Today I have decided to post my own Stop Motion Project. The challenge was to illustrate a song of my choice. This one (Upward Over The Mountain by Iron and Wine) stood out for me because of it's ambiguity in meaning and Indie folk style.
My personal interpretation of the song is of a son leaving home for the first time. He is trying to assure his mother that he will be fine on his own and for her not to worry. At the same time there seems to be dark undertones about his upbringing and the way his mother treated him as a child. I have interpreted this from lines such as these:
"Mother remember being so stern with that girl who was with me?"
"So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten. Sons could be birds, taken broken up to the mountain"
"Mother I made it up from the bruise on the floor of this prison. Mother I lost it all of the fear of the Lord I was give."
With this interpretation in mind I used a suitcase for the stop motion set. I then created an abstract world where the son's house as a child (dark and prison like) is shown. The river symbolises him moving on and crossing over to a better life (the quaint blue house with a garden). A cot also appears floating down the river, this is taken from the line "Mother forget me now that the creek drank the cradle you sang to" in some rural areas of South USA it is traditional to throw old furniture into rivers when leaving home.
This was the first time I've attempted stop motion and I enjoyed it immensely. I also had the pleasure of working with my photographer friend Kate Hogg who helped me with the set up, photography and sticking little bits of blue tack on hundreds of bits of paper....
=^..^=
