Synopsis:
Made in collaboration with visual artist, Beth Hoeckel, Green Water is a collaged animation using archival magazine photography and advertizements to create a domestic world in which a woman travels through rooms in search of the perfect easter basket. Utilizing mid-century and 1960s imagery and color pallets, a imaginary space is created with simple movements, rich sound design, and a linear narrative. Green Water is subtle yet impactful story telling through collage and animation. Easter is here and things are getting strange. 

Personal Statment:
Green Water is indicative of the style of animations that I was making in my career at this moment in time. This particular animation is a personal milestone in my career because it began my passion and focus on deep collaboration within my work. Through my collaboration with Beth Hoeckel, I learned that my practice was enhanced by the conversation and skills that other artists and people bring to a project. After the completion of this animation, I began to seek out regular collaborations within my practice. I also began to focus on the documentary format, incorporating real life, conversation, and people into the form and story of my work. 

Directors: Marnie Ellen Hertzler and Beth Hoeckel
Animation: Marnie Ellen Hertzler
Collage: Beth Hoeckel
Sound Design: Albert Birney

Official Selection Maryland Film Festival 2017

(2017, 2 min.)

Synopsis:
The Domestic Life of a Housecat is a study of hindsight. I, the filmmaker, play the invisible lead as I send the audience rifling through a two-year history of voicemails, and various relics of lost love. Using animation and found images, I pieces together this video as I find my footing after months disoriented by regret and spite. What was once such an intimate and desperate pursuit is now rewound and repackaged as a cinematic peek into the absurdity and ephemera of romantic love.

Personal Statment:
After years of working art department for films, fabricating Mardi Gras floats, commissioned and collaborative stop-motion animation works, this short film is my first independent film work. It is also my first time collaborating with a composer, directing actors, and editing. Though this work is different from the films I create today,  I see it as a the short film that jumpstarted my passion for working as an independent filmmaker and began my career as a director. 

Official Selection, 2016 Maryland Film Festival
Official Selection, 2016 Seattle Transmedia and Independent Film Festival

Producer - Matthew Porterfield
Sound Design - Matt Papich

(2016, 4 min.)

Deep Dark is an ongoing series that draws inspiration from suppressed memories, collected secrets, alleged rumors, and personal confessions. Deep Dark acts as an interpretive document of these stories and retells them through symbols, sound, and animation.

Episode 1: Josie and Jade
A plant that grows unusually large and prolific due to its nurturer’s strange secret
(2014, 3 min.)

Episode 2: No Parents
A biographical exploration of small freedoms, boyhood, and unadulterated curiosity
Official Selection, 2015 New Orleans Film Festival
Official Selection, 2015 Cucalorus Film Festival
(2015, 5 min.)

Deep Dark Books: My House
A reading from a book for children by children
(2014, 2 min.)

Dream Throat hotel room installation: Hotel Monteleone, New Orleans 2014 (Prospect 3+, New Orleans)


Synopsis: Welcome to a room that has hosted numerous tenants. This room is a collector of dreams, aggression, love, lust, and pain. You are the subject of it's experiment as you participate in a brief document of these particular collected occurrences. The tenants change while the stiff taxidermy and rose wallpaper remain as viewers like yourself. You are invited to an in depth and darkened view of what these thorns have collected. Here, stories stain the floor and soak into the mattress of a room we like to call Dream Throat

Dream Throat is an immersive, touring,  installation. Written, shot, and edited all in one room, this film installation focuses on the visitor’s relationships within a singular, yet dynamic space. Because the setting of both the film and the installation is a hotel room, a hypothetical mirror is created, allowing the viewer to actively experience the film as a situation, rather than passively view it as a spectator in a theatre.

Other installation locations:
Miami, Florida (Borscht Film Festival) 2015
Tampa, Florida (Gasparilla Film Festival) 2015
Glasgow, Scotland (Glasgow Short Film Festival) 2015
Baltimore, Maryland (Maryland Film Festival) 2015
Wilmington, North Carolina (Cucalorus Film Festival) 2015

(2014)

Synopsis:
Utilizing unconventional animation platforms, and stock photo characters, Growing Girl is a animation that explores the form and setting of office culture, the reclamation of an empowered female identity, and a remedy for the internalization of an all-too-common social conflict.

 

A PowerPoint presentation about snakes and all of the things I wish I would have done. 

As well as being projected in a theatrical setting, Growing Girl has been performed in front of a live audience as a PowerPoint presentation would be in a business meeting or conference using a live score and dialogue. 

Personal Statement:
Growing Girl was the first film where I directed an actor within my practice. It was also the first film in my career where I received success in the film festival circuit. Because of the success of this film, my career took a turn for the better. I met the producers that currently work with my on my feature films. I formed relationships with festival programmers that have since supported my work and brought it into the public eye. Most importantly, I found my voice as a director and artist. I learned the importance and magic of a director/actor relationship and what nurturing that relationship can produce better art over time. My relationship with the actress in this animation, Isobel Arnberg, is still alive and strong today. She continued to appear in two more of my short films after this one and I look forward to what we will create together in the future. 

Not only was Growing Girl important for my immediate career, it also showed me the importance and power in being open and honest within my work.

Directed/Animated - Marnie Ellen Hertzler
Sound/Original Score - Dan Deacon
Original Poetry - Maya Martinez
Producers - Jillian Mayer, Matt Porterfield
Starring - Isobel Arnberg
Additional Animation - Albert Birney

Official Selections/Screenings
2019 Museum of Modern Art New York
2018 Oak Cliff Film Festival
2018 Indie Grits Film Festival
2018 Florida Film Festival
2018 Ann Arbor Film Festival
2017 Borscht Film Festival
2017 Maryland Film Festival
2017 New Orleans Film Festival
2017 Cucalorus Film Festival

Press:
Good Short Films: Growing Girl - 2018

(2016, 11 min.)