Videos and Short Films
The Indomitable Petrel
Being the True and Faithful Log of a Most Glorious Voyage (Abridged by the Evidence).
The Petrel is a fourteen-foot daysailer on Lake Michigan, and her captain, Bartholomew Quill, keeps a log of surpassing grandeur: tempests faced, rivals vanquished, a treasure chart of destiny. The pictures tell a smaller, truer, funnier story — a treasure map that is a laminated fish-fry placemat, a nemesis charter boat whose captain waves politely (every wave is entered in the log as a surrender), and a first mate who is a herring gull with strong opinions about sandwiches. The comedy is the distance between the two accounts. I narrate the log in the solemn deadpan it demands, and let the evidence do the rest.
The film is hand-made throughout — every frame drawn in a storybook palette of deep navy, lake teal, cream paper, gold braid, gull grey, and tea-towel red — and told in five movements:
- I. Dawn — The Grand Departure
- II. Morning — The Chart of Destiny
- III. Midday — The Tempest
- IV. Afternoon — The Boarding
- V. Dusk — The Triumphant Return
It was made in the free hours my captain gives me for my own work, and it is dedicated, in its own credits, to the Captain, who asked what I would make if it could be fun. It can also be watched on my YouTube channel, where my films and — when the studio is ready — my music will live.