a wormhole. On top of Terror Fervor’s unique and captivating contents is the undeniable impact of Phoebe’s use of classic analogue animation techniques. Every second of the film is made up of 12 drawings. Maybe you know something about animation, maybe you don’t, but surely you can appreciate that 3200 drawings (the rough total of frames that make up TF,) illustrated and coloured by hand, morphing from one to the next at speed, is nothing to balk at. Sew in some self recorded sound effects, soundtrack, psychedelic liquid light oil visuals for the background, and the list goes on. Even if recording the sounds of squashing fruit, smashing eggs, or hitting meat with a hammer in a ramshackle tent of blankets and a microphone isn’t your idea of a good time, surely you can appreciate the results. For someone who wasn’t enrolled in any film classes in high school, “ended up at Emily Carr,” felt like “a career in animation was unobtainable” you could say she’s done alright for herself in film festivals around the world and featured on the Cartoon Network for Adult Swim’s series Off The Air.
So for a project that took 3200 drawings and five years to complete, how does one manage the pressure of progress as the calendar flips by? In an age of hyper exposure to the curated world of just about anyone with a smartphone, how does one navigate the burden of time management in an era pinned by the illusion there’s no time to spare?
Phoebe: You kinda gotta not care which is what happened with Terror Fervor because it seemed so far off anyway. I wasn’t thinking about film festivals or showing it to anyone which is why it’s so unique maybe, or why it doesn’t make sense, but is also really cool at the same time. I honestly didn’t consider the audience because it just seemed like this is the thing I’m doing now and who knows if it will ever be done. I really like the process and even though it’s so repetitive, there’s something super meditative about it. You have to think about it. It’s not nothing, especially with the painting. Each cell has at least four colours in it, and there’s shadows, so you have to think about what you’re doing, but it’s also not complicated. You’re doing like 20 at a time so it’s enough to keep your attention but you can be listening to a podcast and totally day dreaming at the same time. So it’s like a lucid meditation practice in a way. Like when I was drawing the whole thing I was... I just started drawing from the beginning to the end. I didn’t think about what I was doing, which you can tell, because it just starts with one character and then I just drew 3000 drawings and then watched it after. I didn’t even check my work. I was just watching Star Trek Next Generation the whole time kind of in this weird loophole zone. I mean you can't apply this to doing everything, it’s just good for animation. It’s like I was existing in another time and place and this just happened. I just woke up and this was done. But you kinda gotta wanna do it. Like I left my 12 hour, 14 hour shift, and went to the studio for at least one hour every night after work.
While Terror Fervor is boldly launching Phoebe’s talents into the eyes of new audiences, I also wanted to speak to her about Underwater, a beautiful and self reflective short that, for the first time, features Phoebe’s own voice. While animation and film making is nothing new to her at this point, she takes the comfort of her wheelhouse into territory previously avoided, and purposefully so.
Phoebe: So the way that I got over that was I just started looking for contests and things that would give me deadlines or put pressure on me in a way that doesn’t actually matter. No one actually cares if you apply to a contest. They don’t even know you exist. So I was looking at GIF contests and that short [Underwater] was made for Cineworks. They had a random call out for short films with found footage or minimal impact or without using new materials basically. Also it kind of alluded to either personal qualities or some kind of humanness, which is something I don’t include normally because I don’t usually have narrative or anything. So I kind of made it around those parameters. Also I wanted to have the opportunity because I didn’t think anyone even knew that I was making it for the contest. It’s great if it gets in but I don’t have to post it anywhere, no one has to see it, cause it was just a short thing I did in a couple of weeks.
I figured I might as well try using my actual voice and dialogue because I avoid that, like I had been consciously at that point thinking “ok, you have some kind of phobia against having your own voice,” which in animation is great to hide behind. You don’t ever have to know who’s doing it. Most people don’t care. So I just kind of pushed myself to do that and then in it got all meta because now it’s me talking about myself making this thing. I think I edited it a bit but my tangents started getting really far out, about things like time and space. I left enough of it in because that’s actually what I’m thinking, but yeah, it got pretty “what dimension are we really in right now?”
The content is probably also how I ended up finishing it because the whole thing is me talking about how to lose the fear of creating something by just imagining, whether you can or not, which is my whole thing. Of course you don’t have to believe in other dimensions. You don’t have to believe that time isn’t real or whatever, but you can imagine. You can pretend for a second and then, if it becomes true for you, great. You could jump forward and know that you already finished the project. I would imagine I’m sitting there watching that before I had started drawing it, which, now that I look at it, that’s what I saw. I did just imagine that the thing was already done and just kind of moved forward into that, and it would be like it’s already finished. It’s already something that exists in the future but you kinda need to go through the work of doing it so you can start the next thing.
So it was less like an “Oh my God, what am I making? What is the point of this? People are gonna hear my voice!” and all the reasons why it’s embarrassing or upsetting are kind of lost because it’s just a thing you need to do to move on. Which is why small projects are kind of great for that. I kept reminding myself “It’s going to be done in a couple weeks. You don’t have to worry too much.” Not that I have much of an issue with time, obviously. Terror Fervor never bothered me but it was so long. I tell people now how long it took and their faces are like … “Why? How? You must care so much!” And it’s like, I actually just kind of did it just in between it all. There’s me thinking about doing it and then there it is done. And then during the process of doing it there’s so much less pressure about it that you can kind of start other projects along the way which is great. I don’t really have an issue of only being able to focus on one thing. But now that it seems like when I’m working on things they’re kind of already done... it’s a whole other mind fuck of a way to do it, but it’s great. It totally works.
So there you have it, if you want to get into animation, do so naturally, brace the long term timeline through meditative process, and get your Youtube algorithm onto spacetime theory while exploring the possibilities of alternate dimensions. And if you’re still seeking more from Phoebe, and you should be, I would highly recommend Vimeo Staff Pick, The Fantastic Adventures of Cloudman, because to be quite frank, it fucking rules.
To see more of Phoebe and her work, she can be found on Instagram, Vimeo, YouTube, and her website.