Pavlov’s Bell

Take a thrilling journey with Aimee Mann through the immersive experience of a pop-up paper airplane book set to the tune of her song “Pavlov’s Bell”.

When I was eight I made up some amazing adventures with toy cars and Star Wars action figures, sitting in a tiny chair at the big red table in my upstairs bedroom. Evan Mather is one artist who has had the courage to remain at his childhood table; the through-line of his Mac-based movie output remains the world of little plastic toys.

Notorious to Star Wars fanboys for his curb-level lowbrow yet artful deconstructions of the George Lucas universe, the Tarantino universe and potty humor, Mather did a whole slew of stop-motion desktop animated films, beginning in 1997, starring his own collection of vintage Kenner action figures. If your inner eight-year-old isnt tickled by the incessant fart jokes, your post-modern lobe will get a workout watching the Miracle gunfight sequence from Pulp Fiction re-enacted by Han Solo and Luke Skywalker dolls. (In a priceless bit of sampling from Star Wars, skeptical Han survives a close-range phaser blast from a stormtrooper only to quip, I call it luck.)

Mathers drawn animations are more personal in their surrealism. In Fansom the Lizard, a child dreams his pet lizard has gone to Vegas after his mother sucks it up with the vacuum cleaner. Action figures and Fisher-Price dolls figure heavily into Mathers flat CGI character designs; elbows are frozen, arms swivel 360° at the shoulder, two slashes make the eyebrows above dotted eyes on noseless faces. Pavlovs Bell, Mathers music video for the Aimee Mann song of the same name, goes further with this design tack.

Pavlovs Bell is the second video Mather has done for Mann, following Red Vines in 2001. If you see this new short on the big-screen, watch out; this turbulent air-travel-themed piece could give you motion sickness. Aimees on a plane to Idaho, in a pop-up paper landscape covered in the wheat fields and power lines of the great American flyover. The scenario confirms what you suspected as a child when the plane doors close, they lift you up, bounce you around and thats it. Mathers plane is land-locked above a field, accordioning on a length of folded cardboard, a metaphor that the viewer can fly anywhere. Its a bracing and boldly-colored world brought to life by Mathers innovate designs.
Animation World Magazine

***** – Mather’s uses a child-like style of paper cut-out drawings like those movies many first-time filmmakers made as kids using construction paper and a Super 8 camera. Mather then brings these simple drawings into 3-D and then clashes their innocence into harsh, real-life settings. The result is unsettling in all the good ways. “Pavolv’s Bell” is perhaps the best music video short I have seen in a decade and if MTV had any balls they’d show it. Otherwise, find it online and download this sucker, just have a barf bag handy.
Film Threat

2003
Short
U.S.A.
English
4-1/2 minutes
Evan Mather

Screening: 1st International Animation Celebration

Screening: North By Northeast

Screening: Independent Exposure

Screening: Annapolis Reel Cinema Festival

Screening: MicroCineFest

Screening: Festival du Film de L’Internet

Screening: 1 Reel Film Fest 8