This is the video that was supposed to launch this Substack. I’d been trying for years to tell people what I wanted to do—make journalism as beautiful and compelling as art and art as important and informative as journalism—and it felt like no one, absolutely no one, knew what I was talking about. So I set out to make a proof of concept.
At the time, voters in Portland were getting ready to vote on a ballot measure that would completely transform local government here, but hardly anyone with whom I spoke really understood how it would work or what the reforms actually entailed. I knew this topic was both a) important and b) boring, and thus the perfect project for me. If I could make something as tedious as charter reform even remotely accessible and entertaining, I’d have succeeded, and be on my way.
Luckily for me, I happen to be married to one of the world’s most talented animators (really), and I worked with him, an amazing puppet fabricator, and a fantastic puppet costumer to make the film above. We finished just before the election, so I ended up sharing it on Twitter instead. (Then I got a job for a year, and didn’t end up launching this Substack until the following fall.)
The reason I’m writing you today is that ever since I started collaborating with Ian, people often ask me if they can hire us to make a stop motion video for their company or band or social media account etc. and I usually have to say no, because all the animators I know work full time and are too busy. But we are in a very rare moment right now, where a lot of animators—many of whom worked on Pinocchio here in Portland, which you may remember won the Oscar for best animated feature (!)—are in between projects, and thus, available. If you’ve been wanting to make an animated video of any kind, now would be a very good time—just reply to this email or write me at portlandstack (at) substack.com.
p.s. If you’re watching Severance right now (and if you’re not, you should be—it’s soooo good), our friend Michael Granberry, along with Savannah Steiner and Jack Nop, animated Lumon is Listening, which is in the season two premiere, and he’s been posting amazing BTS on his Instagram feed. My favorite is the kiss.
Note: We made this video in the fall of 2022, before Portland’s District Commission finalized its map of the four voting districts. See the final map here. We also made another, more detailed stop motion film about charter reform and single transferable vote for Rose City Reform in 2024 which you can see here.
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