Runtime: 6m 40s
Runtime: 6m 40s
Online Release Date: July 1, 2025
Synopsis: Sarah and her cats go about their separate lives. The cats have strange dreams about their desires, and Sarah develops an unshakable paranoia that something is wrong with them. Sarah's paranoia bleeds into her social life, and the dreams of her cats come true.
About: Gemini was my thesis film for my BFA in Experimental Animation at CalArts in 2024. From idea to completion it took around a year to create, but the entire process of animating the film was done in around 4 months. I did all the animation using pencil on letter-size printer paper, the backgrounds are colored pencil, and everything was scanned into the computer and edited together using Photoshop and After Effects. Grace Dashnaw provided the soundtrack for the cats’ dreams, as well as the end of the film. I edited all the sound effects in ProTools using sound mostly sourced from Soundly mixed in with a few from Freesound.org and a few I recorded myself. All of this minus the soundtrack was done in A115, the CalArts experimental animation studios, which finally re-opened in 2023 after a flood which left them destroyed in 2020. Kahlil Kasir, and Callahan Bracken kept me company in the studio. Powered by a lot of coffee, 8 hours of sleep every night (until the final 2 weeks), and 3 meals a day. Thanks to my EA cohort for advice and motivation: Erin Park, Callahan Bracken, Rita Petviashvili, Siyi Yi, Natalie Leonffu, Emyr Eiler, Jeremy Pappas, Jinyang Han, Yuxi Dai, and Meicen Yi. And thanks always to Pyeong Choi, who was there every step of the way, and without whom this film never would have come into being.
Awards:
Mammoth Lakes Film Festival - Best Animated Short
Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival - Best Student Film
Full Screening List:
October, 2024
- Transfiguration International TV (Virtual)
- Sweaty Eyeballs Animation Festival (Baltimore, MD, USA)
- Open World Animation Festival (Allentown, PA, USA)
- Bucheon International Animation Festival (Bucheon, South Korea)
- Goa Short Film Festival (Goa, India)
November, 2024
- San Francisco Transgender Film Festival (San Francisco, CA, USA)
- CutOut Fest International Animation and Digital Arts Festival (CDMX, Mexico)
December, 2024
- BWater (Berlin, Germany)
- Malt Adult #31 (Chicago, IL, USA)
February 2025
- SlamDance Film Festival (Los Angeles, CA, USA)
March 2025
- Living Skies Student Film Festival (Regina, SK, Canada)
- Sea Slug Animation Festival (Seattle, WA, USA)
- Ann Arbor Film Festival (Ann Arbor, MI, USA)
- Tea Party with TV (Seoul, South Korea)
- AnimaVerso (Florianopolis, Brazil)
April 2025
- San Diego Underground Film Festival (San Diego, CA, USA)
May 2025
- Festival Angaelica (Pasadena, CA, USA)
- Twinning: Gemini & Animated Inspirations Curated by Jamie Griffiths (Madison, WI, USA)
- Mammoth Lakes Film Festival (Mammoth Lakes, CA, USA)
June 2025
- Animation at the Pier (Philadelphia, PA, USA)
Storyboard:
Backgrounds:
Behind the Scenes / Screening Documentation:
Gemini at Malt Adult #31 in Chicago.
The dream of one cat is to walk into walls.
A cat steals a sip from a bowl of cereal.
A cat steps into frame on the windowsill.
A background begins to come together.
The living room sofa.
The windowsill from the opening scene.
Sarah's design starts to come into view.
A cat stares into Sarah's soul. (this is the first sequence I animated for the film)
Graphite impressions are left on my lightbox.
The completed stack of all the frames.
Thanks for looking! ♥ - Jamie