Films.

It is the one film we can show. Every other film belongs to the family it was made for.

A street cat runnin' with a gang of friends
The street cat from Tel Aviv who survived it all
תודה, תודה רבה: thank you, thank you very much
So don't forget, Shmulik, where you've been

The whole film, 3:28, with the song.

A real film, for a real family.

The Street Cat from Tel Aviv

Commissioned by a family in New Jersey for their father, and shown with their permission. Born in Tel Aviv. Yeshiva, the army, Los Angeles, the refreshment stands in New York, a blind date, a house in Tenafly, the grandchildren. Seven stations of one life, in pencil, to a song written about him.

  • Tel Aviv, drawn in pencil: a balcony with a pram and a pot of flowers, the cat on the ledge, and Born in Tel Aviv, nineteen-fifty-somethin handwritten belowTel Aviv
  • The yeshiva at night: a dormitory window with the cat on the sill, and Sent off to yeshiva, just a boy alone handwritten belowYeshiva
  • The cat at an army post beside a crate marked in HebrewThe army
  • Los Angeles: the photograph of Ike developing on a dark page beside a small photograph of the young man, with Out in L.A. you met a man named Ike handwritten aboveLos Angeles
  • New York storefronts with the family's refreshment stands pinned up as cardsNew York
  • The family home in Tenafly, drawn in pencilTenafly
  • A koi pond and a bench with a photograph of the family dog pinned beside the catToday

How we made this film.

The cat is how the song sees him: its chorus calls him the street cat from Tel Aviv, so the model sheets below are his.

  1. The story.

    Your photographs and the stories you tell become a shot list: every scene, who is in it, and what is sung over it.

    The finished shot: the Hebrew words for be strong, be brave written huge in crimson chalk across the sea wall, the cat sitting below
    Shot
    C1-5
    Time
    1:21.6 to 1:23.4
    Lyric
    חזק ואמץ,
    Picture
    Chalk on the wall. חזק ואמץ writes itself huge in crimson across the whitewashed wall behind him, right to left. A small graphite gloss, “be strong, be brave”, fades in beneath. He turns to look.
    Camera
    Locked.
    The cat
    Looks up at the letters.

  2. The cast.

    Every character drawn on model sheets before any scene: here, the cat the song makes of him, at every age he appears.

    The street cat's model sheet: side view standing and sitting, drawn in pencil, with the left ear notched
    Model sheet
    The cat's action poses: a leap in three stages, a standoff with the back arched, a stretch, a skid
    Poses
    The cat's variants: a kitten, the cat wet in the rain, with a grey muzzle, and the coats of the old gang
    Variants

  3. The look.

    Look boards settle the paper, the pencil and where the colour arrives.

    Look board: orange koi in a blue pond beside a grey pencil cat, drawn before the film to decide where colour arrives
    Look board
    The finished frame: a pencil koi pond seen from above, everything grey except one orange koi
    The frame
    A rejected look board: flat 1950s cartoon cats on a yellow and teal street
    The direction not taken

  4. Lettering and photographs.

    The lyric written on screen as it is sung, and your own photographs pinned into the drawings.

$249. About a week. Full refund until you approve the storyboard.

Start their film