full-size poster image (9.4MB)

Kim's final touch for the story was that this mouse doesn't just love to eat cheese; they love it so much they inject it into their veins. So, at the end of the cheesemaking journey is an IV drip and a medical chair, where (in our minds, anyway) our mouse could bring a sauce made of the homemade cheeses, to have it fed right into their bloodstream, then safely pass out.

For me, that was the moment "Inner Peace" was born. (The title came later; it was just "Farmer Mouse" when we started work on it, and it went by "Grounded" for a while. "Tend" was another contender.) Ironically, the IV idea is also what caused the most trouble, but more on that later.

We kept the protagonist as a mouse, even though there wasn't any real reason to, and I scribbled a characteristically face-heavy critter that we quickly grew attached to. At first, I wanted to see whether I could quickly put together shots for an animated cartoon. Simple art, simple animation, abstract backgrounds, everything kept very basic and minimalist. My default mode for moviemaking over the past ten years conditioned me to approach it this way: "Quick! We only have 48 hours! Cut all the corners and get this minute-and-a-half cartoon done!"

But, the story that unfolded is and always was one of patience, not rushing. Getting out of a project (or, life) what one puts into it. Loving what you do and doing what you love.

So, slowly but surely, I began slowing down. The look of the movie stayed very simple, but we wanted to have thought and love put into each scene. We wanted the movie (and our process of making it) to be able to breathe.

Once we let each step take some time and put in some ambient sound, that feeling of letting things breathe really took hold. This wasn't a 90-second story; it was four or five minutes. I did most of the animation and editing work, periodically showing new scenes and bouncing ideas with Kim. For the most part it was very linear; we had the opening first and completed each scene in turn, more or less. Once some new stuff was ready, I'd export another revision and we'd watch it together, figuring out what tweaks were still needed.

Then, I had a "complete" version which Kim couldn't make it through. The idea had come out of her head, and it was rendered in the cartooniest of cartoony fidelity, but the IV needle going into our mouse's arm snapped something in her brain. She'd recently had blood drawn (always a difficult process for her, to put it mildly) and her hand still hurt from it, so we agreed not to have any more preview screenings until that situation was healed.

I felt really awful about triggering such a reaction. Part of me wanted to do whatever it took, and make whatever changes, to make things ok. Another part of me dug in its heels: we need to see the cartoon needle go in. All the steps and all the process and all the work leads up to that moment. It's the inflection point where the love of cheese goes from purely cute to fanatical.

In any case, the break from regular previews was a good one. I got to leave it for a while and watch it again fresh. When I did, the "complete" movie didn't feel complete anymore. Swirling into cheesy bliss for ten seconds or so was the entirity of the mouse's cheese-in-the-veins experience, but that felt... too fast.

He needed to go on a trip.

(tripping)

Next, I had the most fun I've had working on a movie in years. Our high selves have been one with the infinite fractal that is our shared universe, and that is what our mouse had to feel when reaping the rewards of his efforts. Listening to music high has let us feel and smell the inside of the guitar where the strings' vibrations were resonating. We've been the tomato and basil from our garden, drinking the water, bathing in sunlight, then sliced and grilled up in a cheese sandwich. We've had those one-with-the-universe experiences. It was a joy and a privilege to conjure up illustrations of those feelings, and to figure out how to flow from each moment to the next.

Of course, it meant we needed more music than the pair of psychedelic chords I'd found for the first cut. I hit up my usual sources of license- and royalty-free music online, and grabbed a few trippy options.

We listened to them together, and one of them that stood out as a strong possibility had some serious Twin Peaks vibes. I was almost ready to dismiss it on those grounds, but we decided I'd have to play with it in the edit and see which (if any) of the pieces felt right. That same night, we read the news that David Lynch had passed away.

When someone dies, someone who used parts of themselves to make their world better, it is our responsibility to carry with us some of those traits with us. Lynch leaned into the weird and mysterious. He sensed the fractal; his work was equally complex up close as far away. And, it just so happened that the Twin-Peaks-reminiscent music we found didn't merely feel good with early cuts of the tripping sequence; it introduced exactly the right tempo for each next thread, and started doing more lifting than I expected any music to do. The universe had spoken.

The tripping sequence became the crux of the piece. It was bizarre to think we'd spent so much time without it. All the other ingredients and choices got recontextualized -- we hadn't kept the protagonist a mouse for no reason; now we could see his distinctive pointy face in the seeds and the curds and the molecules and the cosmos.

And so, the much-more-complete cut felt finished. After hammering out a few rounds of technical problems, I felt like we'd succeeded in telling the story we'd set out to tell. The only trouble was, Kim had yet to face it again.

After a few more days, she was ready. The needle shot in question still tenses her up every time, but she can get through it, and we can enjoy the fruits of our shared imagination.