So here we are, approaching another year’s end. Don’t worry – I’m not going to ramble on about time again. Instead, I can finally write about what I’ve been up to for the past five years, and what’s to come. That sounds more fun.
So book one of “A Light in the Woods” is out as of last Friday. This is a strange release for me, most notably because I’ve never worked on something for such a long time before sharing it. The Family Tree turned into an eight year project, but I had releases all throughout its lifespan with yearly tours woven in between. It felt pretty constant. This new project, on the other hand, was such a complicated lift that a lot of the work was front-loaded. Now that I’ve got the format sorted and a good system for the overall workflow, it’ll move along much faster, but it took a long time to get my skills up to snuff and wrap my head around it all.
To explain why, let’s go back to the beginning …
This all started back in 2018 with a pretty simple notion: I want to do a project about the woods, and I want to use my three favorite mediums to do it (music, writing and visual art). I didn’t have a clear idea of how that would shake out. I just liked the concept.
I chose “the woods” as my subject because I’d recently left my hometown of Jacksonville, Florida and moved across the country to Califnornia. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do when I got there – I just knew I wasn’t going back. I’ve always used life events as fuel for art projects. When thinking about what might be a good topic for walking into the unknown, the woods cropped up immediately. And like always, I started by finding some books on the topic.
When researching how the woods are used within storytelling around the world, I found more similarities than differences. The woods are typically a place of transformation, the unknown, and to some degree, danger or magic. There’s a mix of fear and reverence about them, and that felt like a good fit. I was both nervous and excited to move, having spent all my life in the city I was born in up to that point. I also just really enjoy forests on a personal level. I grew up on a road with a healthy patch of woods at the end, dividing my neighborhood and the local hospital, and it’s where the majority of my free time was spent as a kid. I associate the woods with freedom and strangeness and imagination.
But it wasn’t long until my digging led me to the fairytale – or, more precisely, the psychology of fairytales. When talking with a friend of mine about what I was working on, I was given two books on what role fairytales play in a child’s development and why they have persisted for so many generations. My main takeaway was that we use whimsy and storytelling to share life lessons that would otherwise overwhelm. By abstracting concepts that are too intense to approach directly, stories can get the lesson across with a sense of wonder and curiosity and keep the nervous system out of the picture.
I loved this idea. And it led me to my final concept … What if I used the fairytale as a way to dissect and observe my own fears, now, as an adult? What if I used a disarming medium to tackle my most existential questions about life in general?
When an idea sits right with me, it’s a very obvious feeling. Once this thought crossed my mind, I was all in. And I haven’t looked back. But I had no idea what I was signing up for.
I didn’t realize how long it would take me to learn digital painting, even though I’ve spent a lot of my life doing visual art in some form. I didn’t anticipate the need for animation, but once I started directing the video it was pretty obvious that it needed more motion. I didn’t think I was going to narrate the story myself, but again, it became the clear choice once I started directing. I also didn’t realize what format would work for this. I knew I wanted something slower paced – something with the tone of a bedtime story, or someone reading aloud to you while sitting next to a fireplace – but I wasn’t sure how that would play out. And I’m still not sure what to call it.
But because all of this was so overwhelming at points, it led me to meeting some new people that I’m very grateful for. I already had my two most constant sounding boards – Josh, my partner, and Jeremiah Johnson – and they were as helpful as ever. But another big part of the project’s development came from Stefano Corazza, who I first met in 2019 around the idea of incorporating augmented reality into a live show. We stayed in touch even after the pandemic shut down the show ideas, and our talks about how to shape the visual side of this project really helped steer it towards this final form – and he did all the 3d effects for me, too. Later, when I found myself struggling with how to translate my script into storyboards, Stefano introduced me to his friend Mitra. She’s a storyboard artist for Pixar as well as a director, and she helped me find my system for making thumbnails out of the script. And then a general mentor for the final paintings came from meeting Robert Stacy, better known as “Sinix”. I reached out to him as a shot in the dark, because I was learning a lot from his YouTube channel on art and design. To my surprise, he was curious enough to hear me out, and we became fast friends. He’s been a huge help with design and composition problems, and his critiques really helped tighten everything up.
There’s actually quite a bit more to these stories and just how I arrived at this result, but I’ve decided to turn it into a series on my YouTube channel, where I’m going to break everything down and go into lots of detail. So if this project is interesting to you, be sure to check those videos out in the coming months. I’ll post them here as well.
I have a lot more I want to talk about, but I’m attempting to write a little less per entry and post them more often. We’ll see if it works. If I’m not keeping up well, then I’ll go back to my typical too-many-words type of essays.
Oh! But before I go, I’d like to get across the overall scope of this project. There are going to be six books in the series (I’m calling them “books” because it’s a word I have a very positive association with, and it implies something slower and more contemplative). The series has 28 songs, 50+ pieces of score, and around 1,000 paintings/animations. Each video is between 40 and 50 minutes long, which adds up to about three films in terms of runtime. It’s way bigger than anything I’ve ever done, but I’m learning to accept that I enjoy scale. I keep going back to it, so I must.
If you have seen it, here’s a link to the first book on YouTube:
And if you enjoy watching it and want to learn more about the world, definitely check out the dedicated website. I worked with this brilliant webteam, Rogue Studios, to make something that feels like the project. Social media isn’t much of a place to create a mood. And as a general note: it will evolve as each book is released, so don’t think of it as a static site. I’m super happy with how it’s turned out so far, and it’s a place where I can put all the information that doesn’t work inside the narrative – so additional world-building and lore and whatnot. Here’s the link, if any of this sounds fun to you:
I think that’s enough for now. Thanks to anyone who has given this new idea of mine a chance, and I look forward to sharing the rest of it with you. But for now, back to work.
Hope you’re well,
-Ben