"In the Backseat" is a series of articles and interviews which spotlight individual elements of Backseat Conceptions projects."In the Backseat" provides more depth and context to the sometimes confusing world that is Backseat Conceptions.

In the Backseat with Dave Popolow

Recently we sat down to talk with stop-motion animator David Popolow who has been working for the past few months on various animated projects for Backseat Conceptions, the Philadelphia based production company.

Training at the School of Visual Arts in New York City, Popolow originally planned on working in live-action film, but as he puts it “experience taught me that puppets were a lot easier to work with than actors”. Answering a call for interns, Popolow’s skills were immediately put to use on the feature film Bikini Bandits and the Curse of the Pirate’s Booty currently being co-produced by Gyro Worldwide and Backseat Conceptions.

“The lead character was giving birth to a human-dolphin hybrid baby, so I had to create the interior of a human womb and the foam latex puppets for it.” After storyboarding down to the frame, Popolow built a miniature set in which to inhabit his brainchildren.

Popolow sculpts the models for his "actors" out of plasticine clay, and then casts a foam-latex puppet. Adding aluminum armatures for pliability and hex-nuts for stability, he can screw the character into its ground for each position. In the case of the dolphin-baby, he suspended it by its umbilical cord it to create a floating effect. Understandably, David grows attached to his puppets, “Sometimes I’ll carry one around with me and talk to it like a baby.”

Proving his worth, Popolow was then commissioned to create the animated bumper that will air before each Backseat Conceptions production. David fashioned an eyeball-octopus puppet to crawl around inside the "Film Projector Set" made by Backseat agent Illya Radysh.

"The concept for the projector was to represent what Backseat does in a visual way." says Nick Esposito, a producer for Backseat. "Backseat uses unique methods in production. We're a weird machine when you look at us from the outside but what we do gets the job done, like the projector. The projector has all these disparate elements working together to make the film feed. Also it's great to use Dave for this; a digital bumper feels generic [these days.]"

Popolow elaborates on “Octo,” the tentacle eyeball that is featured in the bumper, “I like gross stuff.”    So do his superiors.  Nick explains more, "The eyeball monster started as something that came out of Dave's mind seemingly randomly, but it's taken on a life of its own and become a core element of our branding, it’s cute."

With a Sony PDX-10 digital video camera wired into his G4 laptop running Frame Thief software, Popolow begins the process of bringing his ideas to life. Shooting digitally can be more forgiving of errors than film; however shooting stop motion can be a trial. Popolow once lost an entire day’s worth of work because someone had moved the camera in the middle of a sequence.

“That really sucked.”

Once the sequence is shot, David edits with Final Cut Pro. Preferring the organic approach, he hand-draws electrical sparks, then scans and composites the images with After Effects. To find interesting sounds like film projectors, lightning and bugs, David turns to the internet, “I used this website called findsounds.com, it’s a free source for audio downloads.”  After what seems like eons later, the project is complete.

Now that it is done David agrees with the concept of the bumper,  “Backseat Conceptions is like a machine; all the gears work together to create something great. There is a real independent spirit. They love what they do."

-H. Clark