Staff Pick Premiere: "Charlotte" by Zach Dorn |

In this Week's Staff Pick Premiere, forgotten folk singer Lena Black discovers her fifty-year-old track "Charlotte" has been remade to become a popular pop tune. Set in the aftermath of the album's release, filmmaker Zach Dorn explores how the influence of the original song has on Lena as well as her daughter Diane and her eleven-year-old grandson, Eli.

In a letter to the pop star, Lena writes: "There is more to it than forgetting or to be confused." The central idea is woven throughout the film as the song's newfound popularity reveals the old wounds. Weaving a collage of isolated conversation - including the letter of Lena, Diane's call and Eli's cassette tape - Dorn creates a touching picture of a family beginning to connect with each other via the music.

If asked about his distinctive style for the film Dorn explained: "I loved the conceit that we explore these bonds and not seeing the entire family interact with one another. Through the use of individual monologues I wanted the audience to be as if the characters were each creating their own cover of the same song. There are generational emotional, geographic, and generational gap, however, I hope there is something that lies at the heart of their struggles will eventually lead to the same melody."

It's a familiar tune to those who have experienced the separation of their families however "Charlotte" is unlike any other family drama we've shared on the . With hand-crafted puppets and stop-motion animation, Dorn draws us into their stories, experiences, and imaginations, for an incredibly moving journey.

 Ahead of the release, we reached out to Dorn to find out more about his inspiration, process, and style. Check out the interview to learn more about "Charlotte."

 On the film's inspiration:

"In 2019, I created an animated show about the world's biggest sponge, as well as the hit TV series Gilmore Girls. One day, while buying some mini-craft supplies in the fake flower aisle of a Michael's craft retailer, Carly's rendition of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" came on the loudspeaker. The song is extremely upbeat a great bubbly pop song, which is odd because Joni Mitchell's original track is difficult and empathetic. The feeling was awe-inspiring as I loved this Carly Rae cover so much. For me, the pop song version, despite being more artificial it still had all the emotions from Joni Mitchell's first. I felt jaded and dismayed by this idea, but kept imagining Carly Rae Jepsen as well as Joni Mitchell's version of "Both Sides Now" during a conversation. The conversation evolved into the script of "Charlotte ."

 When making the script

"I imagined the original version of "Charlotte" as radio plays, in the form of a Joe Frank voyeuristic drama, with footage of miniature landscapes without any puppets. I wrote the lyrics from the perspective of eight characters, who each experienced a professional or personal connection that was centered around the tune "Charlotte." After spending time getting to know the characters Diane and Eli felt the most interesting, and so I kept them around along with Lena and pop singer T.Y.M. Once I figured this out it was time to spend a great deal of time trying to figure out how to make their stories interspersed."

 on the collaboration in music:

"When I was writing "Charlotte," I always had singer Jenna Caravello in mind. While I was writing the script, I sent the fictional Rolling Stone interviews featuring Lena Black and some of fake diary entries. With this data, Jenna wrote the folk song.

 Jenna's track was sent to Zhenya Golikova, who I met online. In the year 2020, Zhenya covered these voice notes I had written to a friend, silly and silly songs about kittens and marshmallows as well as missing someone in another place, and then Zhenya turned my tunes into incredible ballads. The music she created has that early Magnetic Fields sound, as though the songs were written underwater by wild sea monkeys.. I gave her Jenna's tune and she got her own version of the song a week later ."

 on the talk-show program:

"So many female folk artists during the 1960s and 1970s were greatly under-appreciated. The likes of Vashti Bunyan, Karen Dalton, Linda Perrhacs And The Roches were ignored or marginalized into categories like "freak folk," but were never treated with the same respect as male counterparts. There's an interesting contradiction, where folk music is regarded as having the ideals of progressivism, but are being entangled in a particular sort of unspoken gender-based misogyny.

 With these artists in mind I was imagining Lena at this point in her career, where in order to stay relevant her career would require participation in a 70s Laurel Canyon lifestyle, party with the right kind of people and take the proper drugs - a world made and conducted by men. It's not like she'd feel up to it. Maybe due to her motherhood, or maybe she saw the whole thing. I'm not certain. But I was motivated by her sorrow - which spanned a lifetime mourning a career. What happens to her anger? How will the anger play out for her daughter? In thinking about these concerns I attempted to compose Lena's interactions with Sam as the prologue for her bond with her daughter."

 On developing his unique visual style:

 "In my 20s and early twenties I was an actor, however I wasn't very good at it. I am missing an eighth of my brain and I swear its led to a lack of spatial awareness. Building or manipulating anything in three dimensions was not feasible. However, I did stumble upon Toy Theater, a type of puppetry that was popular in late 19th century England. I started building tiny dioramas out of matte board and acrylics, such as pop-up book, and played with live-projecting cameras in of them, while telling stories of my landlord or deceased dog.

 I am obsessed with the specifics of stuff, whether it's the bar code on an Doritos bag or the design of an McDonald's Happy Meal box. Perhaps because I don't have a brain, I can't cut straight lines or shape anything too realistically - so, I have this style, a sort of mashup of something that is falling apart and obsessive.

 In order to create the puppets I worked with stop-motion animators Oliver Levine and Lily Windsor to create a slightly gritty and textural look that matched the film's hand-painted universe. Because I created the film in the period of lockdown, we traveled long distance, Lily from Chicago, shipping small boxes of llamas as well as Oliver leaving head sculpts at my front door in Burbank ."

 On what's next:

 "Currently I'm independently creating a short film on Livia Soprano, the CGI Livia Soprano from the third season of The Sopranos, as well as this genetic defect known as BRCA2. I grew up with an Italian American family filled with many eccentric customs and people, however, at the end of my 20s the BRCA2 derailed these familial connections through the premature deaths of relatives.

 In the year 2020, I watched The Sopranos for the first time. Each episode felt like I had a conversation with my family again. Today, I'm creating a film about this experience in which I recreate my home movies in stop-motion and analyze Livia Soprano's posthumous performance in relation to my personal experiences with grief ."