Piano-Forte

"Piano-Forte" is an award-winning student thesis film by Pell Osborn, a student at Harvard University's Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts in 1974-75, in the "Beginning Animation" class taught by animator and designer Eric Martin. The soundtrack is Jess Stacy's rollicking piano solo from the famous 1938 live performance of "Sing Sing Sing," by the Benny Goodman Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Rotoscoped, hand-drawn artwork of W.C. Fields (the famous comedian, also an accomplished juggler), Francisco Picasso (headline juggler with the Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey Circus Red Unit), Don and Lana Reed (aka The Amazing Fantasy Jugglers) alternates with abstract animation synchronized frame-by-frame to the soundtrack. "Piano-Forte" screened in competition at the 1975 New York International Animation Film Festival, and opened the Annual Juggling Jamboree of the International Jugglers Association in Youngstown, Ohio. The filmmaker offers many thanks to Mary Beams, Murray Horwitz, Marjorie Prager and Lynn Smith for their encouragement and support.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Piano Forte
• Benny Goodman Orchestra
• Harvard University
• Jess Stacy
• Francisco Picasso
• W.C. Fields
• The Amazing Fantasy Jugglers
• Beginning Animation
• Rotoscope Animation
• Hand-drawn Animation
• cartoon
• animated
• college