Staff Pick Premiere: "Charlotte" by Zach Dorn |

This week's Staff Pick Premiere, forgotten folk musician Lena Black discovers her fifty-year-old track "Charlotte" was remade into a smash pop hit. Set in the aftermath of the album's release, filmmaker Zach Dorn explores how the impact of the hit song will be felt by Lena as well as her daughter Diane as well as her 11-year-old grandchild, Eli.

In a letter addressed to the pop star, Lena writes: "There is something far worse than forgetting, and that is to be misunderstood." The central idea is woven throughout the film as the newfound triumph reveals past wounds. Through a collection of fragmented conversation - including the letter of Lena, Diane's phone call, and Eli's tape recording Dorn creates a touching picture of a family beginning to connect with each other via music.

If asked about his distinctive structure for the film, Dorn explained: "I loved the conceit of exploring these connections without ever seeing the family members interact. By delivering the story through isolated monologues, I wanted it to be as if that the characters had each created each their own versions of the song. The story is divided by generation, geographical, and emotional gap, however, I hope, something at the core of their anxieties ends up converging into the same melody."

It's a familiar tune to viewers who've experienced the separation of their families, but "Charlotte" is different from any other family drama we've shared on the . With hand-crafted puppets and stop-motion animation Dorn draws us into their stories, experiences, and imaginations, for an incredibly moving experience.

 Prior to the publication We reached out to Dorn to learn more about his inspiration the process, style, and process. Check out the interview to learn more details about "Charlotte."

 Based on the film's origins:

"In 2019, I was making a puppet show about world's largest sponge and the TV program Gilmore Girls. While shopping for miniature items in the faux flower section of Michael's craft shop, Carly Rae's rendition of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" was played on the loudspeaker. The song is extremely upbeat an excellent bubbly pop track and is quite odd since the original version is mournful and complicated. This was an amazing feeling as I loved this Carly Rae cover so much. To me, the popular version even though it was more fake was still full of the emotion that Joni Mitchell's version had. I felt conflicted and embarrassed by this idea, but kept imagining Carly Rae Jepsen and Joni Mitchell's version of "Both Sides Now" in conversation. This conversation eventually became the script of "Charlotte ."

 In making the script

"I created the original rendition of "Charlotte" as an radio show, a sort of an Joe Frank voyeuristic drama, that was set in miniature landscapes without any puppets. I wrote the lyrics from the perspective of eight characters who all were in a professional or personal relationship that was built around the song "Charlotte." After taking time to get acquainted with the characters Diane and Eli considered to be the most fascinating they were, so I kept them in the mix along with Lena and pop singer T.Y.M. When I realized this it was time to spend a great deal of time trying to figure out how to make their stories interspersed."

 On the music collaboration:

"When I wrote "Charlotte," I always imagined singer Jenna Caravello in mind. When I wrote the lyrics, I recorded the fictional Rolling Stone interviews including Lena Black and some of faux diary entries. Based on this information, Jenna wrote the folk song.

 I sent Jenna's song to Zhenya Golikova who I connected with online. In 2020, Zhenya covered these voice notes I had written for a girlfriend, goofy and sad songs about marshmallows and cats and missing someone who lives in a different country. And then Zhenya turned my tunes into amazing ballads. Her work has this early Magnetic Fields vibe, like it was written by the sea by horny ocean monkeys.. Jenna's track was sent to her and she came back with the pop version one week after. ."

 In the talk-show segment:

"So numerous female folk singers in the 60s and 70s were greatly under-appreciated. Artist like Vashti Bunyan, Karen Dalton, Linda Perrhacs and The Roches were ignored or relegated to categories such as "freak folk" and never taken in the same way as their male counterparts. There's interesting paradox, in which folk music is associated with modernist ideals but is being entangled in a particular sort of unspoken gender-based misogyny.

 When I was thinking of these artists I could not help but imagine Lena at this point in her career. in order to stay relevant her career would require participation in the 70s Laurel Canyon lifestyle, party with the right kind of people and take the proper drugs , and live in a world created and run by males. But I don't believe she'd feel up to it. Perhaps due to her motherhood perhaps, or maybe she could see the whole thing. It's hard to say. It was just her sadness - which was spread across a lifetime mourning a career. What is the outcome of the anger of her? What happens to her grief? out in her relationship with her daughter? In thinking about these concerns I attempted to compose Lena's interactions with Sam as the prologue towards her bond to her child."

 On developing his unique visual style:

 "In my 20s and early twenties, I trained as a puppeteer. However, I never did very well at doing it. I am missing an eighth of my brain , and I believe it has led to a real lack of spatial awareness. The idea of building or manipulating something with three dimensions was out of the question. It was a good thing I was able to get involved in Toy Theater, a type of puppetry that was popular in late 19th century England. I started building small dioramas using Acrylics and matte boards, such as pop-up book, and manipulated live-projecting digital cameras inside of them, while telling tales about my landlord, or dead dog.

 I am obsessed with the specifics of stuff, whether it's the barcode on the bag of Doritos, or the design of the shape of a McDonald's Happy Meal box. Perhaps because I don't have a brain, I'm unable to cut straight lines or form anything too realistically - so I'm a bit of a that is a mix-up of the disintegration of things and obsessed.

 To create the puppets, I worked with stop-motion animators Oliver Levine and Lily Windsor to create a slightly gritty and textural look that matched the film's hand-painted world. Because I created the film during the period of lockdown, we traveled long distance, Lily from Chicago, mailing tiny boxes of llamas as well as Oliver leaving head sculpts at my front door Burbank .">

 The next step:

 "Currently, I am independently developing a documentary on the CGI Livia Soprano from the third season of The Sopranos, as well as this genetic mutation called BRCA2. I was born into an Italian American family filled with many eccentric customs and personalities, but at the end of my 20s the BRCA2 affected the family connections due to the early deaths of relatives.

 In 2020, I watched The Sopranos for the first time. Each show felt as if I had a the conversation of my family. In the present, I'm making the film that recreates home movies with stop-motion footage and examine Livia Soprano's posthumous performance the context of my own personal experiences with grief ."