Staff Pick Premiere: "Charlotte" by Zach Dorn |

This week's Staff Pick Premiere, forgotten folk-singer Lena Black discovers her fifty-year-old song "Charlotte" has been remade into a smash pop hit. In the aftermath of the release, filmmaker Zach Dorn explores how the legacy of the song impacts Lena, her daughter Diane as well as her 11-year-old grandchild, Eli.

In a letter addressed to the popular singer, Lena writes: "There is more to it than forgetting or to be not understood." The central idea runs through the entire film as the newfound popularity reveals the old hurts. In a series of all-but-one conversation - including the letter of Lena, Diane's telephone call, as well as Eli's cassette tape - Dorn draws a moving depiction of a family that begins to hear each other through music.

If asked about his distinctive design for the film Dorn explained: "I loved the conceit of exploring these connections without ever seeing the family interact with one another. Through the use of isolated monologues, I wanted it to be as if the characters were each creating each their own versions of the same tune. There are generational, geographical, and emotional gaps, but, hopefully there is something that lies at the heart of their struggles ends up converging into the same song."

It's a familiar tune to those who have experienced the separation of their families however "Charlotte" differs from other family drama we've shared on the . Using hand-made puppets and stop-motion animation, Dorn takes us inside their stories, experiences, and imaginations, for an incredibly emotional experience.

 Ahead of the release We reached out to Dorn to find out more about his influences the process, style, and process. Check out the interview to learn more details about "Charlotte."

 On the film's inspiration:

"In 2019, I made an animated show about the world's biggest sponge, as well as the hit TV show Gilmore Girls. One day, while picking up some miniature supplies in the faux flower aisle at a Michael's Craft retailer, Carly's rendition of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" heard on the speaker. It's a wildly upbeat cover and a wonderful bubbly pop tune, which is odd because the original version is difficult and empathetic. This was an amazing feeling, because I loved this Carly Rae cover so much. For me, the popular version, despite being more artificial it still had all the emotion that Joni Mitchell's version had. I felt jaded and dismayed over this notion, yet kept imagining Carly Rae Jepsen as well as Joni Mitchell's version of "Both Sides Now" in conversation. This conversation eventually became the lyrics of "Charlotte ."

 On making the script

"I thought of the first"Charlotte "Charlotte" as radio plays, in the form of a Joe Frank voyeuristic drama, that was set in miniature scenes without the use of puppets. I composed the story from the viewpoints of eight characters who all had a personal or professional relationship that was built around the tune "Charlotte." After having spent time getting acquainted with these characters, Diane and Eli felt the most interesting, and so I kept them in the mix along with Lena and the pop star T.Y.M. After I had figured out this and was able to understand the story, I spent lots of time trying to determine how to make their stories intersect."

 on the collaboration in music:

"When I wrote "Charlotte," I always imagined musician Jenna Caravello in mind. While I was writing the song, I began sending the fictional Rolling Stone interviews featuring Lena Black and some of fake diary entries. With this data, Jenna wrote the folk tune.

 I sent Jenna's song to Zhenya Golikova who I connected with online. In the year 2020, Zhenya covered these voice memo tunes that I composed to a friend, silly and silly songs about kittens and marshmallows and missing someone in another country, and the following year, Zhenya turned my tunes into amazing ballads. It has that Magnetic Fields sound, as though the songs were written underwater by wild sea monkeys.. I sent her Jenna's song and she got her own version of the song a week later ."

 On the talk-show segment:

"So many female folk artists in the 60s and 70s were deeply under-appreciated. Musicians like Vashti Bunyan, Karen Dalton, Linda Perrhacs as well as The Roches, were either ignored or were pushed aside into categories such as "freak folk" and were not taken in the same way as their male counterparts. I think there's this an interesting contradiction, where folk music is regarded as having progressive ideals, while still immersed in a specific type of quiet sexual sexism.

 With these artists in mind, I kept imagining Lena in this tense moment of her career. in order to stay relevant it would be necessary to engage in the 1970s Laurel Canyon lifestyle, party with the right people as well as take the appropriate drugs , and live in a world created and run by males. But I don't believe she'd be up for it. Perhaps it was because she was a mom perhaps, or maybe she could see through It all. I'm not sure. But I was motivated by her sadness - which was spread across the course of a lifetime, mourning for a career. What does she do with her anger? How does the grief play out in her relationship with her daughter? Thinking about these questions I decided to try writing Lena's interactions with Sam as the prologue for her bond with her daughter."

 On developing his unique visual style:

 "In my 20s and early twenties I was a puppeteer. However, I wasn't very good at the art. I'm missing an eighth part of my brain. I believe it has led to a inability to perceive spatial space. Making or manipulating things with three dimensions was impossible. However, I did stumble upon Toy Theater, a type of two-dimensional puppetry once common in the late 19th century of England. I began to build tiny dioramas out of matte board and acrylics, like pop-up books. I manipulated live-projecting digital cameras inside of them while I told stories about my landlord or dead dog.

 I am obsessed with the specifics of stuff, whether it's the barcode on an Doritos bag or the shape of an McDonald's Happy Meal box. Maybe because of the missing brain, I'm not able to make in straight lines, or design anything too realistically - so I'm like this which is like a mashup of something falling apart and obsessed.

 For the puppets, I collaborated with stop-motion animators Oliver Levine and Lily Windsor to create a slightly gritty and textural style that was appropriate to the hand-painted film's world. Since I made the film during the lockdown, we worked across the country, Lily from Chicago, shipping tiny boxes of llamas as well as Oliver dropping head-sculpts off at my front door in Burbank ."

 The next step:

 "Currently, I am independently developing a documentary about The CGI Livia Soprano from the third season of The Sopranos, as well as the genetic mutation known as BRCA2. I grew up with an Italian American family filled with many eccentric customs and characters, however at the end of my 20s the BRCA2 caused the break-up of these family bonds through the premature deaths of members of the family.

 In 2020, I watched The Sopranos for the first time. Every episode made me feel like I had a conversation with my family again. Today, I'm creating the film where I recreate home videos in stop-motion and analyze Livia Soprano's posthumous performance the context of my own personal experiences with grief ."