Walker’s Short Film is Long on Inspiration
In 60 seconds, you can scramble an egg, check your e-mail, or sew a button on your cuff. You can also change the world. That is what Jamie Walker (A&S ’06) is hoping to do with his one-minute film, “Live a Revolution,” which was one of nine winners in the 2007 Film Your Issue (FYI) competition.
FYI, an Internet-based global competition, invited 16-to-25 year olds to create short films about the issues they are most concerned with. Topics of the submissions ranged from gas conservation to racial profiling. Walker, who majored in film studies and music at the University of Pittsburgh School of Arts and Sciences, chose to focus on the importance of being true to your ideals.
“I was inspired by a war protest that my roommates and I attended in Washington D.C.,” says Walker. “We heard that some of the other protesters had stormed through police lines and up the steps of the Capitol building shouting “Our Congress!” Unfortunately, we missed the action. Our crowd of peace marchers preferred holding signs, singing songs like “We Shall Overcome,” and chanting catchy anti-war slogans. It was my personal questioning of which method of protest is more effective that inspired me to make the film.”
About the Film
Walker estimates that his movie—which is an example of stop-motion animation, the process used in the feature films The Nightmare Before Christmas, Chicken Run, and Corpse Bride—required nearly 70 hours to complete.
“I wrote the music and narration first, and then I gathered photographs that would correspond to my words. I made the images into cardboard cut-outs using paperboard products like cereal boxes that I gleaned from our recycling bin. Then I set up shop on our ping-pong table in the basement,” explains Walker. “I essentially took a snapshot of a wooden artist’s mannequin with some cardboard cutouts, moved the subject a tiny bit, took another snapshot, and created the look of inanimate objects moving on their own. It’s a very laborious process but rewarding and magical nonetheless.”
The competition’s judges—including such luminaries as news anchor and journalist Walter Cronkite; actors Kevin Bacon, Ellen Burstyn, and John Cusack; CEO of Adobe Systems, Bruce Chizen; and New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof—selected “Live a Revolution,” as one of three finalists in the category, “FYI Jury Selections, U.S.” This past summer, Walker joined the other winners at a celebration in New York City to accept his award during a ceremony at the United Nations Headquarters.
Practicing What He Preaches
Walker is currently using his free time to gather ideas for a feature-length script and produce another short film with his fellow filmmaker and girlfriend, Julie Moffa. But most of his hours are spent doing exactly what he hopes that his film will encourage others to do: making a difference.
Says the modest Walker, who is serving with AmeriCorps, a service network that places participants within educational, public safety, environmental, and health organizations, “I wouldn’t go so far as to say I’m living a revolution, but I am trying to practice what I preach. I am with KEYS Service Corps, a program that mentors and tutors inner-city children. I also try to live in an environmentally conscious way by recycling, conserving electricity and water, composting food scraps with a worm farm, becoming a vegetarian, and taking the bus or walking whenever possible.”
A self-professed romantic, Walker cites Amélie and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind among his favorite movies, but not surprisingly, when he considers his future as a filmmaker, his aspirations lean more toward making a difference in people's lives than making a killing at the box office.
Offers Walker, “Eventually, I would like to become an independent filmmaker who directs, edits, and composes music for my own films. I like to look at motion pictures as not just a series of ‘moving pictures’ but as ‘pictures that move people.’ My ultimate achievement would be if I made a film that inspires someone.”
To watch Jamie Walker’s award-winning film, visit filmyourissue.com