I found a very peculiar video called “Hi Stranger”, before I immerse myself I would like to write a little about the creator Kirsten Lepore, when I visited her official website www.kirstenlepore.com, we can notice that she uses a diverse variety of social networks such as vimeo, twitter, tumblr y facebook. The only thing we can infer from her official website & social networks is that she lives in the United States, born in 1985 with a predilection on the animation technique of frame by frame.
Youtube official video of Kisten Lepore’s channel
I was amazed the first time I watched the video… I loved it.
Analysis
The animation is really well planned & executed in terms of aspects of simplicity & details. Balance between each frame, lighting, landscape, environmental music & facial expression. Although the facial expressions are simple and with very limited variations, the look & mouth combined with the voice pitch are very expressive. It is a piece of art with a duration of 2 minutes & 42 seconds very well executed.
What fascinates me is that it breaks the fourth wall & the character interacts with you creating an atmosphere of serenity, piece & appreciation. It shows us the character in a state so vulnerable or you could call it “comfortable” showing us its butt & it proceeds naturally with the conversation with the visual receptor during the flow of the dialogue. The character is so comfortable & confident that it opens up with the viewer sharing something personal like the tree it just created, denoting security & peace about how cool & implicitly beautiful the tree is, commenting at the end that it took so much time & mental energy to create it taking the character to the edge of weariness.
At the end of the previous scene it says that the only thing it wants is to sit and relax with us.
Later we get to a certain point where the character is relaxing & appreciating the landscape. The interesting thing is that I start seeing life through the eyes of the character & it took me particularly to a state of relaxation & I definitely thought that the landscape was beautiful as it thought. So I let myself go.
After appreciating the landscape, the character starts to appreciate the next most beautiful thing before its eyes… the viewer. It does a silence therapy portraying & immortalizing us in a drawing for its personal appreciation & it does not show it to us, however, its serenity indicates how much it enjoyed it.
Subsequently, it begins to helps us make a generic self-examination applied to the lives of all the viewers, generating a sense of understanding the aspects that overwhelm many people.
It says that it thinks a lot about the viewer & how it seems to have observed us a lot lately, it watches that we do everything at the same time, that we are concerned with decisions we make & what we say to others. It concludes that we are too hard on ourselves, however, it says that we are wonderful & worthy of being loved that we just need to believe it.
Finally, it creates an atmosphere of how embarrassed it is & is aware that we are busy, but it is thankful for the opportunity to share a moment with us. It says goodbye to us saying something we do not hear very often… that it loves us.
I can only conclude that it is short animated film made frame by frame unique in its wholeness, I have not seen anything compared to it so far. I liked how it could channelize animation to a whole new genre in which an interaction exists between the animation & the viewer. In this current age where it seems that there are no new ideas in which creators do not take risks in creating & rely heavily on recycling & nostalgia, it was definitely refreshing & interesting. It led me to a state of relaxation & wonder quite elusive to reach with daily life concerns. To the point that I will check out other animations of the authorship of Kirsten Lepore.
Philosophical Engineering 
Leave a comment