Bossier City, LA – What do you do when you retire? If you are Al Bohl of Bossier City, you spend almost two years writing and animating a new film. His newest film is entitled The Esteemed Priority. It is a short, stop motion using silhouette paper cut puppets. His film is over six minutes long. Film festivals all over the world are embracing his film. He’s already won several and been officially selected, semi-finalist, finalist, and a nominee at more festivals.
“As a rule,” said Bohl, “the average selection rate is two acceptances to ten rejections. We enjoyed an almost 70% acceptance.”
It is animated in the tradition of Lotte Reiniger who was a German filmmaker. The late Reiniger is best known for her feature film Prince Achmed released in 1926. It is widely considered to be the first feature length animated film which pre-dated Disney’s Snow White by ten years.
“I taught drawing, painting, and animation for the Talented arts program in Bossier Parish for eight years. My students made between 150 to 300 short films each year,” said Bohl. He instructed the students using many types of stop motion filming, but his favorite was silhouette paper cut puppets.
Bohl wrote, produced, directed, and animated the entire film in his small studio inside his home. The music was written and produced by retired Philip Wade.
“Philip is an excellent composer and orchestrator. He knows so much about music theory and instrumentation. Phil’s biggest strength is composing powerful melodies. His music perfectly interpreted the story,” said Bohl.
Al Bohl, Producer, director & animator
Al knew that he needed a special narrator to further elevate the film. He wanted a female British voice, but he didn’t know anyone from England living in America. One day while buying plants from a local store, he heard one of the workers talking to a customer in a rich, beautiful British accent. The lady was Denise Robinson from Bossier City. While not a professional voice actor Denise was happy to join the team. Al booked time at Robin Vosbury’s VoxWorks recording studio and she did an excellent job.
Bohl storyboarded the entire film and set out on the long, arduous task of creating the puppets and animating. Each character only moved a quart inch or less with every click of the camera. All the backgrounds had to be created. Bohl built a large light box with special low heat LED lights. Using a Canon Rebel on a camera stand and Dragonframe software, he took almost 10,000 frames to make the film. Al and his son in-law Peter DeHart built a multiplane apparatus that consisted of four shelves of glass that sits on top of the light table. By placing the paper cut puppets on different levels the animator can change the focus to add depth of field to a flat plane. This device was created by Lotte Reiniger and later widely used by the Disney studio’s version as a multiplane camera.
Bohl has lived in Bossier City since 1960. He has enjoyed a prolific career as an artist for fifty years. In addition to teaching, he has written twelve books and illustrated over fifty books for various publishers. He traveled for years as an evangelist using chalk art painting, music, and speaking in hundreds of churches. In 2012, Al and his daughter released a feature length documentary called Tarzan: Lord of the Louisiana Jungle. The two-DVD set included a re-edit of the 1918 silent film Tarzan of the Apes. The music was done by the super talented Kermit Poling. It is distributed by Jansen and is being viewed globally.
Presently, Bohl is finding success as he submits his new film in festivals all over the world. He was an Official Selection in the Senior Film at the Cannes Film Festival in Frances. You might be wondering how much money he might make off this new film. The answer is simple: nothing. While he absorbed all the costs of making the film, people are donating to a gofundme.com account to help enter the festivals. His hope is to be invited to festivals to do workshops and Q&As after screening his film.
What does a retired artist do next? Being retired he can work at his own pace. He tries to spend a lot of time with his wife of almost fifty years Doris and his five grandchildren.
“I’ve got three new books to write and illustrate based on characters I created. After that I hope to make another silhouette film called Bridge.”
