Staff Pick Premiere: "Charlotte" by Zach Dorn |

In this episode of the Staff Pick Premiere, forgotten folk singer Lena Black discovers her fifty-year-old track "Charlotte" was remade into a hit pop song. In the aftermath of the album's release, filmmaker Zach Dorn explores how the influence of the original song has on Lena and her daughter Diane and her eleven-year-old grandchild, Eli.

In her letter to the popular singer, Lena writes: "There is something far worse than being forgetten or to be confused." The central idea is embedded throughout the film, as the track's recent triumph reveals past hurts. In a series of all-but-one conversations - Lena's letter, Diane's call and Eli's cassette recording - Dorn paints a poignant portrait of a family starting to listen to each other over the sound of music.

If asked about his distinctive style for the film Dorn said: "I loved the conceit of exploring these relationships without ever seeing the family members interact. Through the use of distinct monologues, I wanted it to feel like they were all creating their own version of the song. There are generational physical, emotional and geographical gaps, but, hopefully there is something that lies at the heart of their anxieties is able to be merged into the same song."

It's a familiar tune for audiences that have felt their families drift apart, but "Charlotte" is unlike any other family drama we've shared on the . Using hand-made puppets and stop-motion animation, Dorn takes us inside their lives, memories, and imaginations to create an emotional experience.

 Prior to the publication We reached out to Dorn to find out more about his inspiration as well as his process and design. Check out the interview to learn more about "Charlotte."

 The film's source of inspiration:

"In 2019 I created a puppet show about the world's largest sponge and the TV series Gilmore Girls. A few days ago, as I was shopping for miniature items at the faux floral aisle of a Michael's craft retailer, Carly's cover of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" came on the loudspeaker. The cover is incredibly upbeat an excellent bubbly pop track that is a bit odd considering the original version is complex and mournful. This was an amazing feeling, because I loved the Carly Rae cover so much. To me, the popular version although it was less slick was still full of the emotional complexities of Joni Mitchell's original. I felt conflicted and embarrassed over this notion, yet was able to imagine Carly Rae jepsen as well as Joni Mitchell's version of "Both Sides Now" as they conversed. That conversation would eventually become the script for "Charlotte ."

 On making the script

"I thought of the first"Charlotte "Charlotte" as an radio show, a sort of the Joe Frank voyeuristic drama, set inside footage of miniature worlds, without puppets. I composed the story from the viewpoints of eight characters that all were in a professional or personal relationship that was built around the song "Charlotte." When spending time getting to know the characters Diane and Eli felt the most interesting, and so I kept them around along with Lena as well as pop-star T.Y.M. When I realized this it was time to spend a great deal of hours trying to find out the best way to weave their stories intersect."

 On the music collaboration:

"When I wrote "Charlotte," I always imagined singer Jenna Caravello in mind. When I wrote the lyrics, I recorded her fictional Rolling Stone interviews featuring Lena Black and some of faux-diary entries. With this data, Jenna wrote the folk tune.

 Jenna's tune was sent to Zhenya Golikova who I met online. In the year 2020, Zhenya covered these voice notes I had written to a friend, silly and silly songs about marshmallows and cats and missing someone in a different country. And the following year, Zhenya changed my lyrics into amazing ballads. The music she created has that early Magnetic Fields vibe, like it was written by the sea by horny marine monkeys.. I sent her Jenna's song and she had the pop version one week after. ."

 on the talk-show program:

"So numerous female folk singers in the 60s and 70s were deeply under-appreciated. Artist like Vashti Bunyan Karen Dalton, Linda Perrhacs, as well as The Roches, were either ignored or relegated to categories such as "freak folk" and were not taken with the same respect as male counterparts. I think there's this fascinating contradiction in that folk music is associated with modernist ideals but is being entangled in a particular kind of subtle gender-based misogyny.

 When I was thinking of these artists I could not help but imagine Lena at this strange moment in her career. to maintain relevancy her career would require participation in the 1970s Laurel Canyon lifestyle, party with the right crowd and take the proper drugs - a world made and governed by men. And I just don't think she'd want to do that. Perhaps because she's a mother and maybe she saw through It all. It's hard to say. However, I was influenced by her grief - spread over an entire lifetime of mourning over an entire career. What happens to the anger of her? What happens to her grief? out with her daughter? Thinking about these questions I decided to try writing Lena's interaction with Sam as a prologue to her bond with her daughter."

 On developing his unique visual style:

 "In my early 20s, I trained as a puppeteer. However, I wasn't very good at it. I am missing an eighth of my brain , and I believe it has led to an utter lack of spatial awareness. Making or manipulating things in three dimensions was out of the question. Luckily, I fell into Toy Theater, a type of two-dimensional puppetry which was once very popular in late 19th century England. I began to build tiny dioramas out of matte board and acrylics, such as pop-up books. I used live-projecting digital cameras within of them, while telling stories about my landlord or my dog who had died.

 I get obsessed over the small details of stuff, whether it's the bar code of the bag of Doritos, or the design of a McDonald's Happy Meal box. Maybe because of the missing brain, I'm unable to cut in straight lines, or design anything too realistically - so, I have this style which is like a mashup of something falling apart and obsessed.

 To create the puppets, I worked with stop motion animators Oliver Levine and Lily Windsor to maintain a slightly grotesque and textural style that was appropriate to the hand-painted film's world. As I was making the film in the time of the lockdown, we had to work on a long-distance basis, Lily from Chicago, mailing tiny boxes of llamas as well as Oliver dropping head-sculpts off at my front door Burbank ."

 What's next?

 "Currently, I am independently working on a short documentary on the CGI Livia Soprano from the third season of The Sopranos, as well as this genetic defect known as BRCA2. I grew up with an Italian American family filled with a bunch of eccentric traditions and characters, however at the end of my 20s the BRCA2 caused the break-up of these family bonds by causing the death of members of the family.

 In 2020, I watched The Sopranos for the first time. Each episode felt like I had a the conversation of my family. Now, I am making a film about this experience that recreates home movies in stop-motion , and then analyze Livia Soprano's posthumous performance connection to my own grieving experiences. ."