The Three of Us
A film by Nirvan Mullick and Benjamin Goldman
music: Number Three by Ben Harper
Synopsis
A surreal love story, The Three of Us uses stop-motion, hand drawn animation, cutouts, and found objects to explore a dream world of memory. With music by Ben Harper.
35mm stop-motion TRT: 3 minutes made @ CalArts
© 2004 nirvan mullick and benjamin goldman
Reviews
"Sublimely otherworldly." - Baltimore City Paper
"A beautiful, Dali-esque work, compellingly strange and stunning." - Elaisaid, CINEQUEST REVIEW 2003
A surreal love triangle." - ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE 2/9/2004
"The Three of Us made an indelible mark at this year’s festival. Nirvan Mullick and Benjamin Goldman’s kinetic film combines stop-motion animation with cut-outs, scratches, and found objects. Although surely influenced by Tim Burton, the three-minute experiment also takes cues from the paintings of Egon Schiele and the works of Salvador Dali... In a format too often fraught with dilettantism and pretension, Mullick/Goldman buck the trend." - Mattias Frey, NEFilm Review
Production Notes
The Three of Us was a collaboration with Benjamin Goldman, started in 1999, a few weeks after we met at CalArts. Ben and I were both new students in the experimental animation program. New students were being offered a week of stop-motion studio time, so Ben and I decided to sign up together and combine our time to improvise a piece.
We did not have a finished film in mind initially. At first, we each designed characters. Ben brought in some rusty found objects from a burned down house on the hill next to his place. We also picked a piece of music (ben harpers number three') to give us some timing.
When everything mashed together, the ideas sparked and we came up with the idea for this film. We ended up devoting a lot more than the two weeks to the project. We spent the majority of our first year at CalArts working on the film. Some of our class assignments were even included in the film. After working on the project for our first year, we went separate ways to focus on our thesis films. I made The Box Man while Ben made The Pickle Jar. We then got caught up with graduating and everything else.
Three years later, after having graduated, we finally found time to get back together and finish 'the three of us.' The film was originally shot on 16mm. the footage was then transfered to high-definition, put on hard drives for editing, and eventually blown up to 35mm by FotoKem, post sound was completed by Danetracks.
the film premiered at the AFI Fest in 2004, and went on to have a short festival run.
Screening History
INDEPENDENT FILM FESTIVAL OF BOSTON
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A short film about the best cardboard arcade ever made.