Animating Poe: I Did the Voiceover on George Higham's New Film

Back in 1999, I was contacted by George Higham, who asked if I might be interested in doing some voiceover work on a film he was making. Now, I've known George for many years, and under a variety of guises?as a sculptor, as a source of information on issues like plastination and also as a good friend?a surprisingly sweet and even-tempered man, considering the general subject matter of his artwork. Higham's sculptures, you might say, take a few steps beyond the macabre. Baby skeletons, dead angels?one of the pieces I have at home is titled Fetus de Milo, an armless (and pregnant) female mummy whose belly has been opened to reveal the tiny fetal skeleton she carried inside.

Yet despite the immediate, external horror of the subject matter, his work also embodies a strange and undeniable beauty.

His work had always impressed me, so I agreed?especially after hearing that the film he was making was a stop-motion animated version of Edgar Allan Poe's final poem, "Annabel Lee."

My job in the film was very simple?I just had to recite the poem, and scream. It only took a short afternoon to record. Higham's work, however, took two and a half years of toiling away on miniature sets in his cramped Brooklyn basement. He recently finished the film, and having seen it, I can say that it's certainly something unmistakably his own?a 20-minute vision of both horror and beauty, as Poe wanders through a nightmare world, searching for his dead love, Annabel Lee. Along the way, he encounters various malevolent angels, alien half-creatures, bridges made of skulls and Death himself. It's minutely detailed, and gorgeous to look at. For a guy working essentially alone in his basement, shooting one frame at a time, he did a hell of a job.

George and I sat down a few weeks ago to talk about what it took to bring "Annabel Lee" to life.

I was surprised?though I'm sure he must have told me this before?that Annabel Lee was his second film. His first, Necromania (no relation to the 1971 Ed Wood feature), was his SVA thesis film.

That film, he says, was "more or less a morality tale, presented as a horror film." In it, a woman who practices black magic and human sacrifice tries to atone for what she's done, at a point where she's way past atoning. It was later shown on the PBS series First Look. I asked George why he moved from that?his degree was in filmmaking?into sculpture.

"It came down to a matter of cost," he said. "I attended SVA on a merit scholarship. That enabled me to take the money I would have spent towards the education, and put it towards making the film. For about two years after graduating, Tony [Pellegrino?who did the postproduction work on Annabel Lee] was trying to produce a feature version of Necromania with me. We shopped it around, and didn't have too much luck with that."

He credits longtime companion Dr. Sharon Packer with urging him toward sculpture. "It was something I was able to do with very little expenditure of money. I could sell the sculptures, and try to get gallery shows and exhibitions." Still, he was determined to make films again, so he got a job and started planning. "It was going to be a number of different films all through the 90s. The one it ended up being was Annabel Lee."

When asked why he decided to use stop motion, Higham said he never really conceived of doing it any other way?though he could have. "There was a wealth of material, which I had to cut down. I could've been making this for the rest of my life by pumping different things into it." Cost was again an important determining factor. "I had the ability to sculpt the puppets, make the sets and shoot them myself. Granted, it took much longer because of that?but cost-wise, it's something I was able to do."

He started thinking about the project seriously in 1998, while spending a month in Prague, studying the architecture?something he would later attempt to recreate in miniature. His direct inspiration, however, came during a visit to the Poe house in Philadelphia, where he was shown a short film based on "The Black Cat."

"I think it was made in association with BBC television. It was wonderful?it was really amazing and really creepy. It had an actor who looked like Poe reciting the story as events happened around him. It was very inspiring to see that something so exciting could be done with a short film and Poe's work. That got me thinking about Poe in particular?I always liked 'Annabel Lee,' and I love rhymes. It's as simple as that." The poem, he says, also represents the quintessential Poe, condensing everything he was known for into a few short stanzas.

He spent most of 1999 working on the script and building the puppets and the sets. Sometime later, after I'd agreed to read for him, he had me and Morgan over to take a look at what he was doing. It really was something. His basement was packed with sculptures and materials?with the current set stuffed onto a work table in the back corner. He went through all the puppets he'd made?from the disturbing "Misery Angel" to the tiny half-rats that skitter through the alleyways. He made the puppets out of anything he could get his hands on.

"Everything from animal bones and wire to old rusted mechanical pieces and gears," he explained. "Anything that I collected over the years, knowing I would use it one day."

I asked about the Misery Angel in particular, who, among other things, had a screaming, eyeless face that seemed to be made of cracked eggshell.

"He was actually inspired by a quick shot I saw of a mummy, in a mummy documentary on the Discovery Channel at some point. One of these many mummy shows. It was a series of dissolves, and they showed this one very quickly, and it looked like his features were grown over with cracked plates. Just his mouth was visible. From what I recall?I might be filling in some blanks in my memory. That image stuck with me. I sculpted his head in clay in miniature, and I took broken eggshell and pressed it into the clay before I made the mold."

Pretty much the only thing you see onscreen that Higham didn't make by hand was the puppet of Annabel Lee herself?who, he explained, was "Frankensteined together" from several different fashion dolls.

"It was mainly my trying to find a dress that would fit, and that would be in the same scale as Poe. I had done a small bust of Edgar Allan Poe. That came first, and that figured into the idea of doing a Poe puppet film, because I had just finished the sculpture. I thought, 'This would be a good size for a puppet,' and figuring out the body, he was about 16 inches tall, so that set the scale for the rest. I did some smaller versions of him, with the idea of doing sets that would look much bigger. It got to be a little overwhelming, trying to design everything myself and conceive of different sets and different sizes. It was actually going to be more work than would have been noticed, or worth it. So I just stuck with the 16-inch scale. It was a lot of work making those smaller Poe puppets that I never used. I have all the pieces sitting home in boxes. That was a good part of 1999 that I wish I had back."

For the next two years, Higham hid in the basement at night and on the weekends?whenever he could find time away from work?shooting the film one or two frames at a time. He'd build a set, film what he needed on it, then (because of space considerations) he'd have to dismantle it, before building the next set for the next scene.

"A good night would be getting maybe 10 seconds of animation. The longest animated shot in the film is 18 seconds?that's Poe walking across the interior of the tomb to Annabel Lee's sarcophagus. In general, I try to get two five-second shots a night, and I always had a second before and after as a bumper for cutting."

He stayed in contact with me the whole time?every week or two I'd get a progress report. It moved very slowly, but it was always moving ahead. There was never a moment when he seemed to hesitate at all, when he seemed to ask himself how he'd gotten into this situation.

Higham describes most of the shooting as a one-man-band operation. Shoot a frame, move a hand or a foot, then shoot another frame. Afterward, though, a few other people became involved. First was Higham's old partner from SVA, Tony Pellegrino.

"I gave all the footage to Tony. Then it was a one-man band that he was playing. What he did with it was amazing?all the visual effects, the composites, everything. Cutting the sound and the music, the title sequence, that's all him. I told him how I envisioned it, then we put it together, then I stepped back to let him do whatever he wanted to make it better. A lot of the effects he came up with. He really took my ideas and ran with them, expounded on them a great deal."

For the score, he contacted another old friend from SVA, Pat Gillis?who, together with Bill Warford, had formed the experimental musical outfit Northern Machine. They altered their usual industrial style pretty drastically to fit the mood of the film.

Now that the film is complete and he's already received praise from Joe Coleman and acceptance into the first two film festivals he applied to (SITGES and the H.P. Lovecraft Film Festival?though he's still waiting to hear from dozens more), Higham's looking ahead to his next film?a live-action feature entitled Opal.

Meanwhile, he still has a basement full of sets and puppets.

"I preserved everything I could. As a sculptor, I didn't want to leave this two-and-a-half-year experience without sculptural work to show for it. Although it killed me to take a lot of the sets apart. It killed me."

Annabel Lee will receive its first New York screening on Weds., Oct. 31, as part of the Anthology Film Archives' New Filmmaker Series, 32 2nd Ave. (2nd St.), 505-5181. There will be a discussion at 6, followed by the 7 p.m. screening. For more info concerning the film and Higham's other projects, visit www.poepuppet.com.