Goodies and Gifts

    While recently browsing through my favorite Etsy artists, I gladly visited Dame Darcy's shop. Over the years this artist has been one of my biggest inspirations when it comes to the rare, yet intriguing genre of southern gothic. She is a talented, witchy, and a one of a kind artist who performs, illustrates, and sells incredible handmade goodies!

View DameDarcy.com today!

When I saw her 2016 Witch Calendar, I had to indulge...

    I was so excited when I purchased this gem, I decided to send a short heartfelt message to the Dame herself, just to say hi and remind her that her art is just as amazing as ever. I also thanked her for allowing my film crew and I to use her version of Down in Willow Garden, "Mercury Wine," in the credits of our film Avery Parrish Thieves. For more of her tracks, indulge here!

     Soon I received a response that made my heart leap! Dame Darcy was flattered and in turn shared both Avery Parrish Thieves and Séance on her social media sites, along with personally complimenting my work. As if I wasn't already feeling so flattered and happy, I became even more so when I received the witch calendar... along with an adorable gift...

There's nothing more rewarding than making great friends through great art. Cheers to all who agree, in the mean time, when it comes to Dame Darcy: Like, Follow, Read! 

Penny Dreadful

Been really wishing I had Showtime so I could indulge in this series, Penny Dreadful. My aunt sent me a cool and creepy clip from it which made me really want to watch it! 

View Clip Here

Halloween 2013 Decor

Had an amazing time putting up the decorations this year. It's many of the same decorations we have all seen on my Flickr and Blog before, but each year I try to mix it up a bit. 

Probably my favorite part of the decor was creating the bloody walls. I basically did the same thing I did last year for my windows. Contact paper, red acrylic paint, and a sponge brush to splash the paint is really all you need. 

Also bought some cute purple and orange lights for the dining room, which kind of brought the room to life!

Definitely enjoyed this year's decor. It was simplified in many ways compared to previous years, but I decided to go with my gut and just put things out that really popped in the room. Lets just say blood splatter was the perfect example. 

Check out more on my Flickr Photostream: Halloween 2013 Set! 

'Séance' (Revamped)

    Recently I had a chance to re-edit an old short of mine, Séance. This short was initially called Vintage Séance after my blog. In fact, I kind of made it to promote the blog, but after viewing it later, I felt I could probably do more with it than keep it as a small promo.

    

   This time around the film is slightly quicker. I didn't have a great camera or editing software when I initially filmed it, but now I have taken the old footage into FCP (final cut pro) and have sped it up and tightened the editing a bit more. Unfortunately, I lost a lot of the original footage so I couldn't start from scratch. I mainly had to use the original .mov file and re-edited that as opposed to going back into original footage. 

    Because of this, the film still has its original filters, which I actually prefer. The old filters are just from iMovie but they still give off the look that I felt worked for this short. I really wanted to capture antique cinema (pre-talkies/ silent film era), which is why I chose an aged film look with a thick sepia tone. 

     As for the style and film elements, as well as character design, I wanted to really show that Southern Gothic style that I often lean toward, and incorporate a magical, but dark, side to it by having a séance gone awry. The séance itself also plays into the spiritualism movement, which was also common during the turn of the century/1920s era. 

    For the sound, I had my brother Bijan Sharifi assist me, as he is an expert. I told him I needed original music (since the music I originally had in the short was not my own) and I wanted the film to sound old and scratchy. He accomplished this with ease and made it sound even better than I had imagined. An extra slight reverb on the music made the audio sound a bit ghostly, which exceeded my expectations and made the film much spookier. 

For more information on Bijan Sharifi Audio visit Bijan Sharifi Audio or "Like" Bijan Sharifi Audio on Facebook. 

Take a look at the final cut of Séance on Vimeo:

Seance from Nina Sharifi on Vimeo.

Halloween 2012: Decor Pics

Just a few cool shots from my Halloween decor from 2012, never got a chance to post them...

Since I have my vintage camera collection in my bookcase, I decided that this area should be the spirit photography/seance section.

I usually like to keep the cute, vintage decorations in the kitchen and dining room, keeps things feeling nostalgic and homey.

Decided to bring my Scarecrow from my parents house so I could set it up at my place. I like how he ended up towering over the balcony, gives him a real spook factor.

But don't worry I didn't rob my mom's place of all the Halloween decorations, she has a lawn so we set up our graveyard outside. The best part is that we now have newer gravestones that my mom made during the spring for my movie Avery Parrish Thieves.

    For some reason red was my color this year, not only for my Lydia Deetz costume, but for blood splatter too. And speaking of left over props from Avery Parrish Thieves, I had a bloody sheet left over from one of our shoots and decided to hang it above our snack table, though I can't seem to find those photos. But trust me, it made everything look delicious...

   Still going along with the blood theme, I was very much inspired by blood splatter this year months ago decided that I would make my place look more gruesome than usual. Living the glamourous apartment life with white walls, I wanted to cover them with blood to really make them pop, but when I began looking for wall decals of blood splatter all I found were cheesy stick-ons, most likely with grease in them to end up giving my walls grease stains. So I figured, why not make my own decals? It was even easier than I thought it would be.

   All I had to buy was a roll of contact paper and some acrylic red paint. I rolled out large and medium sized portions of the contact paper on the floor, taped them down, poured the paint into a small bowl and used a sponge brush to dip into the paint and make the spooky blood splatter come to life (you can add a bit of brown paint in there to look more realistic probably, but I didn't have time). I have to say it was actually really easy, fun, and cheap. After I let them dry throughout the day, I stuck them right onto the walls for my party. On Halloween night I posted them on the windows hoping to get some trick 'r treaters...

Turns out we only had two. What is happening to the world!?

Overall I am pretty proud of how things turned out and those trick 'r treaters who never showed up totally missed out.

The Grave of Elijah Jefferson Bond

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The Men Behind the Board

2010 Haunt

See more pictures on my Flickr Photostream

"Ghost Writer" The Story of Patience Worth (1919)

My Grandpa saw this article in his Smithsonian Magazine and knew I would be interested.

"A long list of physical sleuths, psychologists, and other skeptics tried to debunk Patience and prove that Pearl was a fraud. No one succeeded."

Read the Article Here.

Friday the 13th

The Winchester House

The Number 13

Vintage Seance: The Film

Well, what an adventure it has been. I first began brainstorming on a story idea about a year ago (one that I am still working on) inspired by the spiritualist movement, which took place during and after the turn of the century. During the spiring I finally came up with the idea to create a short film based on the theme, design, and some of the characters and events that took place in my original story. I simply wanted to make short and miniature version of the story idea I already had, but by telling this story through stop-animation. Because the style and theme for the story also happens to be the same style and theme of my blog, I decided that the short film should be an introduction to my blog, while also being a short little story. ( Here's when I first proposed the idea in a post way back.)

I began to storyboard based on some of the vital elements that I had in mind for this 'seance story' during the early spring. Finally as summer rolled around, I knew that it would be the best time to create this movie with the time I had. So basically, for the first two months I worked on the puppets, then finally the set and props. After this, I filmed for about four days and edited for two weeks. I had finally completed the film! Only three minutes and twenty seconds long, but even that was longer than I expected.

When I thought my technical difficulties were over (after having to re-edit about half of the film, animating clay faces that only began to crumble over time, etc...) I soon realized I was wrong. The music I chose for this film became disabled on YouTube after I uploaded the film. I spent days trying to fix the problem using all sorts of complicated computer methods, and it still wasn't working. I was so bummed because I was worried that I wouldn't be able to show it to very many people.

Turns out, after posting pictures I took of the puppets on my Flickr photostream (which I promise to post all over this blog very soon) I also included the YouTube link, even though I knew it wasn't going to be the complete film experience without the music. Lucky for me, the amazing Pumpkin Rot commented on one of my photos with a link that saved the day (or film, I should say). To say it simply, I got the audio back!

The music is actually from a Panic! at the Disco song (random, I know) but I could really visualize the story when I heard this portion of one of their songs. I did edit the portion to last three minutes and twenty seconds so it may not sound perfect. Also keep in mind, I am not a very experienced animator. I just knew that I wanted to make this film... so I did.

Hope you enjoy the final product! This version is still not the best quality, but it is certainly worth watching. Enjoy!

Here's the link to the film on my PumpkinKidFilm channel and here is a link to the film on my new VintageSeance channel (not very active... yet.)

Thanks again, Rot!

Progress...

Finished working on the Puppets and their costumes, finally. I will be taking some pictures of them today and begin coming up with some final ideas for the set...

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"Margery the Medium"

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New Short

Have been working on a new stop motion short, hoping to finish making the puppets soon so I can begin filming. Don't want to give too much away, but here are some images that really helped inspire me:

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They Are Here

"When you're real quiet, you can hear them..."

Vintage Spirit Photography Pool