December 9th, 2019 
Aubry J. Mintz 
Patrick Smith has made a staggering 13 award winning films in the last 19 years. His latest two films are explorations about our cultural love affair with guns (Gun Shop) and prescription drugs (Candy Shop) – two companion films created in the same timeframe. Gun Shop is currently one of the few (if not the only) non-narrative experimental film out of the 90 eligible films this year for the 2020 Oscars Best Animated Short Film.
Using frame by frame stop motion techniques, Smith takes a non-narrative approach to these two films, simply juxtaposing images together at rapid speeds, allowing the viewer to draw their own conclusions. Two highly intriguing films keep us mesmerized with trancelike jazz percussion allowing us to revel at the thousands of images (one frame at a time) witnessing a massive variety of artillery and pharmaceuticals. Even more stunning is the fact that we are exposed to only a fraction (Smith captures just less than 3000 out of the 393 million guns that exist in the US and 11,926 pharmaceutical drugs) available worldwide.
Both films started on a somber note when Smith uncovered 5 guns and a variety of medication in the process of cleaning out his parents’ home after his mother passed away and his father was institutionalized with dementia. As part of his grieving process he thought he would document them in an unconventional way. He captured these items and created a loop to see how it would play as an animated test. The result was so interesting that he decided to develop not one, but two 2.5-minute animated films. Inspired by filmmakers like Paul Bush, Norman McLaren and Jan Svankmajer, Patrick Smith follows a similar approach capturing one picture for each frame.
Smith – not necessarily a gun or drug enthusiast – found himself in need of more materials and traveled to gun shops, museums and pharmacies all around Long Island and posted online queries. What he received was an overwhelming response. One owner of a private gun collection in Long Island, provided Smith with as much as 200 different firearms (some large caliber and very frightening guns). This simple ask which generated an abundance of gun and drug images helped solidify the context of the films about this cultural phenomenon.
Using jazz percussion as his backdrop, Patrick plans “hits” to emphasize certain images. Allowing us to revel in the variety of gun shapes and sizes but also find the groove of the soundtrack teaching us tempo along with poignant lessons on gun culture and addiction (the famous drummer Max Roach was a professor at University of Massachusetts – Smith’s alma mater – heavily influenced Smith’s ear for music).
From Smith’s “Candy Shop”
What Smith needed was a visual metaphor to juxtapose the images. His choice to use to use toy guns pairing with real guns (Gun Shop) and candy with drugs (Candy Shop) provides a jarring contrast using items of play vs tools of destruction. But also considering the genesis of the film, a seed idea about his coping mechanism dealing with the emotional trauma of losing his parents, it makes sense that he would escape to images of his youth. His analogy becomes relatable as it encapsulates what we all experience when we transition from the elation of childhood fantasy vs the starkness of adulthood reality. Ironically the toy guns were actually more difficult to source than the real guns. What the filmmaker says is “an interesting commentary in itself”
Aubry Mintz (A): Candy Shop was created after your mom passed away and Gun Shop after your father was moved to dementia care. Do you wish they could have seen these films? What might they say about them?
Patrick Smith (P): I was very close to both my parents; they were supportive of my work despite knowing very little about film or art. I miss the blind support and encouragement!! To be fair, I can show my father my work, he seems to appreciate it, but minutes later he forgets what he’s looking at, or even who I am. He loved that I used his old rifles in Gun Shop, he remembers his childhood well, and his days hunting with his father. and in his later years he became quite the pacifist, so he likes the simple critical message of the film.
A: Was the film Gun Shop going to be just about your father’s guns?
P: No, I didn’t have enough. I wanted to experiment with this stop motion technique – I wanted to stray from hand drawn animation. I just wanted to do something new. I didn’t realize that it would take over my studio. So, I started with my father’s guns and made a 12-frame boil – looped it and took a look at it. They were shot guns and rifles. And I thought, “oh that looks pretty cool!”. Long Island has a lot of gun shops so I photographed some more. Most of the photos are from the National Firearms museum in DC – they had like 4000 guns there. Not only the scary parts but the artistry behind them is pretty amazing. I shot 50 or 60 and then showed it to a producer (also Smith’s wife Kaori Ishida Smith) and she was like “this is cool you should keep going with it”
From “Gun Shop”
A: You have this one frame at a time approach, shooting one image per frame.
P: For the stop motion films yes. 24 frames a second – Its one object per frame of film. Although I’m getting more fancy with my latest film and it will vary based on the percussion.
A: Was that conscious – knowing that your audience would see certain images over others?
P: What happens is you get this mesmerizing effect. For Gun Shop it’s the same exact model but for different guns. So, you can digest what it is. I couldn’t find 24 bazookas so the bazooka is a “hit” which is ironic because you see the hits better. You have this jazz percussion and I animated the full thing in Adobe animate, it was almost like an exposure sheet and I roughed out the first version, in Adobe animate, and drew the frames I wanted to hit or where I’d want the gun to do something. So, you can go from a 9-millimeter to a 44 magnum and feel the hit (watching it grow). So, then id replace my drawings with the images of the guns. It’s the technique I’m doing – I’m certainly not the first. Probably mostly mastered by Paul Bush. But also, by…
A: Norman McLaren?
P: Yes and Frank Morris ( i.e. Frank Film back in the 70’s) that used the replacement technique. With Norman McLaren I took his precise abstract synch with music. I did a similar treatment with the objects – you really hit the right notes. It’s a far cry from hand drawn animation.
A: How do you plan the “hits”? Are you using a strategy with contrasting shapes/elements so that we notice the objects you want us to notice? Or are you purely going by the music?
P: Its purely the music. I’ll hear a symbol crash and pair it with an image that I know the audience will pay attention to. I also restrained the weapons in the first part of the film because I wanted the big white guns to be the deadly shock at the end. Then the juxtaposition to the toy guns I wanted that to be a dramatic hit. So, the first section I just kept with larger hand guns.
A: And when did the music come in?
Max Roach
A: So how did the score for your film come about?
P: I had worked with Jen Mitlas on commercials and I’ve used Steve Rice’s music in a few productions – these two musicians jumped out. I’m in awe of music. I listened to tons of tracks and narrowed down what I liked then the musicians gave me a few different versions to work from.
A: When you’re listening to the music can you imagine scenes/images? In other words; is music feeding the visuals?
P: Oh yeah – music is incredibly visual. All of my films are interpretations of music – almost like the Disney Fantasia model.
A: On your description of the film you “critically examine Americans love affair with guns”. I can see audience automatically responding from an anti-gun perspective but I wonder if you had any feedback from pro-gun constituents as if this heightened their love of guns?
P: Most of the pro-gun people identified me as an enemy which is unfair because I tried very hard to lift my politics out of it, I just wanted the guns to speak for themselves. I’m not a big fan of propaganda. It’s not like I’m completely unbiased – because I did make some suggestions in the film, i.e. the comparison with toy guns is an obvious critique of our culture, but it’s not an outright attack – I did not want to alienate anybody. I do want pro-gun audiences to watch this film. I feel that anyone that is subjected to the overwhelming number of guns hopefully will give them pause. Then maybe in another side of their brain there is a fascination – I admit that I do think guns are beautiful objects. I’m not a gun person, I’m anti-gun, but I have shot guns. I think this film shows a lot of that dilemma.
A: Was there a specific event that propelled the film(s) forward?
P: Not really because the gun issue is alive and well – it’s not going anywhere. In fact, I didn’t think of this going into it. I was just thinking of the object. I can’t think of a more powerful object in terms of our contemporary world. Or even in the history of the world. I think its arguably the most influential object in the world. The fact that I have access to photograph them is absurd. I can get 1500 photos right here in Long Island -It’s kinda nuts! After 3 months putting the call out to a few places I amassed over 3000 photos.
A: Even the military ones? Where they were easy to come by?
P: Some were from the museum. However, the assault style – they came from gun shops. One thing I learned is there is no “Assault rifle” – Assault is just a style. You can make grandpa’s hunting rifle assault if you paint it black and give it a handle. Assault is just basically “mean looking”. Fully automatic military style is illegal so those ones are in the museums. Full disclosure… there are even some air rifles in there – because I didn’t have enough big weapons. Air soft makes replicas – so close in design and size since I didn’t have access to the real deal it was just as easy to do it.
A: It doesn’t hurt the film at all.
P: They are all one frame so no. I also put some Easter eggs- there’s a Halo weapon in there. There’s even a light saber in the film!
Smith making “Candy Shop”
A: Candy Shop feels like it has a little more narrative.
P: That was a companion film. I shot them both practically at the same time. I gathered pills from my mom’s house before she died. She had hundreds of different pills. When she passed away, I took the pills thinking I would do this someday. I got images from the National pill registry (which is mostly for people to ID pills. i.e. if your kid swallows a pill you can quickly type in its description and find out if it’s dangerous or not). I spent a lot of time in Japan and they have a whole new set of drugs available there. I wanted to photograph as many as possible and juxtapose with something for commentary – like candy.
A: I want to ask more about the metaphors in Candy Shop. Money is obvious as pharmaceuticals profit massively. But why candy? Was it simply the shape/color/ variety? Or is it more of a comment on addiction – that we transition from loving candy as kids to loving drugs as adults? Or is there more to it?
P: Candy was the first juxtaposition I thought of. Simply comparing the intake of drugs to how we eat candy. Easily prescribed, easily taken, easily over-indulged. And secondary is the obvious shape comparison of say a jelly bean to a pill. Or a pregnancy pill dispenser and a plastic container for tape gum. The money was a happy accident that the shape of a bill was similar to a particular foil dispenser. With the added bonus that Pharma is linked so heavily with money… which I have some personal experience with as I directed the Zoloft campaign for Pfizer a while back.
A: Are you getting any feedback from the gun rights/activist communities or the Pharmaceutical industry?
P: Early on I got crap from both sides of the gun debate which was confusing to me. People don’t like it when you don’t make propaganda for their side – they are so used to seeing it. People don’t like anything that is subtle anymore.
A: What I actually think is a strength of your films is that you can draw your own conclusions – Gun Shop – even more so than Candy Shop – it’s going to impact you how you feel about it anyway so why spell it out? Maybe we’ve turned into a spoon-feeding culture – what’s wrong with films like Koyaanisqatsi and Baraka (Ron Fricke) – why can’t we do that in animation?
P: There’s nothing worse than preaching – there’s a lot of on the nose politics in films. Just present it to me – I’m a big boy
Patrick Smith is known for his metaphorical animated short films. Smith is a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and a fellow of the New York Foundation of the Arts. His formative years were spent as a storyboard artist for Walt Disney, and animation director for MTV’s Daria and the Emmy-nominated Downtown. In the last decade, Smith has produced and directed over 10 independent award-winning short films, screening at Tribeca Film Festival, Slamdance, SXSW, and Annecy. His PBS web-series “Blank on Blank” is the longest running and most viewed animated biographical series of all time, featured in Rolling Stone, New York Times, and Juxtopoz Magazine. His latest award winning animated short film “Gun Shop” recently qualified for entry into the 2020 Oscars. Patrick lives and works in Montauk, New York, with his wife Kaori Ishida and their daughter.
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- “Gun Shop” / “Candy Shop” – Patrick Smith Copes with Subliminal Transgressions - December 9, 2019
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