Tainted Love Claymation

Video is slowly creeping its way into our lives (with its dual saviors, common culture and E, flanking its introduction). I am simultaneously suspicious and excited. My biggest concern is P's apparent confusion about the difference between reality and movies. He gets the leap between story-world and our world, but movies look so... real! So, with E away playing in Atlantic City with his brothers, P and I played with a project I hoped would allay my worries...

Despite BB's true status of "magic" P realizes that the monster can't really walk on his own (thus the constant requests for me to "do BB!!!") (Even there, though, some confusion seems to reign. P often whispers to me, so that BB can't hear. And when BB goes missing in the house, P calls to him, demanding the monster tell us where he is. When the lost doll doesn't respond, P tells me to make BB talk, but appears confused when I say I can't respond with the location if I don't know where BB's hiding. So P moves onto helpful questions, asking BB if its dark or light, hot or cold, soft or hard... Its as if he thinks I'm channeling the thing rather than the actual soul of it :) Even though the monster's abilities aren't completely concrete in P's mind, lack of walking ability seems pretty certain. So we decided to make him walk, without my hands.

After the sculpting (for claymation) and script writing (you should have heard P's initial script plans! Oh, the heights of elaborateness! The kid is Hollywood bound ;) we proceeded to the filming. The special effect (BB falling) was necessary, as P is fascinated with the idea of the impossible becoming possible to the eye, but still not actually being possible. It all took eons. Later, as we edited on my computer and I showed P the initial results he was flabbergasted. "Why is it so short? We worked for so long!"

I'm afraid the results, slapped together and greatly aided by a four year old, are less grand than the four year old had hoped, but it certainly showed him how something unreal can look (kinda) real through movies. This, hopefully, will help me to worry less about this media messing with his mind.... Now if we could just cut the "stupid"s, "shut up"s and "idiot"s from kid's movies. Seriously, I'd rather my kid yell "fuck" really loud when he falls down than call someone stupid...