{"id":7047592,"date":"2026-08-25T17:26:38","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T17:26:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/animation\/the-girl-who-cried-pearls-by-chris-lavis-maciek-szczerbowski\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T17:26:38","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T17:26:38","slug":"the-girl-who-cried-pearls-by-chris-lavis-maciek-szczerbowski","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7047592","title":{"rendered":"The Girl Who Cried Pearls by Chris Lavis &#038; Maciek Szczerbowski"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div itemprop=\"text\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski\u2019s The Girl Who Cried Pearls is already gaining recognition as a stop-motion piece of note\u2013a shortlisted nominee for Best Animated Short at the 98th Academy Awards and celebrated on the festival circuit. But as beautiful and moving as the story is, the technical journey of this National Film Board of Canada production is also a story of creative problem-solving at its finest.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">When Technical Director \u00c9ric Pouliot joined the team in 2019, he faced a daunting challenge: how to make the expressive puppets speak without altering their sculpted faces, which was the original advice he\u2019d gotten from VFX supervisors the team had consulted thus far. But traditional motion capture markers or physical modifications were out of the question. Directors Lavis and Szczerbowski, in collaboration with the NFB, have been pushing the edges of visual effects in animation for decades now and were committed to preserving the integrity of every handcrafted detail of the puppets, wanting the option of using raw footage with no visual effects at all, as a sort of backup.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Pouliot\u2019s breakthrough came from a surprising source. A neon black-light dance video he came across on Instagram sparked the idea of using invisible tracking points revealed only under ultraviolet light. By shooting each frame twice\u2014once under normal lighting for the final shot and once under UV, the team could capture precise tracking data without any visible markers. To make this elegant solution happen, the team used Dragonframe\u2019s multi-exposure workflows and automated DMX-controlled lighting.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Finding the right UV-reactive paint was another creative hurdle. After testing highlighters and glow paints that either faded or smeared, Pouliot discovered the OPTICZ Invisible Ink Pen: a security-grade UV marker that stayed invisible under standard lighting, adhered well to the latex puppets, and remained effective throughout the entire shoot. Remarkably, those invisible dots still glow today, six years on.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This blend of ingenuity and technical rigor of embracing UV light, Dragonframe\u2019s DMX\/exposure tools, and thoughtful experimentation allowed the filmmakers to integrate CG mouth replacements while honoring the tactile artistry of stop-motion performance.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">What stands out most in The Girl Who Cried Pearls is how seamlessly the technical and the artistic intertwine.\u00a0 It is a testament to what is possible when filmmakers push tools like Dragonframe beyond capture and into the realm of creative problem-solving.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Please see below for a behind the scenes on the team\u2019s novel integration of Dragonframe into their process if you are curious to learn more about their process.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski\u2019s The Girl Who Cried Pearls is already gaining recognition as a stop-motion piece of note\u2013a shortlisted nominee for Best Animated Short at the 98th Academy Awards and celebrated on the festival circuit. But as beautiful and moving as the story is, the technical journey of this National Film Board of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7047593,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12035],"tags":[3007,16357,991,210192,210193,2355,210194],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-7047592","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animation","tag-chris","tag-cried","tag-girl","tag-lavis","tag-maciek","tag-pearls","tag-szczerbowski"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>The Girl Who Cried Pearls by Chris Lavis &amp; Maciek Szczerbowski - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7047592\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Girl Who Cried Pearls by Chris Lavis &amp; Maciek Szczerbowski - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski\u2019s The Girl Who Cried Pearls is already gaining recognition as a stop-motion piece of note\u2013a shortlisted nominee for Best Animated Short at the 98th Academy Awards and celebrated on the festival circuit. But as beautiful and moving as the story is, the technical journey of this National Film Board of [&hellip;]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7047592\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-08-25T17:26:38+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/girl-pearls-FT-1.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"1280\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"580\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7047592#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=7047592\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/#\/schema\/person\/b85e3c3dc0e1daea076524dc8810c371\"},\"headline\":\"The Girl Who Cried Pearls by Chris Lavis &#038; 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