Animator. Director. Artist. Scapegoat.
“3 Behold, the hand of the Lord is upon thy cattle which is in the field….there shall be a very grievous murrain.” –Exodus 9, King James Version
The fabulous music here is “Dead Animals” by Mental Decay. You should really hear the whole song. I have no idea why this band isn’t more famous.
The Plague of Murrain comes after the Plague of Flies, which is good because I have animated flies on hand already.
I love making endless loops in Flash, especially when they involve “perspective.”
Shofar, sho good:
“21 Else, if thou wilt not let my people go, behold, I will send swarms of flies upon thee, and upon thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thy houses: and the houses of the Egyptians shall be full of swarms of flies, and also the ground whereon they are.” –Exodus 8, King James Version
Like Lice before it (and Locusts to follow) this Plague has Oingo Boingo’s “Insects” (1982) as a soundtrack. Lyrics:
Flying insects everywhere!
Flying insects buzzing, buzzing, buzzing through the air
Just like little diamonds in the sky
Insects buzzing in my eye!
Buzzing insects make me want to dance!
(Dance, dance, etc.)
This is still rough. Things will change before it goes into the final Seder-Masochism movie, not least by the addition of sound effects. Notice Aharon is in this scene, blowing a shofar with Moses. I might retroactively stick him in a few other scenes too, since he seems OK.
There’s gonna be a whole plague of these.
Proof? Here’s your proof.
Head on over here between 2 and 4pm EST today, Friday February 27.
UPDATE: Reddit is not allowing me to post. On my own IAMA. Granted, this IAMA was set up by someone else, who said he had duly submitted my handle (Nina_Paley, created a week ago) to the mods. But it didn’t work. I was on the calendar, but I can’t respond to questions. I am not happy about this but mods aren’t responding, so I give up. You can AMA on Twitter instead.
UPDATE 2: after half an hour the problem was corrected, and I went back and answered questions.
Music is from “Frogs” by DJ Zeph featuring Azeem, from the album “Sunset Scavenger.” It’s from 2004, making it the most contemporary song in the film. I almost used Taylor Swift’s 2014 “Bad Blood” for Blood, but I ended up deciding Josh White’s 1933 “Blood Red River Blues” was simply a better song. It wasn’t due to fear of lawsuits; I decided long ago not to allow copyright to determine my artistic choices. If you don’t know my stance on Intellectual Disobedience, you can learn about it here:
youtube.com/watch?v=dfGWQnj6RNA
and here:
blog.ninapaley.com/2013/12/07/make-art-not-law-2/
I’m curious what frogs DJ Zeph and Azeem were originally referring to. Here, of course, the frogs are these:
“3 And the river shall bring forth frogs abundantly, which shall go up and come into thine house, and into thy bedchamber, and upon thy bed, and into the house of thy servants, and upon thy people, and into thine ovens, and into thy kneadingtroughs:
“4 And the frogs shall come up both on thee, and upon thy people, and upon all thy servants.” -Exodus 8, King James Version