Saturday, February 16, 2008
By Glenn Coin
Staff writer
In a rambling, two-story house in Vernon, a group of young animators is preserving and spreading ancient legends of the Oneida Indian people.
The Four Directions Productions animation studio has already produced its first feature, "Raccoon & Crawfish," which has won numerous awards at film festivals across the country and has even been screened in, of all places, a theater made of ice in Finland.
"I can remember my grandmother telling me this story," recalled Dale Rood, an Oneida who runs studio operations for Four Directions, owned by the Oneida Indian Nation. "My goal is to preserve the Oneida culture, the legends that have been played out from generation to generation. What better way to do that than to bring them to life through animation?"
Bringing ancient legends to life with modern technology is a staff of four animators, headed by Verona native Cal Waller. In their studio, the team created the characters from scratch, performed the voices in the sound studio upstairs, and polished the animation. The whole process took about a year.
"Raccoon & Crawfish" was screened at 22 film festivals last year, and won awards at five. So far this year, the film has been accepted at 15 festivals, including two in England.
"Raccoon & Crawfish" is a morality tale, an Aesopian fable that teaches that pride goes before a fall and that
honesty is the best policy. It's the story of Crawfish, who boasts falsely to his fellow crustaceans that he has slain their dragon the raccoon who considers them delicacies. But when they climb out of the water to celebrate Crawfish's victory, the raccoon awakes from his feigned death and gobbles them up.
In the final scene, with all the crawfish unwillingly gathered inside the raccoon's belly, an elder crawfish turns to the title character and says, "You are a liar." The screen fades to black.
The animation studio is just part of the Oneida nation's video and audio production arm. Four Directions has produced, among other things: animated kiosks on Oneida nation history for the Children's Museum of Utica; advertising for Turning Stone Resort and Casino, Ferris Industries and other clients; a documentary on Native American dances that appeared on NBC; and videos about Saratoga and Valley Forge historical parks.
Rood credits nation leader Ray Halbritter with supporting the production group's efforts.
"For an Oneida person," said Rood, a member of the tribe's Turtle Clan, "it's really gratifying that the nation and Ray had enough foresight and a vision to utilize resources in a way that preserves our culture."
Four Directions has taken over the large house on Route 5. The kitchen has been left in place, and staff members often have lunch at the counter, and there's a foosball table in the next room. The staff has even been known to have a hot dog cookout for lunch in the middle of winter.
The animators are housed on the lower level, their offices crowded with huge computer screens and high-powered processors. Rood said Four Directions uses more computer processing power than the rest of the nation combined, including the Turning Stone resort complex.
On a digital tablet on the left side of his desk, Waller demonstrates how he created the image of Crawfish, whose googly eyes dangle above his head on antennae. As he draws a stylus across the screen, Crawfish's oversized head rotates and changes in color from pencil gray to a rusty tan.
When Waller has finished creating the shell of the character, it's Karabo Legwaila's turn to add the skeleton, which determines how the character moves.
"We have kind of a think tank down here," Waller says. "We just throw out crazy ideas until you come up with one you like."
Long before they put stylus to screen, the animators have to come up with the story. A legend is one thing; a cohesive, 8-minute film with dialogue is another.
"You take a Native American legend and you have to make it more exciting for animation," said Legwaila, a native of Botswana who started work at Four Directions when "Raccoon & Crawfish" was about half finished. "The computer stuff is easy. It's coming up with the good story that works and makes people laugh, with that message you're trying to put out that's the hard part."
The group is working on a second feature, and while no one will say officially what the subject is, an entire wall downstairs is filled with drawings that sketch out the tale of the turtle and the beaver.
© 2008 The Post-Standard. Used with permission.
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